ADHD Skeletons in the Closet | ADDitude Adult ADHD Blog

"What's life with adult ADHD like? Well for starters, my mind is like a 250-pound woman who is sluggish and needs to shed the weight. 


At the end of the day, I feel like no one would want a woman with attention deficit disorder, whose thoughts and interests drift...


The truth is that I am scared shitless about someone seeing through the shield."

Incubus - DIG

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We all have a weakness
Some of ours are easier to identify
Look me in the eye
And ask for forgiveness
We'll make a pact to never speak
That word again, yes, you are my friend
We all have something that digs at us
At least we dig each other
So when weakness turns my ego up
I know you'll count on the me from yesterday

We all have a sickness
That cleverly attaches and multiplies
No matter how we try
We all have someone that digs at us
At least we dig each other
So when sickness turns my ego up
I know you'll act as a clever medicine

If I turn into another
Dig me up from under what is covering
The better part of me
Sing this song
Remind me that we'll always have each other
When everything else is gone
Oh, each other when everything else is gone



//everything else is gone. it's been years and years since someone made me feel, since someone made me come alive. now i have to turn my back on that. you wonder why i can't give up. because i won't let my life pass me by.//

Oh Who Am I Kidding ?

I can pretend that I'm above it and past it but really, who am I kidding? 
This sucks.
Once you enter a realm with someone where feelings begin to surface, you can't go backwards.

I have to accept that the pain is there. If I ignore it, it'll only rear it's ugly head at some later and inconvenient date. Moving on sounds great, but I'm just not feeling it yet. I hate feeling like this, but I guess pain and I are buddies right now.

Moving Right Along...

I think it's time for me to embrace a reality about myself and that is that there will be no "relationship" for a long, long time. Not with anyone. Putting all your eggs into one basket like that is just setting yourself up for the inevitable fall, because another person will always disappoint you no matter what. I'm keeping all my eggs to myself.

There are so many things in my life that need attention. Trying to breathe life into something that's dead is really not something I need to be doing right now. Better that I focus on the rest of my life and not get bogged down by bullshit. With that in mind, I also realize there are things to look forward to, relationships that were put on hold while I experienced this mess.  Hooah will be home from Cuba in a few weeks;  B. will be home from Afghanistan soon. Knowing that was upcoming, what was I thinking? What was I doing? What exactly was I hoping to accomplish? I don't really know. I got knocked off my horse, that's for sure. I didn't expect to, wasn't expecting to feel the way I felt. There is still that fire for him, only now it's anger. The key to putting out that fire for him will be when I can experience indifference.

Love Proceeds

You sit there silently watching the fits and starts of my sadness and anger, watch it bleeding from me, while slowly unraveling my dignity. My outbursts are like the death throes of a dying monster, whatever I've become in trying to keep you near me. You watch as I succumb to the worst parts of myself, just as your presence once summoned the best of me. Now I struggle to control my demons with self-discipline, struggle for the strength to stop hurting. I try to resist the urge to let pain make me close my heart, although keeping it open has had so many consequences. But I refuse to allow the ignorant world to make me bitter, to make me hard and cold. I proceed, unabashed, into every adventure of the heart because I know that once my heart is moved, I listen to its truths. I stand firm in who I am and who I choose to love. I won't let your shifting sands undermine my feelings nor will I let the pain and anger drown me. What you see in my angry words and bizarre actions is the remnant of a dying wicked spirit, a damaged and evil heart. They say there's no rest for the wicked and this I can tell you is true. I've spent the past year enveloped in my own worst impulses and I sit crumpled on the floor exhausted, weary and without promise of rest, unless I drive myself into my grave. 

I know that I am better than that, I know that this is the final blow. No more can I proceed by taking someone else down with me. It's time that I moved on. 

I'll try to collect myself as best I can, with the embarrassment of the rotten things I've said hanging off me like a scarlet A. I'll pull myself together and take one step today, never regretting the intensity of my feelings, only regretting that they were not respected. I am a woman of deep passion and love without boundaries, who is learning self-control. Your silence has taught me acceptance; let my heart teach you to love. I have faith that you will recover and find that strong man buried in you, the one who is not afraid of love's power. Regardless of whether I ever meet that man again, I know he is you. Remember when I showed you the best of me, because I know that woman intimately, and she is who I'm to become. 

Criminal

Sometimes a song pops into your head or comes on the radio unbidden and it seems to fit your circumstances at that moment in time so well that its almost scary. Fiona Apple's "Criminal" came on the car radio today while I was driving. It's been years since I've heard it and I couldn't remember at first who sang it or what it was called. But as I listened to the words, I almost careened off the DC Beltway. I was a good Catholic girl, so I know somehow, someway, I'm guilty, this is my fault, this is something I did and I need to be redeemed in some way, though what that is I might never know. 

Let the flogging begin......


Criminal

I've been a bad, bad girl,
I've been careless with a delicate man.
Don't you tell me to deny it,
I've done wrong and I want to
Suffer for my sins.
What I need is a good defense
cause Im feelin like a criminal.
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I sinned against
Because he was all I ever knew of love.
I know tomorrow
brings the consequence at hand.
But I keep livin' this day like
The next will never come.
I've got to cleanse myself.
Until I'm good enough for him.
Ive got a lot to lose and I'm
Bettin' high
So I'm beggin' you before it ends
Just tell me where to begin.
Ive got to make a play
To make my lover stay
So, what would an angel say? 
Cause the devil wants to know.
OH, I need to be redeemed
To the one I sinned against
Because he was all I ever knew of love.

When I Was in the Right Place

He arouses my every desire just by stroking a finger down my arm. With him I knew I was in the right place.
He deepens my passion by whispering just the right words in my ear. With him I knew I was in the right place.

He stirs the butterflies in my chest with merely one word. With him I knew I was in the right place.
He causes the heat to rise to my face by using his eyes to look right through me. With him I knew I was in the right place.
He is that special someone who causes me, body, mind and soul to ignite at the mere thought of him. His words, ideas, his mind, feed me in ways no one ever has. No one has filled this need before and there is no one else I want.   My mind and soul want no other, my body cringes at the thought of another's touch. He brings me to the brink just thinking of his kiss. 

When I was with him, I know I was in the right place.

You are everything

You are everything
that takes my breath away
body, mind, soul.
What I see in you
makes me a better person
just for knowing you.

I want so much to be in your arms,

in your bed,

in your life.

What must I do,

who must I be,

to make that a certainty

Where Sex and Love Collide

I've always liked to write. I recently found the little poem below, written when I was 18 years old. Seems as though I had some issues confusing sex and love - feeling close to someone and mistaking it for a feeling of love. Guess it's fortunate I've had 22 years to ruminate on this. 


At this point in my life, I have a lot of experience to draw on, experiences that span a large range of emotions and physical feelings. I've learned that there are different shades of love, that love is not all or nothing, that love is not always perfect the way "they" tell you it is. You can love someone to the point that it bursts your heart wide open and that may still not be enough.

I've learned that love is not just an emotion, it's an attitude and an action. It's something that you do every day, not just when the mood hits you. It's a promise, a certitude, which is why when it's broken it is so hard to get back. LOVE in that sense, is exclusive. 

I have had feelings of affection for people, loving feelings which in turn have elicited a loving attitude, loving gestures and overtures which then become a commitment. That commitment is that I care about you and I am here for you unless something happens that we agree otherwise. We all have these loving feelings for our friends, our families, children, even our pets. They are different shades of love because they don't involve sex or sexual feelings and they don't indicate familial responsibility like a husband and wife. But they are all love.

The feeling of raw lust is a powerful drive that sets us on fire. When combined with feelings of love, there is nothing that can match it! But sex has nothing to do with love other than that they oftentimes coincide.  For me, that has not happened often, those feelings of genuine love AND forceful sexual attraction. I have felt powerfully pulled to have sex with someone, genuinely lost in lust, drowning in the physicality of it, with no love at all. The point is, giving in to the power of sex can be intoxicating, but it is not love. Sex is an action to be sure, but it's not the sustained action of love. Sex may overtake your mind, it may drown your body and make you ache for more, but that is called lust, not love. You can make a choice to not act on lust, but it is almost impossible to not act on love. The burning of lust fades quickly, like fireworks, where the burning of love sustains even the most horrendous, painful and horrifying events. You would not walk to the ends of the earth for someone because you want to fuck them; but when you love them, you would endure all manner of insults to your body, mind and soul. 

No Peace

She finds no peace in sleeping

She finds no peace awake

The only peace she finds

Is in every move he makes

The feeling of his body

Is committed to her mind

But the movement of his body

Is the only peace she finds.

If his body movement falters

She knows she still will need him

But at this moment

for the sake of peace

She's content to be beneath him

Joining with his rhythm

Pulsating as he moves

Finally she's satisfied

Her peace has turned to love.  

War Crimes Against the Family

From a journal I kept in 2004-2005 when my husband was deployed to Iraq. He did return safely, however, he is now my ex-husband. 


Early morning, we wake, dawn yet to break and the birds still silent. The baby is not yet ready to be fed but I wake her anyway and take her to my breast. She's sleepy but still finds her way. Around the house, I hear the sounds of someone preparing to leave, of drawers being checked, of zippers closing suitcases. I hear his combat boots pacing impatiently outside the closed door to the baby's room; he is waiting for us but I can't make the baby eat any faster.
"Daddy, are you leaving today?"
The sound of my 6 year old son's sleepy question turns my blood to ice. He knows today Daddy is leaving for war, he knows it is not safe, he understands Daddy will be gone for a long time.
Baby Nicole is finished quickly as if she knows something is amiss. However, she sits upright too fast and promptly throws up all over me. A quick change for both of us and we are ready to go. No one is in the mood to make jokes.
Before leaving the house, he wants me to find him a scarf or bandanna or something to tie on his military-issue duffel bags, to help distinguish them from everyone else's in the deployment line. I find a few bandannas and pray to God that the next time I see them they are in his hands and not with mortuary services.
Finally we pile into the car, silently, and drive to the flightline, the runway on base where his unit will fly to Iraq. Anxiety and panic is in my throat and I am only able to quell it by thinking about how much I smell like spit up. Without that to focus on, my mind reels wildly around all the fatal possibilities facing him and the depth of possible sorrow facing our family. Spit up never smelled so good.
We wait on the flightline, in an empty hangar for the plane to load. The troops are lined up behind a rope, dressed in their combat gear and all dragging the same drab green duffel. Everyone has some kind of floral scarf or bandanna or ribbon from their wife, girlfriend or daughter tied to it.
Andrew, our son, fiddles with dad's bandanna then with the laces on his dad's combat boots. He's not supposed to cross the deployment line. The commanders don't want wives and kids getting tangled up in hugging and kissing while the troops are supposed to be gearing up. But Andrew has found a spot between legs that he can crawl through to get to his Daddy and Daddy doesn't turn him away. Baby Nicole is just happy to smile at all the people.
The line starts to move and I have to fish Andrew out from underneath the pounding boots starting toward the door. As I pull him out, he starts to scream, "Daddy! No! I don't want you to die! Daddy please don't go! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"
I have to hold him back but he is strong and determined. He breaks out of my arms and is caught in the arms of the base commander, who picks him up and tells him, "Daddy has a job to do."
Andrew replies, "His job sucks!"
I don't argue or reprimand him. I do wonder where he picked up the word "sucks" but later forget about it. The commander frowns at us with a lack of compassion that stupefies me. Meanwhile, we are missing our last chance to wave at Daddy as he disappears out the door and up the steps to the plane.
Andrew runs to the window screaming and crying, "Daddy!" His tantrum goes on for hours, days, doesn't even let up when he goes back to school.  I end up sitting in the hallway outside his classroom for weeks until he starts to settle down.
The bottom drops out of me. Whatever safety net underlies our lives in general, that psychological function that blocks us from thinking about mortality every second of the day, that has disappeared. It turns out that beneath the net lies only an open abyss with no perceptible bottom, only darkness and falling, falling, falling....
Yet I hold it together for my children, wake each day like a robot, mother and love my children, care for them and try not to let the darkness enfold me. In spite of my attempts, each night after the children go to sleep, the abyss takes me into it's sinister embrace and holds me captive until morning, showing me images of death, of fear, terror, and violence. Knowing every day could be his last, I have nothing to cling to, no hope, no faith. Just nothing...