I know the frustrations with the cleaning house and having too much on your plate to really deal with it all. You bite off more than you can chew, but you don’t realize it until you are actually chewing for 10 days straight. It just seems that this year has flown by and there is no time to do anything other than tend to your obligatory items that you've set up.
Laundry is my biggest thing now. If I could just get my laundry done, without staying up till all hours of the night finishing it... I'd be good.. I also know all too well about the forgetting of things... Forgetful is my middle name. I forget where I put my keys down, I forget about things I have to do for work, I forget to call people back (which is NOT a good thing when it comes to work stuff). I forget to write things down so that I won't forget them, and I forget to keep remembering not to forget things.
I am so disorganized with everything I do, that it is amazing that I can actually get up every day and make it to work without forgetting to change out of my pjs. I am beginning to wonder if all of the organizing genes just magically went to my sister, and skipped me completely, and the genes were able to get to my brother although, not as heavily as they did my sister. All I know is that I was blessed with the creativity gene, NOT, the organizing gene. *note to self: don’t forget to google this and see if there are any actual studies on genes that single out organization. Hmmm… Now what was it that I was supposed to remember?
Yes, my medicine does help and I remember what it was like without, and I couldn't even focus long enough to complete a sentence, much less understand one that I was reading or hearing someone speak. Medicine can only help focus on certain things... Small tasks.... But, it doesn't cure it, it doesn't magically take my ADD away and all of a sudden, I'm an average adult without a disability. That couldn't be further from the truth!
I am able to concentrate now, which is WHY I still have my job, and I can focus long enough to get the necessary things done (regarding work, etc...) but I have so many unfinished projects at home, and so many ideas that I want to do something with. I start projects, and then get frustrated, because I want so bad to finish them, but other ideas keep coming to my mind, and I never get anything completed. I know it frustrates the hell out of my parents, because I keep saying.. I'll do that, I’ll get it, I’ll take care of it.. and COMPLETELY forget to do the task that I told them I would get done.
ADD is definitely not conducive to being an adult!!! It's not something that anyone really discusses, and that's the hard part. It’s not like I can go to a coffee shop and overhear a group of people talking about how crazy having ADD as an adult makes you feel. ADD is unspoken about as an adult. Everyone focuses on what it is like for a child to have ADD, but how often to you hear about adults with the Disorder? It’s not like once you hit 18, ADD just disappears and you grow out of it. You have this Disorder for the rest of your life.
I feel like if I mention how my brain feels, people will tell me to just "get it done" and "focus on one thing at a time.." Ummm... HELLO!!!!!! FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME???? That's what people without ADD do... That's what they can do with ease.... They can just "get it done" and not think anything of it.
The way my doctor described Adult ADD to me... Adults with ADD are perfectionists, and when we start something, we try to finish it, and when it isn't finished in the perfect time frame, our brains go on to something different, and the cycle keeps going. He said that it gets to the point that when you want so bad for a room to be clean, so you start cleaning, and of course it looks worse when you first start because you start pulling stuff out of drawers etc... but your mind gets bored, and that task of cleaning that room, turns into an overload, and we never complete that task because it's too overwhelming.
The funny thing is, I can completely organize someone else. I can completely keep all of Bella's records/foods/schedules etc... I can keep those completely in line. When it comes to myself... I can't keep myself organized to save my life. It's so easy for me to organize other people, because I don't have a bond with their stuff. Sit me down in my room, and I'm apt to picking up a sock and go on a search for the other one because it would make a good pair of socks for me to wear to work one day, but during that search, I come across my photo albums, and go through them thinking about old friends etc, so I’ll go email them or call them etc… ......... and the saga continues... side note: I never find the other socks.. Also.. by the time I finish all of the things for work, dinner, dog stuff, I'm too exhausted to care about the other stuff.
People that don't have ADD don't understand what it's like to live in a life where you forget things so easily. Getting Side-tracked doesn't even come remotely close to defining what goes on in the brain when you have ADD. It’s more of a “Detour” that takes you through the mountains and lands you back in a spot that isn’t exactly where you were trying to get to. My life has always been detours, I’ve never taken the straight route to get from point A to point B. More like start at C and maybe go to A, but if B has something cool going on.. I may stop there and forget to go to A.
Point of the matter being....I DO get frustrated so easily with myself. It's so hard to ask for help too. That's my BIGGEST problem, is knowing when to ask for help, because I just don't ask. (I forget). It’s not that I’m trying to avoid asking, I just don’t remember to ask.. I know that for my family, it is incredibly frustrating to live with me. I appear to have all of my ducks in a row, and I often think I do, until someone tells me that one of my middle ducks has gotten out of line. So I do get called out if I missed something.
If you meet me for the first time, no one would ever suspect that I have Attention Deficit Disorder. However, do you ever meet an adult and go up to them and think automatically…. “I bet they have ADD” or “I bet they have OCD”..etc…
I’ll end this here, because I can see that I’m rambling. Adults who have ADD are out there, even though the focus is on children with the disorder. We do struggle, and sometimes feel like we are just kinda hanging out there with no real support, other than a monthly visit for a prescription refill. I know there will never be a 100% cure for this. I do hope for better support systems for adults though.
I will post the story of my ADD a little later on, because I know there needs to be a little bit more background to this post, but I needed this to be on the blog.
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