“A Year After Losing My Job and My Home, I’m Still ADDrift”
As an adult with ADHD, is it possible to achieve a stable home life?
I apologize that I’ve been incommunicado lately. This summer has flown by in a whirlwind of traveling — first from Hong Kong to my family’s home in New York, then around the United States and Canada — visiting family and friends during a break between the end of my old job and the start of a new one. I can’t believe it, but it’s been almost a year since I lost my job, my apartment, and my boyfriend in New York City and picked myself up and moved to Asia for freelance work. Though I’ve given up the freelance life and will soon be settling into a new (and hopefully) stable full-time job, I still feel like a nomad.
As I pack what feels like the umpteenth suitcase of the last year, all I can think about is how much I do not want to board an airplane and go back to Asia. More travel, more passport stamping, more long-distance flying, more suitcase living. As I explained to a friend, “I’ve been flying around for so long, I’m tired and I just want to land.” Is my fuel running low, or does my engine just need a break? Deep down I know that passport therapy — which I so craved after my breakup last year — is now doing more harm than good.
The recurring instability and uncertainty that come along with living out of a suitcase are constant reminders that I’m not doing the kind of serious dating that could lead to the marriage I hope to someday have, I haven’t settled into a permanent address, and I’m nowhere near ready for baby-making (not that I’m in love with the idea of children, but it is nice to have options). Right now all I have gained is a handful of cell phone numbers, suitcases, and the status, among loved ones and acquaintances, of “globe-trotter,” “world traveler,” and “swimming gypsy,” all titles that are the antithesis of settling down and achieving some semblance of adulthood.
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