Hopefully you have read my Disclaimer. If not, please start there.
But if you have then you know the absolute basics. Name, age, job, relationship status and the fact that I do not yet have a diagnosis of ADHD. I feel some shame in that and I don’t really know why. I guess Imposter Syndrome - the feeling that you don’t belong in an area of your life, are just faking it and at some point will be caught or found out - must be pretty common for people with ADHD. I worry that people will think I am a hypochondriac or just making it up or that I’m a fraud somehow. I worry that people who have been diagnosed will feel I am on their turf, like an unknown wedding guest that no one invited. Should I be speaking out about what it is like to have ADHD - and thus advancing myself as a voice for those with it - when I do not yet know that I have it and may be told at any time that in fact I don’t have it?
I think the answer is that the purpose of this journal isn’t to represent anyone or be anyone’s voice but simply to chronicle my own experiences. So often I feel like it is all in my head or that I must be fine really. And when someone asks me what it is like to live with this condition or how it is I know that I have it, I freeze up. The words don’t come or if they do, they are inadequate. Yet I spend all of my time constantly dealing with a thousand reasons why I know I have ADHD and there are so many of them and I am so used to them all that I barely notice I am not like everyone else, because how on earth do you even know that when you have always been this way? I need to be able to keep track of all of the things happening in my life, instead of just scrolling through endless posts and memes on facebook about ADHD going ‘yes! I do that too!’, having a brief moment of understanding and then forgetting about them again. I need evidence for myself as much as anyone else, that I’m not making this up.
I also need an outlet. I need an outlet for my overthinking brain that spends hours thinking about everything I’m going to write in this journal. I need something constructive to do with all these thoughts that leaves me with something to show for it all. I need to get this stuff out there so that I don’t explode with it all because it’s either going out onto the page in front of you or it’s going to carry on spinning around in my head, which is exhausting.
And as much as anything else, I also need the therapy it provides. I love to write because I love to think and seeing my jumbled messy tangled web of thoughts go from the heavy burning burden of my mind into something tangible that I can rearrange and correct until it is perfect is actually very cathartic. But it is much deeper than that. There are so many feelings and experiences I am carrying around with me that bring me pain. I’m writing them in the hope that I can let some of it go.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t hope someone reads this and takes something from it. I hope someone else can relate to some of it. I hope it strikes a chord. We all need understanding and to feel connected. But first and foremost, this is for me.
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