Jaimee Eat World

I learned pretty late in my life that I have ADHD.

I Can’t Help Myself At All

Knowing I have it didn’t really change anything for me, but I stick it firmly in my “well, that’s good to know,” pile. It’s a short pile.

It’s not uncommon for women to be diagnosed as adults, mostly because so much about what we understand in health and medicine comes from studies that are primarily done on men. Women are generally an afterthought in this space and I’d probably be more furious about it if I could channel my attention to that cause specifically, but I can’t.

The signs of ADHD differ tremendously between boys and girls. My lack of attention was far less noticeable than some of my friends who showcased obvious signs that were largely disruptive to others, but by the third grade at least one of my teachers had noted that she was sure I had it. Nothing was done with this information because I was doing fine as far as anyone could tell – grades were good, homework got completed in the ninth hour, nobody knew I was staying up half the night reading or playing addictive video games, so, there was no real cause for concern. Obviously I was none the wiser and thought everything I did was just like, normal. On some level I guess it was, but on other levels, well, uhm… oops.

As a result I learned to deal with my ADHD alone and in my own way, but once I learned more about it later in life, it was really eye-opening how many of the things I’d spent my entire life struggling with could more than likely be traced back directly to it.

As I said, it didn’t really change anything for me. I still struggle with a lot of the same things I did before I knew, but now I breathe a little easier when I’m having a hard time starting tasks, finishing them, dealing with rejection sensitivity or I’m feeling hyperactive and impulsive, because at least I know where it’s coming from and that it’s not my fault – you can really beat yourself up a lot when you don’t realize there’s a legitimate diagnosable problem affecting your decision making.

It’s still an ongoing battle to not get frustrated with myself about it sometimes, but I’m much kinder to myself about it now.

I’m Not Asking For A Fix

It obviously wont ever go away, so I’ve had to make peace with it. I’ve convinced myself on some level it’s a net positive to have. I think it works well with creating music and playing instruments. It’s part of the reason I jump around from instrument to instrument as much as I do which means I progress a lot slower than someone who say, plays guitar and only guitar and is committed to that singular task, but I kind of enjoy the jump-around – it keeps things fresh and interesting every day (or hour, or 15-minute interval).

I don’t really have any advice about it other than if you think you might have ADHD, especially if you’re an adult woman, I’d read up on it as much as you can. A lot of the things people suggest to help you with it for me don’t ever really stick so I don’t find a lot of it terribly useful; Getting a bullet journal is probably not going to solve your problems, but you might enjoy using one for a week or two before you push it aside and forget about it like all your other journals/agendas/sticky note piles.

I will say I do think I benefited greatly from the structure and routine of school and afterwards being in a consistent 7-3PM job even if it goes against the way I wish I could really live. These days I have a super scattered random schedule and because of my tremendous executive dysfunction, I don’t always get as much done in a day as I would like to and it’s easy to feel kinda shitty about it… every day. I’m working on it. Sometimes, sort of.

The hardest part these days really is having too much time in my own head and not many people to sound off to. That’s another one of those things that doesn’t really help or change anything, but makes you feel a little more normal when someone else is there to just listen and toss you the occasional, “hey, I go through that, too.”

I Just Need You Close To Reach

In the last couple years since abandoning the traditional 9-5 job slog, I do notice certain aspects of my ADHD being much more challenging to manage (because of the lack of structure and too much time to think about it), but then I remind myself we were never really supposed to live that way and it goes against most of our nature to begin with.

Because it’s really not that ADHD is difficult for me to manage – it’s difficult for me to manage it within the confines of our modern society.

Modern society kinda blows, by the way. I remember learning about the Medieval Ages in school and I really loved that shit because it seemed like such a bizarre and strange way for people to live. What do you mean there’s a King who rules over the entire country who has Nobles and Knights and … peasants? You have peasants here? That’s crazy. And they don’t get fed as well as the others and are forced into heavy labour at the benefit of your Knights and Nobles and women don’t really have rights and are just supposed to bare children and work for the man of the house?

And then I think about the way we live today and the only thing we’re missing is a guillotine.

Anyway, I’ve kinda gotten off track here and just wanted to release this week’s cover song, we can pick this up later, maybe.

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Lean was originally released some time ago with the hurried completion of the Damage album – you can hear the old version here: