Discovering ADHD

Hyperfocus

Laser light on gold. 2019

I hope you will forgive me this catharsis today. Time is a meaningless thing to me. It is jumbled. Far and near are neither and my memory is a crashing chaos of shame and elation that often makes little sense. I forget my own history on this planet. This moment is so strong in my mind that the past vanishes. It is important for me to write on this today. To find some pattern in the turbulence and to bring to the light that which is often kept in the darkest place, our hearts.

My story about living with ADHD starts both in my youth and with diagnosing my son when he was in preschool. See, ADHD and I go way back, even though I never really knew it. 

I was one of those who believed that ADHD was a made-up illness, meant to keep kids in their school seats, chemically strapped down to their desks. Despite never having knowingly interacted with someone who was actually diagnosed and medicated, I carried the conclusion that medical research was wrong. Now, I can say with confidence dozens of my peers at school have ADHD. Many of them were very good friends because we were the same.

Sometimes I feel regret or anger at having slipped through the system. I have begun to come to terms with that and will cover that some other time.

I was never a good student in school, at least until I reached adulthood. Most teachers didn't understand me, and I didn't make it easy for them. I have awful emotional skills. I always have and likely always will. Having lived half a life I think I am starting to build some decent skill. Teachers require a certain level of calm to really perform and I almost never had that. I am shocked that I was given the passes I got. My mom recognizes now that school failed me, not the other way around. They should have dug deeper, they should have cared. I carry a lot of shame from this period in my life. There were many lies I told others and myself.

This became a huge problem in high school. I make jokes that I studied high school at the local fast food joint. My family and friends know the place. I was practically furniture there. I owe my crossword solving skills to cigarettes, plastic furniture, and weak coffee. My high school was pretty big and growing out of a pretty rough background. What is now a home for the 1% was once a backwoods working-class village with all the mindset that comes with it. Boys were grease monkey chain-smokers and girls were loud fashion victim rebels. The teachers I met at that school were worn of their care. I don't blame them. Eventually, they kicked me out, though I was already far gone by then.

The story of how I came back will have to wait for another time. In short, I was able to finish high school at a later date and explore my creativity at post-secondary art school. I would like to fast forward about twenty years to my son, nine today, but four at the time of his diagnosis.

He was a hard to handle little guy. He is the sort to do what he wants to do, not what anyone suggests he do. This didn't work well with his preschool. We frequently had to pick him up and take him home because his behaviour was too much for the educators. As this progressed, the preschool really stepped up. They have access to counselling and psychiatry and they sent my little one for an assessment.

They have some clever tests for such young people that I cannot describe, never having personally witnessed one. The results came back that our boy was gifted in some way, and that he should see a pediatrician about possible ADHD. I was surprised the same test couldn't detect his awful eyesight we discovered a few years later.

I seem to recall that it took some time to get an appointment for the pediatrician. She had read his evaluation beforehand and asked us a few questions about him. Each one was like a stab. She was describing me as a kid, not just my son. The fears, the outbursts, symptoms I knew too well. I left that appointment a different person. A person who knew he and his boy had ADHD.

A few little words made a lifetime suddenly make sense. I've always known I was different from a lot of people. Other people have known I am different. Some could get past the less desirable aspects to love me. Even I got past some of those aspects to find people to love.

Thanks for reading.

Pete