“Creative Confabs”
When I share my story as an adult with diagnosed attention deficit disorder, I waver between wanting sympathy and wanting none at all.
Wednesday is creative writing night. I sit among a group of strangers and do that striptease thing. I’ve been writing about my ADHD and found that there are certainly downsides to sharing the ADHD self. They read about my ADHD escapades and they say that I have a great sense of humor, but there’s an underlying sorrow and layer of low self-esteem.
Every time I’m late, the instructor says, with a smile, “Well, you made it.” Someone slipped in after me and he says, “Well, you’re not the only one.” He’s trying to make me feel better, only I feel like I’m five years old. I waver between wanting sympathy and wanting none at all.
There is a new shrink, a tall, lanky woman who I’ll call the psych lady. I’ve traded the Buddha man for her, because somehow I feel like I have the worst luck with him. The last session I had it written down that we’d meet at 8:15 and somehow he had 7:30, and he came close to saying, “I know you’re wrong.” After all, who has ADHD here? I had a measly five-minute session with him and handed him the $25 co-pay in anger.
“So much for helping people,” I mumbled, wanting to slam the door in his face. I huffed and puffed and called the psych lady, asking to see her that afternoon. Finally, someone who will listen to me about my guy problems, who seems to care about my dumb luck when it comes to emotionally unavailable men.
