They say the hardest thing about being diagnosed with ADHD later in life is mourning the life you could have had. The support that you could have had from the beginning that would have made education enjoyable or even finishable for many of us. Parents who knew what they were up against instead of years in silent panic, trying to cope on their own. Years wasted in self-loathing trying to be “less lazy” by reading every tough-love self-help book available when the time could have been better spent learning a language.
The list of ways my life could have turned out different if I had been diagnosed as a child is too much of a long and depressing one for people half-reading this on the bus or under toast crumbs on a Saturday morning. It’s still not the hardest thing about having ADHD.
It’s listening to a person tell you “but everyone has that these days”. My response varies depending on the day, the alignment of the stars and the amount of time that has lapsed since I last ate. Sometimes if I’m a conciliatory humour, I go straight into education mode. Maybe they don’t understand that the old diagnostic criteria tended to exclude large portions of the population, specifically women and it’s not that people have it more but actually we’re just better at picking it up. Sometimes people are open to learning more. Sometimes they’re not. It’s not my personal responsibility to change people’s minds when I’m just trying to make it to the end of the day with my wallet, phone and house keys.
Other times when it’s obvious the person’s mind is as closed as a pub’s door during a lock-in, I do the old “haha” laugh that fails to reach my eyes and look away. This is the universal sign for “I think you are speaking total shite but I cannot be arsed arguing with you”. What I would really like to say is, “Clearly, Sharon, not everyone has it these days because if they did, I wouldn’t be having this stupid conversation over and over again with big melts like you.”
If everyone had ADHD, my life would improve tenfold. I would live in a world built for me
Unpaid or poorly paid entry-level creative jobs are subsidised by wealthy parents
Relationships even between the best and tenderhearted can still fail
The people who really care about you shouldn’t abandon you over tricky conversations
What a lot of the people who haven’t gone through the diagnostic process for ADHD fail to understand is what it actually looks like in person. I have had people tell me about why we shouldn’t put labels on people and how we’re all a bit eccentric. Then tell me with a straight face all about their dad, whose interest in the first World War was so great that he once went missing from a family party for a good hour because he’d found a captivating book on the Somme in the downstairs loo. But other than having to replace his bank card three times a year, he had a brilliant mind for details.
Or the 10-year-old niece who struggles to make friends at school but has the reading ability of an adult and is told she’s a “pleasure to have in class” even if she is “easily upset by noise”.
If everyone indeed did have ADHD, I think I would know it. In fact I think my life would improve tenfold. I would live in a world that was built for me and my patterns instead of what I do now, which is wedging myself into a way of life that’s as comfortable as a pair of scratchy, sucky-in knickers after a 12-hour wedding.
Small talk, that neurotypical construct, would be binned. We don’t need to talk about the weather; we have apps for that now
I would have no meetings before 11am. Planes would have a 15-minute departure buffer time. I would have direct, clear communication without the faff of figuring out what someone said versus what they meant. I would never feel anxiety about whether someone was “off” with me. I’d know because they would have told me instead of everyone else around me. I could ask as many clarifying questions as I wanted to without sounding insubordinate or sarcastic. People in workplaces would be rewarded for the work they do, instead of how good they are at pretending to do work. Office politics might even cease to exist entirely. Kids wouldn’t be bullied for being weird because the concept of “weird” wouldn’t exist any more. Small talk, that neurotypical construct, would be binned. We don’t need to talk about the weather; we have apps for that now. Instead all work or social meetings would begin with people doing a short infodump about what they’ve got really into lately. Do I want to hear Darren talking about how we’re expected to have rain again when actually I want to hear all about how he’s been really getting into Irish light pollution maps and can tell me the next place to watch the Northern Lights again? This is useful information.
But this utopia can never be because, no, not everyone has ADHD.
