“Beach Days”
Given the number of drinks I’ve knocked over on dates, I’d say adults with ADHD are dumb when it comes to coordination.
The replacement roommate arrived for the summer, a cool-looking red head, whose arrival reminds me that I am here for another season. So far we’ve been off to a good start, because, being a lawyer-in-training, she’s almost as neurotic as I am – and she too is on a job hunt.
Yes, the hunt. Starting last week, I felt cabin fever again at work. Bored again and surfing the wanted ads for the next big adventure. The sister asked me today if it was the ADHD talking. Maybe… but I’m losing track of what is the ADHD and what is me. Besides, when I try to separate the two, it’s like untangling a ball of crossed wires. I go completely insane. It’s like separating the colors from the darks in that ever-growing dirty laundry basket.
The first reaction when the sister asked that was anger, though. How is she going to play shrink and ask me if it was my ADHD, as opposed to I’ve been doing the same thing for almost two years and need another challenge? After she asked that, I got kind of abrasive, and uh-huh’ed her for the rest of the conversation. I ended the chat and said it was getting late; we should get our sleep, and have a good week.
I’ve been dating a new man. A music teacher, a rock musician in the making, who looks like Elvis, James Dean, and the ex-guy friend who will every-so-often shoot me a one-word email. (All he’s given me are scraps. Bastard.) As for the new guy, I met him on one of the litany of dating sites that I’ve joined impulsively and am now trying to un-join (Is that a word?). Although we’re on our sixth date and he made it clear that he really wants to see me and likes me, I’ve still held on to the old and destructive habit of seeing a couple of guys on the side.
On Friday, it was funny because I was scheduled to have drinks with one guy. In my memory, I’d emailed the name of the bar correctly, but I missed a letter so it ended up, in truth, being another hotel. The poor guy was waiting in the correct hotel, when, in fact, I was in the wrong one. To make a long story short, he took a cab all the way from uptown to meet me and apologized profusely. The next day, he emails that, Oh just FYI, he had the name right, it was I who had assumed it was another hotel. There was a time when I’d beat myself up, but I just laughed and said, “Oh well, sorry, brain freeze.” I won’t hear from him again.
On other fronts, I’ve been accepted into yet another guinea pig-styled study, this time about whether adults with ADHD are dumb when it comes to coordination. I know the answer is a definite yes given the number of drinks and glasses of red wine I’ve knocked over on dates, and the fact that somehow a bit of butter or tartar sauce always ends up on my hair. In order to get into the study I had to meet briefly with a shrink, who had to green light my participation.
“Why are you here?” he asked me.
“Because I supposedly have ADHD,” I said, somewhat defensively.
He looked at me, eyebrows raised, and asked, “What do you mean, do you not think you have it?”
I grinned like a Cheshire cat. “No, if the doctors say it’s true, it must be true,” I said, somewhat sarcastically.
He was probably thinking, another difficult, crazy person with ADHD. On that note, the assistant who led me on these various meetings said that I was one of the few guinea pigs who actually had a full-time job. This was highly discouraging and made me wonder if I should start a temp agency, to place adults with ADHD in ADHD-friendly workplaces. Another idea to add to the list of a thousand and one.
