The Moment I Knew I Had ADHD
Like Alice, down the rabbit hole I went
This is an excerpt from the first draft of my memoir, Breadcrumbs Across Suburbia: How I Retraced My Steps and Found My Way Home. If you would like to read my book proposal, please email me at stephanieisobel06@gmail.com.
The Last Piece of the Puzzle
“Don’t forget Mom’s present,” my brother texted me. I smugly acknowledged to myself the victory of having already placed the wrapped box in the “shit to take to Brian’s house” tub by the door to the garage. “Actually, presents,” he corrected. “Victor just reminded me that there are two gifts.”
The flash of panic and shame hit me head on. Fuck. When I opened the small box prior to wrapping it, the necklace nestled within had jogged my memory of what we’d purchased for her, nine months earlier during a weekend in Santa Fe. I felt the niggling sensation that a scarf had been part of it, but that was the only box I saw in my closet. I’d been so proud of myself for texting my brother right after our trip that I’d placed the gift bag on the bottom shelf of my closet, far right side. ADHD had been on my radar for a while by then, but just a little whisper of an idea that popped up from time to time and then retreated back into the chaotic, murky shadows of my brain.
I was so proud of myself for remembering where the gift was, wrapping it, placing it by the door. But my confidence was clearly misplaced, along with the second gift. Of course I had fucked it up. My closet was a disaster that I kept pretending didn’t exist, along with the crawl space, downstairs bedroom, linen closet. . . the list went on. The expensive scarf that I’d lost was just one more tick in the ongoing tally of my failures.
Hot tears of humiliation streaked my cheeks as I jumped out of the backseat of my parents’ minivan—oh, the irony being a grown woman relegated to the ever-familiar travel position behind them, always with the minivan. “Just let me run inside and check one more time,” I mumbled between more explosive self-flagellating remarks.
I dashed past my confused dogs and proceeded to tear apart my bedroom closet, scooping up donation items and books I hadn’t read, reaching above me to sweep my hand behind boots I hadn’t worn for two seasons, making sure an invisible bag containing an inappropriately expensive scarf hadn’t appeared since the last two times I’d checked. Admitting defeat, I settled back into my row of the minivan, crying as my brother texted to convey his disappointment and my mom texted my brother, likely with a plea not to make a big deal of it because I was already upset and now I was downright triggered.
When we arrived at my brother and his husband’s home, I made a beeline for the kitchen to open my organic, soil-tested sparkling rose. Actually, that’s a lie; I made my brother-in-law open the bottle. Opening a bottle of sparkling wine remains one of a number of tasks I have never done as a midlife woman, and it feels as though the statute of limitations has run out on acquiring this particular skill. Sort of like tying a knot in a balloon—shouldn’t I just accept that there are certain things I am incapable of doing, like popping a cork, changing a tire, or following any type of assembly instructions? (Cough, I believe that is a condition known as “learned helplessness.”)
We ate Christmas lunch before opening gifts, and I smiled tightly as my mom opened the small box revealing the exquisite necklace we had picked out to accompany the matching, missing, scarf. My brother stood up and bent over the box, murmuring something about wondering if the scarf could be in the box. I rolled my eyes; generally the scarves we buy for our mother are long and thick, suitable for fall and winter. He lifted the foam cushioning under the necklace and all six of us gasped as he revealed the missing scarf—delicate and silk, any recollection of its appearance had been soundly erased from my mind—elegantly folded and placed beneath the padding.
I immediately burst into tears, cradling my face in my hands. “I didn’t ruin it,” I blubbered. “I was so sure I had screwed everything up because I’m so disorganized and forgetful and messy.”
As I continued my self-deprecating journey into how I had always been like this, and I wasn’t an asshole for not bringing the laundry basket upstairs, I just couldn’t remember, my mom quietly interjected, “I just had no idea you had this struggle.”
Our friend Sierra, who had been my confidante after her own diagnosis, spoke up, “It’s because we’re so good at masking. Girls fly under the radar because we present so differently. Nobody talks about how different ADHD looks in girls, especially smart girls.”
I nodded fervently, “I spent my entire childhood compensating for the fact that I basically had no idea what I was doing. I can’t tell you the number of times I snapped to attention during class, realizing I had no idea what I had missed or how long I hadn’t been paying attention.”
Sierra added, “We internalize everything and don’t want to let anyone know.”
I looked at my mom, who seemed distraught. “It wasn’t your fault.” I reassured her. “I didn’t tell you how I was feeling about any of it.”
“There’s all this research about smart girls with ADHD and what it looks like. We’re also more susceptible to rejection sensitive dysphoria. It’s basically when you experience serious emotional pain when you feel like you’ve failed or are being rejected. It seems like that might be an issue for you, based on what just happened,” Sierra commented pointedly, but not unkindly.
I snorted. “You think?”
We talked about our struggles with household tasks, and Sierra talked about dopamine and the struggle to complete tasks that weren’t interesting to us. “We literally can’t remember to do things we don’t enjoy doing,” she told me, and I felt like my brain exploded. As we talked more, and she texted me the number of the practitioner who diagnosed her, I felt a wave of calm wash over me. There were answers out there. And I was going to find them.
Nearly immediately after the Christmas gift debacle, I went down a rabbit hole. As I frantically took notes while listening to the “What Does ADHD Look Like in Women?” episode of the ADHD for Smartass Women by Tracy Otsuka podcast, I felt like I was listening to a case study about myself.
Ironically, I had to pause the episode every twenty seconds or so, because as I scribbled frantically, jotting down signs of ADHD two to three at a time, I found I had to backtrack because I couldn’t remember the first sign in the sequence. Right, fast talking. Oh yes, losing things frequently, can’t follow directions. . . I gobbled up the signals, recognizing myself more and more with every breadcrumb Otsuka left me.
I checked off nearly every indication—aside from difficulty with memorization, which was the superpower that kept me on the honor roll—of inattention or combination type of ADHD: Easily distracted by external stimuli; difficulty stopping interesting activities; failure to follow through, particularly with less interesting tasks, perfectionism, losing track of time when hyper-focused, attraction to organizational products but difficulty with follow through, a strong dislike for waiting in lines, a quick temper that is equally quick to be regained, bored by small talk, clenching the jaw and symptoms of TMJ, forgetting what you are saying mid-sentence, repetitive body-focused behaviors (picking and tapping were my go-to activities).
“Many women experience shame around their diagnosis,” host Tracy Otsuka shared, and I thought, “No. I’m not ashamed. I am fucking relieved.”
I experienced that tingly warmth that occurs when you take a personality quiz and recognize yourself, that exhale of, “Oh! There I am—the comfort that means someone, somewhere understands you and can explain you. You aren’t a complete anomaly—there is a prototype of you!
After Sierra's brief foray into smart girls with ADHD, I was shocked that the very first podcast episode I listened to covered this topic. Otsuka shared that increased intelligence causes increased compensation; good grades are a false indication that nothing is wrong, and teachers may ignore odd or shy behaviors since there is a lack of disruptive behavior or academic failure.
Superior gifts mask invisible symptoms and chronic struggles with disorganization and forgetfulness. She added that some girls could be seen and appreciated for the daydreamers they were at home; my Good Girl made that difficult for me. This demographic experiences, not shockingly, more coexisting anxiety than girls with average intelligence.
Many of the qualities of inattentive type resonated painfully with me; tuning out frequently; difficulty paying attention when people were talking to them; excessive worrying; difficulty tolerating frustration; overthinking everything; daydreaming in school; being described as needy.
Otsuka explained that people who have inattentive type ADHD internalize their symptoms; they are hyperactive in their own minds, ruminating, which results in increased anxiety. I physically shuddered when she drove this point home: “These girls don’t want to tell anyone. They don’t want anyone to find out.” She described a daydreamy quality, an internal restlessness, talked about little girls who presented like absent-minded professors. She mentioned how often they were in their own little world, living inside their head, forgetting where they put things and what they were doing.
And then she hit me with the line that brought me to my knees: “These girls can’t retrace their steps, because they weren’t in their bodies.”
It was a cartoon brain explosion moment, profound thought bubbles jumping off the page, clues syncing up like perfectly aligned dominoes. Of course that’s why I was constantly trying to retrace my steps. It was a desperate attempt to figure out where I’d been and what had been lost, because I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t in my body; I was lost in my own mind. Retracing my steps, following breadcrumb trails, trying to return to base camp—these obsessions were the earliest coping strategies I had developed, latching onto them without ever understanding why.
I had been an intermittently disembodied collection of rag-tag parts, fumbling around, compensating, protecting, surviving in a world that didn’t understand me. There may not have been a crime, but there had been a trauma. I was one of many casualties of a world that didn’t yet understand neurodiversity, sensitivity, and anxiety, and I was pulled between a desperate desire to be seen and understood and a desire to stay hidden. Pulled between a front yard designed to protect me and a backyard designed to set me free.
When I finished my feverish scribbling, I raced downstairs to my living room where my parents were reading. Like an elementary school child, I triumphantly presented my journal entry to my mother, reading my notes aloud, receiving the understanding and validation I was unable to procure from her during childhood, through no fault of her own. “Smart girls with inattentive type ADHD internalize their symptoms—they don’t want anyone to find out.” I let that sink in. They don’t want anyone else to know. They mask. They compensate. They coast.
I called my friend’s psychiatric nurse practitioner and left a desperately hopeful voicemail. I didn’t know if I needed medication as much as I needed validation. Or more accurately, absolution. I wanted absolution for my shortcomings. For my disorganization and flightiness, my laziness and rudeness, my inability to be an effective hostess or follow directions for assembly, navigation, or really, anything else. I wanted to be absolved of my incompetence and self-absorption, my hyper-focus on my writing and big ideas. I wanted to be known, understood, solved. I am a puzzle to be solved, I am. And I just found one huge fucking piece.