Where I Am

I was diagnosed with ADHD two years ago this week. I am still surprised by what I'm learning.

Photo by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash

I wasn’t going to publish this week. I am working on something long-ish, and it’s a lot of moving parts, so it’s taking a bit longer than I expected. Focus and quiet is hard to come by these days. Everything is chaos, because for some reason, the American people decided to choose that.

I tossed off a draft of something, just to have something to publish. It wasn’t up to my standard. I know that not all of my writing here is amazing, but I do know when a piece just isn’t gelling. It wasn’t wasted time. It was a bit of a rant, and I needed to get it out.

I refuse to let Substack become a chore. I’ve so enjoyed my experience here, and no, I will not be pivoting to video. So I intended to just take a break for a week.

I looked at my calendar after I left work, and it said “Happy Anniversary to YOU!”. I had no idea wtf my phone was even talking about, as I left no other useful information to myself.

Then it dawned on me: I was diagnosed with ADHD two years ago this week.

I wrote an essay last year about how year one went. Year one was bewildering. Overwhelming. At moments, ecstatic. I was almost in love with the diagnosis. I held it, I obsessed about it, I thought about nothing else. To finally have an answer to the question “what the fuck is wrong with me?” was a watershed moment.

Year two has been different. I’m past the honeymoon phase.

ADHD is part of who I am, but it isn’t the whole story.

---

There are things I still struggle with.

Sometimes I hate this disorder so much I wish I could rip my brain out and hand it to someone who knows how to fix it, rewire it, make it work like a normal person’s. There are days my symptoms aren’t controlled by anything - not meds, not sleep, not diet. My brain becomes a whirling dervish, a Tasmanian Devil. The difference is that eventually it wears itself out, which is better than what it used to do, which was become a tornado that tore me apart and left me rebuilding, brick by brick.

Then there are the good things, but they can be complicated.

I don’t allow people to treat me like shit anymore. That seems a simple thing, but when you spent your whole life convinced you were terrible and broken, you put up with shit that maybe you shouldn’t have done. Any time there was a fracture in a relationship, I felt like it was my job to glue it back together, because obviously I must have been the one to break it. When I began to get to know myself, and understand the why and how of how I operate, a lot of stuff became super clear. And despite what I’d told myself, I had not completely rid myself of narcissists. I hadn’t broken the cycle yet, and worse, I tied myself into knots to try to please them.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula is a leading expert on narcissism. Her podcast Navigating Narcissism is a must-listen for anyone struggling with a narcissist in their lives. I don’t turn to it often, because I have a good working knowledge of the subject matter, but once in a while I’ll listen to an episode that catches my attention.

I saw a clip on her TikTok channel where she was interviewing Patrick Teahan, an expert in childhood trauma. She asked him “What do you think is the definitive symptom of childhood trauma?”.

He said something that blew my mind.

“It’s about trying to get a difficult person to be good to us.”

@doctorramaniWhy do you keep trying to get difficult people to be good to you? Childhood trauma survivor and someone I greatly admire @Patrick Teahan reveals one of the most important things you will ever hear! Link in bio

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I am known for being able to deal with difficult people. I’m good at it. I always have been, because I grew up with a difficult person, and I know how to walk through a minefield gingerly, always on my toes.

When I started to reflect on my life and the situations where this manifested itself¹, I realized I was still doing it. I was still waiting for difficult people to show me respect. To value me. To be good to me. To change.

This is a game I played for decades, and it’s only now I realize that I cannot win.

I have self-respect now. I value myself. I admire my strength and resilience (although I am very tired of being resilient). I have learned how to be good to myself. I don’t need to try and convince anyone of my goodness, my worth, my value. If they can’t see it, that’s their problem.

I also can’t pretend that the mistreatment isn’t happening. Sometimes the rage is so huge that I have trouble concealing it. I resent anyone who doesn’t want me to succeed, especially when they make it bone obvious that they’re comfortable keeping me exactly where they want me. But I don’t do what everyone else wants anymore, and if they don’t know that yet, they’re about to find out.

And then, there are the uncertain things. The questions that remain. The “what now”?My life looks very very different than it did two years ago. I am different. I’m quieter and more introspective. I don’t need to jump from thing to thing to satisfy the Dopamine Monkey. I don’t need validation the way I used to.

But sometimes I am not sure where that leaves me. The uncertainty in the country has me re-imagining my goals, my plans, and my hopes. I am looking at the rest of my life and asking the big questions.

What do I really want? What is serving me? What isn’t serving me? What will be fulfilling? What old ideas am I still hanging onto?

These are all huge questions, and I don’t know the answer to them yet. What I do know is that I am grateful. I am grateful to not be suffering all the time. I think about the suffering I endured in the past, but I am able to abstract it. I am not consumed by it.

I don’t live there anymore.

---

I am so grateful to all of my readers for being here with me.

I know a lot of people think it’s bullshit when you say you don’t care about leaderboards, or paid subscriptions, etc. Saying I don’t care is disingenuous, but there is no monetary value I can place on having a consistent writing practice, and that there are people who like what I do. I needed something outside of theater to find my audience. I don’t have to wait years for people to see something I wrote. I just had to stop being afraid to tell my truth. To write my own story. And so long as I am here, that’s what I intend to keep doing. The rest of it is a bonus.

Because of the work I’ve done here, and the response to it, my confidence is back. I will never again pretend to be something I am not to make other people happy. I will not conceal my struggles, my triumphs, or my opinions for fear of what other people will think. I won’t live in fear of retribution. No one will ever have that kind of power over me ever again.

For the first time in my life, I feel a sense of something I had trouble identifying at first.

What I feel is freedom.

1. I want to be very clear that my husband is not one of them. Thank god. I don’t know HOW I managed to not become romantically involved with a narcissist, and I thank my lucky stars every day that wasn’t my journey. He has his faults, bless him, but he’s never been cruel to me, and he is absolutely NOT a narcissist.