For as long as I can recall being in school, concentration has been a challenge for me. My lack of focus was often attributed by teachers as a lack of discipline. If I just worked/ studied/ tried harder, I would be “on track.” If I could just do this one thing that was seemingly within my control, I would be on the deceptively linear path to success. I would be excellent. Oddly, the truth of the matter was that I was working hard. I would take notes and stay after school for extra help and then come to school early for some more help. I bought any folder and planner that promised me a more streamlined method of organization. Cute, novelty calendars and post-it lists were traditional stocking stuffers from Santa. I bought organizing systems for my organizing systems. The Container Store was both my heaven and hell.

     It wasn’t until a routine counseling session in college, that I began to entertain the idea that I might have ADD. My initial skepticism was due largely because growing up, I was assured I didn’t have it. My parents, like many others, felt we were living in a culture of over-medicating and their kids were not going to be a part of it. And I didn’t blame them. At college, recreational use of ADD meds was the norm. People used them to stay up and party. People also used them to cope with massive workloads. During finals, the price of an individual pill would rise. It was a whole market! A lot of my peers didn’t need these pills and for a while I kept questioning if I really needed them as well. The answer was and still is, yes.

     After being diagnosed and sent off with my first prescription, it was like a massive knot had been untangled in my brain. Tasks became less overwhelming. It became easier to mentally break things down to make them more digestable. I started to feel more engaged and in control. I started to feel intelligent and capable. This all being said, managing my ADD is work. It stays lodged in my anxious and busy mind. It’s the oil that keeps the anxiety gears running at full speed. It’s sitting down to write and then googling the entire royal family of Saudi Arabia (god damn they are rich!) It’s feeling stupid for all of those years in school. It’s feeling like if you could only try harder, things would fall into place. It’s forgetting things. It’s feeling like organization and control will always be out of reach. It’s depression. It’s loneliness. It’s feeling like you’ve lost a chunk of your life, especially if you’ve been diagnosed beyond childhood. It’s a battle upstream. But it’s a battle I’m going to win. There are good days and bad days. Days when I can get everything down in my planner. Days when I can peacefully clean the apartment. Days where I can forgive myself for having this thing.

     For a period of time I thought I had caused it myself. Maybe I watched too much tv or spent too much time on the internet. Maybe, growing up, I didn’t read enough. I still come back to this line of thinking, only to be kindly reassured by my therapist that I didn’t choose this. You can’t catch ADD. When I try to visualize it, I picture a tangled ball of hair that I want to cut out but have to condition. I’m stuck with it and all the accompanying feelings of shame, sadness and anxiety (more on those later). I truly hope that one day I won’t need meds but for now I will surrender and continue to manage, knowing I am fully capable of doing so.