Love—and Adderall—Rediscovered

This is bliss. I am in love, and it has been ages since I had someone I actually looked forward to being with. Cupid is kind.

We are at the end of month three with Mr. Sensitive, and it’s great. For the first time in my life I can’t complain. (OK, he’s obsessed with baseball, and he wants to take things slow. It took him two months to mention my name to his mother, and to the rest of his family I am non-existent. But, as the father says, as long as I am having fun, that’s all that matters. I mean at the end of the day you can’t care too much, right?)

Mr. Sensitive is an M.D. and knows all about drugs. He’s an anesthesiologist, and, he adds with a laugh, a “drug pusher.” He sometimes talks about his patients in a very generic way, and he has a particular gripe about the “spazes,” the people who can only function pseudo-normally with doses of Clonazepam.

We were flipping through a celeb glossy the other day as we waited for a takeout order, and there was a short piece about Lindsay Lohan. Is she anorexic or is it the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug Adderall? Adderall, the weight loss secret to the stars. Mr. Sensitive started going into the details of Adderall—how it’s a stimulant, how it suppresses appetite, how it is abused by people, even if they have not been diagnosed with ADHD, who want to shed weight quickly. “It’s basically speed,” he said to me.

I feel like someone who is now keeping a dark secret. The other day I got a refill of the Adderall, and I’m once again on the medication and feeling oddly productive. Sure I am spending all of my time with Mr. Sensitive, lying in bed, laughing and enjoying the grand view of one of the ritziest neighborhoods in Gotham from the “penthouse.” I feel lucky; everything is going smoothly.

As I write, Mr. Sensitive is sleeping, but I wish I could be myself fully and tell him about “my drugs,” the Adderall, and the long and painful search for answers to my disorganized angst, to the checkerboard resume: 12 jobs in just as many years. Last night he mentioned a few of the things he liked about me. “You’re not crazy and you’re different, I’ve never met anyone like you before,” he says.

“How?” I asked.

“You have this way with words, you say these things and it makes me laugh,” he says.

He says I am sweet, too, and kind. I want to tell him that these are common traits among adults with ADHD, but I stop there. I lie in the darkness and in the silence, and keep my mouth shut.

“Thank you,” is all I say, and it is all that I can reveal for now.