My two track mind

As I mentioned in my first post, I have diagnosed ADHD and anxiety and while both of these conditions can make life difficult, today I want to focus on some of the more humorous aspects of having ADHD. I do want to preface this by saying that undiagnosed, and untreated neither ADHD or anxiety are humorous at all, but with treatment I’ve definitely learned to see the funnier side of my adhd diagnosis.

Recently, I was talking to my son’s father on the phone, my son was at his house and I could hear him talking in the back ground so I said ” Tell him hi for me. ” His dad suddenly said ” Look ,I don’t have a 2 track mind like you do. I can only listen to one of you at a time.”

He wasn’t being mean, I started laughing because he’s right. I often find myself talking to someone while emailing someone else or I’ll be listening to someone while writing a to do list, and they will be annoyed with me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone accuse me of not listening to them only to have me recite, almost verbatim what they just said. For example, I can remember being a teen and having my parents ask me why I was not paying attention to the sermon at church that day. When I told them I had been they said you were doodling the entire time, so I told them exactly what the sermon had been about. I was never asked if I had been paying attention after that. Two track mind. Well , it’s a two track mind on meds, off meds it’s more like a 100 track mind and I can’t figure out which track to take so I just stay in the terminal.

Several years ago I woke up one morning to the sound of a rooster crowing, now I live in a fairly large city so this was not a sound I expected to wake up to. I get up, make coffee, and wait for the kids to get up. It is a weekend so no huge hurry. My oldest is up first so I ask her to take the dog out, not thinking about the fact that I had been woken up by a rooster, cause yeah ADHD. She grabs the leash and out they go. A few seconds later she runs in saying mom come quick , no dog with her so I assume the dog somehow yanked the leash and got loose. I run out only to see my German Shepherd running down the road leash trailing behind chasing a rooster. I give chase and before I know it we have a rooster running through the city streets chased by a dog who is being chased by a woman in her pajamas, who is being chased by two kids. I caught the dog, the rooster was not harmed. ( turns out it belonged to my neighbor and that’s a whole other story)

My point is that ADHD is kind of like this. One thought chasing another, chasing another, each thought is trying to achieve its goal but not all of those goals can be reached, at least not at the same time. My goal was to catch my dog before she killed a rooster or got hurt herself, my dog’s goal was to have chicken for breakfast, and the rooster’s goal was to not be eaten. Well 2 of those goals were achieved. I caught my dog and the rooster lived to see another day but my poor dog didn’t get that chicken she had worked so hard for. If she had, I would not have achieved my goal of catching her before the rooster was attacked and the rooster, well the rooster’s goal setting days would have been OVER.

ADHD is like that for me. I have all these ideas and goals in my mind and I know that they are achievable, but I have to pick the one or maybe 2 that can be done at the same time without sabatoging myself or getting so overwhelmed I end up shutting down and not accomplishing anything at all. My brain wants to do 2 things at once, well medicated it wants to do two things at once. Without medication my brain wants to go to the store, clean the house, do the laundry, work on my blog, do my 9 to 5 job, and spend time with my kids all at the same time. The problem is my body just hasn’t caught up with my brain yet. It needs rest, it needs quiet, and it only has 2 arms, 2 legs and 2 hands so yeah, that’s an issue.

I guess until science can find a way to help my body match the capabilities of my brain ADHD will remain a challenge for me and medication will remain a must have, but as soon as I figure out how to grow another set of arms, hands, and legs and how to solve that pesky need for sleep I’m definitely stopping those meds!

Until next time…