too, enough.

I’m supposed to be working, but instead, I’m diving into what some people call ADHD kryptonite. I’m cleaning up my ‘downloads’ folder which is a treasure trove of fun things like my wedding vows amongst pictures of me in a banana costume and old zoom recordings of graphic design classes.

The common thread in the kryptonite is learning and growing which I don’t feel like I’ve done much of lately which is a ridiculous thing to say. I’ve grown so much in the last 5 months that I’m struggling to know who this new person is. I finally have the missing puzzle piece but only I can see the hole it filled.

There was so much resistance to my ADHD diagnosis. External resistance I didn’t anticipate. My own resistance was due to a distrust in the medical system that had traumatized me as a kid. I had fought this fight before, I could do it again and I did. I knew deep down for so long that I was different. There was something about me that was ‘othered’ in a quietly detrimental way. Having a doctor tell me all of a sudden made it real. Maybe too real for the people who had ‘othered’ me. The people I mask the most around. The people who said that I’m:

Too: loud, quiet, scatterbrained, sensitive, lazy, aloof, blunt, open, accepting, naive, outspoken, confident.

That I don’t have enough: confidence, drive, thick-skinned mentality, penis (you needed one to work in construction, apparently.), gumption, focus.

We’re not all too much/not enough all the time. There are places and spaces we can be ourselves. As I watched my friends and acquaintances reveal their diagnoses, I realized that we had all come together over the years because we were othered. We were drawn to each other’s otherness. We protected each other. We still do.

Why is my downloads folder ADHD kryptonite? It’s a digital junk drawer with layers of memories folded in. That banana costume had me laughing again after being so depressed, I wanted to unalive myself. Those wedding vows poured onto the page and were some of the easiest yet hardest words I’ve ever written. They mean so much. The zoom class was my very last class before I graduated. It had words of wisdom and encouragement from a man who truly cared.

As I work through resolving all the loose threads in my past that hurt me, I’m reminded of all the really tight threads that hold me together. Some threads are looser than I remember them to be. Some threads are even tighter.

Maybe I am actually working after all.