Moving In and Out of Time

Lee Skallerup Bessette

Moving In and Out of Time

By Lee Skallerup Bessette

Hi! Welcome to my interview with myself about what it's like to write with ADHD. I've set up a couple of ways for you to experience this essay. If you want the full experience, turn up the volume on whatever device you're on, and just (link-goto: "go straight into the essay. ", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) If you're looking for a little more guidance, (link-reveal: "click here. ")[ At the bottom of each page you'll be presented with a number of options: you can choose "What's Next?" and you will have the full ADHD experience of just popping in wherever, or you can choose from the list of titles for a little more control. The list of titles is also in a kind of order that might make the narrative a little more accessible. You can always just hit the back arrows as well if you get stuck in a loop. Feel free, as well, to mute your computer if the sound is too distracting. Just remember that someone with ADHD doesn't have that luxury. So let's get started. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Introduction]] [[Nachos]] [[Trauma Time]] [[Time Blindness]] [[Shuffle]] [[All The Words]] [[Tripping, This Way]] [[Tripping, That Way]] [[Living Life Twice]] [[Now-ish]] [[Clutter]] [[Embrace the Chaos]] [[Bridging the Gap]] [[Indirect Answers]] ] (link: "References")[(open-url: "references.html")]

(set: _list to (array: "Important", "Wrong", "ADHD Writing", "Twine", "The Point")) I read into the comment an extraordinary amount of frustration and exasperation, perhaps because it was punctuated with an exclamation mark, and while texting makes it so that an exclamation mark means PLEASE UNDERSTAND I AM ACTUALLY HAPPY! when it comes at the end of a scolding remark on my writing from my editor on my eleven-billionty draft of my essay… “Stop moving in and out of time!” she wrote. I was taking a huge chance, trying to tell the story of trauma and healing. It’s one thing to blurt out pieces of that process, that narrative 140 characters at a time on Twitter, it’s another thing to pull all of the pieces together and make it into a coherent narrative. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Important]] [[Wrong]] [[ADHD Writing]] [[Twine]] [[The Point]] <audio src="media/typewriter-sound.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Sundays", "Again and Again", "Starting")) The best part of having tacos for dinner is being able to make loaded nachos the next day for lunch. I look like a hero to my kids despite the fact that I can’t really cook, but I’m really good at reassembling and microwaving, which is perfect for loaded nachos. The dog has planted himself next to me, sitting pretty-puppy, hoping that I will drop some meat on the floor, but he’d settle for a tortilla chip. His fur smells like tortilla chips, which is weird, but there are worse things that he could smell like. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Sundays]] [[What is it?]] [[Again and Again]] [[Starting]]

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) We are never just one thing. I have ADHD but I also have been previously diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I still take pills for them. I am a sexual assault survivor. I am an abuse survivor. I grew up and did sports in the 1980s and 1990s when our bodies were brutally policed, our gender mercilessly mocked. I was a weird kid, and I never understood why I didn’t fit in, why I was so different from everyone else, but also subjected to the same gender-based violence and torment. I wasn’t skinny. I was awkward, physically and socially. I was, as many who have ADHD are told, too much. Much too much. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/storm-coming.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) When I swam, we started doing visualizations to help prepare for our races. We would lie on old, worn mats, that smelled like old chlorine and sweat, eyes closed, with the coach guiding us to picture getting ready for the race, standing behind the blocks, and then he would tell us to picture the race in our head, what it felt like, and that we should be able to tell exactly how long the race would take and open our eyes at exactly the time we would take for the race. I never, ever did. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/clock-ticking-sound.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) Flighty. Scattered. Space cadet. Blond. Ditsy. Disorganized. Unreliable. Unprofessional. My podcast co-host once said that her husband likened her to a slot machine—drop in a coin, pull the leaver, and you’ll get SOMETHING, but who the heck knows what it’ll be. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/slot-machine-pull.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Silence", "Volume", "Tidal Wave", "No Words", "Spilling", "Desperation")) We always received compliments on how eloquent and well-spoken our children were (and still are), especially around emotions. My daughter always and still has big, complicated emotions, and we needed to give her the language to be able to articulate the multitudes of levels of feelings that she was experiencing. Why did she not like other kids’ birthday parties, even though she loved other kids’ birthday parties? The shades and nuances of language were necessary for us to be able to help her, to help us make sense. We still screamed and cried a lot, unable to understand each other, each of us not knowing that our brains were different in similar ways, and we did the best we could. I used to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk until I was told to shut up or sent to my room or yelled at or even hit. I write to stem the tides. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Silence]] [[Volume]] [[Tidal Wave]] [[No Words]] [[Spilling]] [[Desperation]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-nature-ocean-waves-roigh-distant-wash-against-rocks-top-of-headland-cliff-insects-summer-001-43840.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Carrying the Past", "Bits and Pieces and Fragments", "Too Much Attention", "The Smallest Things")) I want to go back to the Goldberg quote, about writers living their lives twice, once in real time and then again on and through words on the page. But even for a writer without ADHD, it’s not only ever just twice. You write it, you re-read it, you edit it, you revise it, you forget about it, you rediscover it, you share it, get feedback on it, revise it again, and then maybe somewhere in here, you share it with the world, and then it lives on someplace else, not quite inside you anymore, but not completely apart from you either. And then you engage with people who have read it, and that’s another reliving, another retelling. They bring their lives, their experiences, their richness, their ideas, their images to it. It may inspire, and then there are new lives springing up, connected in some ways to yours, but also wholly themselves, getting lived and relived in their own ways. The front page of a newspaper that contains a column the author wrote at 17

The front page of a newspaper that contains a column the author wrote at 17

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Carrying the Past]] [[Bits and Pieces and Fragments]] [[Too Much Attention]] [[The Smallest Things]]

(set: _list to (array: "Présent Historique", "Temporal Confusion", "ADHD Excellence?", "Everything is Present Tense")) When I was writing my memoir, I had the challenge of trying to communicate the bizarre temporality I was experiencing in trying to make sense of one year of my life, month by month, while also dealing with the lasting impact of that year on my life since then. Because now and not-now had become then and not-then. So I created now-ish. It’s not-then time, but not how one would typically think of right now, today, the present. It’s an ADHD present that is constantly folding in pieces from various other moments in time, to make the now both immediate and distant, stretching and contracting. Now-ish is reflecting on a daughter growing up before your eyes as you remember all of those same milestones of your own girlhood, struggling to hold yourself together. Now-ish is a rejection that echoes across years and years of other rejections, all flooding your senses at one. Now-ish is hearing a song, putting on a dress, watching a movie, driving a route, and you are not alone but also sitting with all your past selves who heard the song, put on the dress, watched the movie, drove that route. Now-ish is when in a movie the main character moves at a normal or even slower speed while everything else in the background is sped up, but also happens to be a montage at the same time. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Présent Historique]] [[Temporal Confusion]] [[ADHD Excellence?]] [[Everything is Present Tense]]

(set: _list to (array: "I Digress", "Insomnia", "Unlearn", "Relearn, Rediscover", "Hope and Anguish")) My desk is a disaster. My office is a disaster. My bedroom is a disaster. My house is a disaster. My planner is a disaster. Everything is full to the point of overflowing. And I love it. I love it. I love it. I can’t work when things are too clean, too neat, or too bare. It makes me anxious, and it's distracting. I worry that my presence is way too much for a space like that, and so I sit there and try to fit a space that I will never fit into. Give me clutter. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[I Digress]] [[Insomnia]] [[Unlearn]] [[Relearn, Rediscover]] [[Hope and Anguish]] <audio src="media/smarties.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Exhaustion", "Tenuous Existence", "Flourishing", "Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much")) I have a tendency to tell and retell the same stories over and over and over again. I repeat myself often. I’m not very original in all of the words that I write, not really, and I forget what I have previously said and where. But I also have to make sure that I am getting the story right. Each retelling, each reliving of the story might turn out differently because this time, this time, the clutter in my brain rearranges itself just so that the story will finally reveal a new layer of meaning and maybe some truth or insight that had eluded me. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Exhaustion]] [[Tenuous Existence]] [[Flourishing]] [[Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much]] <audio src="media/embrace-the-chaos.mp3" autoplay>

(set: _list to (array: "Difficult", "Unruly", "An Eventual End", "Hindsight")) This is the most radical piece of writing I’ve ever attempted. The voices of some of my editors keep ringing in my ears about all of the shortcomings of my writing, how I have words, but could they just be a little more, or a little less… I now have the ability to pick and choose my writing outlets, choose who gets to edit my writing. Sometimes, the project is so important that I break my rule of only working with editors that I know. But not often anymore. I’m lucky that writing can be my hobby and not my primary source of income, so I literally can afford to be choosy. I am no longer chasing the tenure-track, traditional academic job, so no more traditional peer-review. A job that values my ability to communicate the way I do, that leaves me space to still write and create for myself. Outlets and editors that not only value but also understand my voice, look to make it better. These are things I never thought were possible, that my writing was always going to be a battle to be valued. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Difficult]] [[Unruly]] [[An Eventual End]] [[Hindsight]] <audio src="media/deep-relaxation-ambient-music.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For", "Always Already Written", "Freedom", "Answer the Question Already!")) How do you write so much? There is a scene in Good Will Hunting where Skylar asks Will how it is that he is so good at math. He explains, trying to use the example of Mozart, that when Mozart looked at a piano it just made sense to him and that’s how it is for Will with math - it just makes sense. Writing just makes sense to me. A gif of Matt Damon saying how you like them apples?

A gif of Matt Damon saying how you like them apples?

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For]] [[Always Already Written]] [[Freedom]] [[Answer the Question Already!]]

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) “Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by the perception that a person has been rejected or criticized by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short—failing to meet their own high standards or others’ expectations.” (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) In trying to start writing this, even after I had my unrelated anecdote as an opening, I found myself going down rabbit holes of unnecessary research: Haitian Spiralism, because have to be more academic, but also because my God, does it ever relate to what I am trying to express; memoir writing because that’s what this is and I have to make sure I get it right, and besides, there was that quote about living life twice, where was that; Twine tutorials because I have to make sure I know EVERYTHING before I start something even though while interesting I won’t use 90% of what Twine can do, even I know that a recipe for never, ever finishing. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-horror-drone-long-swell-eerie-tense-sinister-70189.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Important", "Wrong", "ADHD Writing", "Twine", "The Point")) Why is this still here, she would ask of me, and I would rage internally that IT IS IMPORTANT, but of course it was dropped in with little context and only the thinnest of connections to the larger story, but in my core I knew I would not take it out. She was equally frustrated, I think, because there was a story there that wanted to be told, but I wasn’t telling it in a way that made sense to a reader, one that didn’t jar a reader, give the reader whiplash, leave the reader wondering where we were headed and how we even got there to begin with. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Important]] [[Wrong]] [[ADHD Writing]] [[Twine]] [[The Point]] <audio src="media/heartbeat-sound-effect.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Important", "Wrong", "ADHD Writing", "Twine", "The Point")) I experienced trauma when I was younger. But I also have ADHD, a diagnosis I didn’t receive until I was almost 40. It was a new trauma, suddenly realizing that all the ways I was “wrong” growing up, moving through my life, was because of my ADHD, and if we had only known, what could I have become, or at least what scars would have been avoided? I read and I read and I read, and understood myself better than I ever had before. I started embracing those things that were “wrong” with me, started celebrating them, started asserting them. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Important]] [[Wrong]] [[ADHD Writing]] [[Twine]] [[The Point]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-human-tutting-44271.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Important", "Wrong", "ADHD Writing", "Twine", "The Point")) I started to see how ADHD has shaped my writing, both in what I write and how I write. Dani Donovan’s ADHD comics are revelatory for how it feels it have ADHD, how our brains process different, how we work differently, but focuses on the day-to-day, and I wanted to find a way to express how my writing works differently because of my ADHD, how my writing would look if I didn’t have to worry about neurotypical readers. What would the shape of it be? Where would it take me? Even my private journals read like I am writing not for myself but for an imaginary audience who may one day read them and want to make sense of them. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Important]] [[Wrong]] [[ADHD Writing]] [[Twine]] [[The Point]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-fantasy-giant-male-say-hmmm-as-in-pleasure.mp3" autoplay>

(set: _list to (array: "Important", "Wrong", "ADHD Writing", "Twine", "The Point")) I hated Choose Your Own Adventure books growing up. I always chose wrong, and ended up dead too quickly, unable to access all of the other pages in the book that seemed to hold such potential but that were unavailable to me because I couldn’t make the right choice. It would then seem counter-intuitive to use the tool Twine to write this piece, an interview with myself to try and give a narrative account of what ADHD writing is, to provide a glimpse into how my mind works, how it shapes my writing. Except there is no wrong way to read this piece, no choice that will frustratingly kick you back to the start, teasing you with what you can’t access. No, this is about the opposite, bringing everything into the narrative, to give as full access as I can to my writing and my ADHD mind. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Important]] [[Wrong]] [[ADHD Writing]] [[Twine]] [[The Point]] <audio src="media/losing-bell-game-show-sound.mp3" autoplay>

(set: _list to (array: "Sundays", "Again and Again", "Starting")) I’m making nachos and suddenly, I’m pulled back to a strong memory from my late teen years. Sundays two of my best friends would come over and watch football on Sundays, and they would make a giant plate of nachos. I say they because it was how they “paid me back” for sharing my living room, TV, and cable. I probably also either refused for quasi-feminist reasons, or did it once and they hated them and mocked me mercilessly, so I refused on those grounds. Possibly both. My eyes well up with tears as my dog watches me, confused at my sudden mood change. Those Sundays watching football saved my life. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Sundays]] [[What is it?]] [[Again and Again]] [[Starting]]

(set: _list to (array: "Sundays", "Again and Again", "Starting")) Natalie Goldburg once wrote: “Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and the detail.” Except the ADHD makes it so that I do it without training, without trying, most of the time when I don’t even want it to, that part of me that is the ADHD writer, where one moment you are making nachos and the next you're a scared and scarred 17-year-old again, living that moment of your life over again, but not the exact moment of making nachos but all of those complicated and overwhelming emotions and memory of that extended moment. You’re reliving all of it, at once, and the moment stretches like infinity around you, and there is now and not now and that differentiation no longer matter. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Sundays]] [[What is it?]] [[Again and Again]] [[Starting]]

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) I was an extrovert bullied into introversion. I felt safe stuffed into my swimsuits, like it would somehow contain me enough to do something somewhat successfully. Outside of the pool, I embraced 1990s grunge style and hid in oversized clothing that was both too big and too small—nothing ever fit, I never fit. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/all-the-waves.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) My handwriting was atrocious, another common symptom of ADHD, and I would cry when I would have to do weekly penmanship tests, always almost failing, writing the slowest and still sloppy. I would concentrate, chewing on whatever ribbons or buttons or zippers where on my shirts, and then moving onto the pens and pencils once the teacher insisted that my parents take anything that could be a distraction, anything that I could get into my mouth, off of my clothes. But they couldn’t take the pens and pencils away, and I would taste metal and ink and lead and plastic, and my handwriting never improved. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/all-the-waves.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote in personal journals that I still have today. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote notes to my friends that we passed to each other in high school when I found some friends, and I wrote and wrote and wrote letters to boys, to my friends, to people I wanted to be my friends, letters I never gave them and still have. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote stories, but I could never write fiction, because I couldn’t get my own life out of the way in order to come up with something new. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/all-the-waves.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) “Trauma survivors live with a difficult phenomenon that is sometimes referred to as ‘trauma time.’ Trauma Time is a phenomenon that has grabbed and deceived almost every survivor of trauma at one point or another. Traumatic memories are stored differently than normal memories. They are encapsulated in unmetabolized form in the limbic, or emotional region of the brain—an area of the brain in which time has no meaning.” “Experiences of emotional trauma become freeze-framed into an eternal present in which one remains forever trapped, or to which one is condemned to be perpetually returned by life’s slings and arrows. In the region of trauma all duration or stretching along collapses, the traumatic past becomes present, and the future loses all meaning other than endless repetition. Because trauma so profoundly modifies the universal or shared structure of temporality, the traumatized person quite literally lives in another kind of reality, an experiential world felt to be incommensurable with those of others. This felt incommensurability, in turn, contributes to the sense of alienation and estrangement from other human beings that typically haunts the traumatized person. Torn from the communal fabric of being-in-time, trauma remains insulated from human dialogue.” “(trauma time) is the ecstatical unity of temporality—the sense of stretching along between past and future—that is devastatingly disturbed by the experience of psychological trauma. Experiences of trauma become freeze-framed into an eternal present in which one remains forever trapped, or to which one is condemned to be perpetually returned through the Portkeys supplied by life’s slings and arrows…all duration or stretching along collapses, past becomes present, and future loses all meaning other than endless repetition.” (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/clock-ticking-sound.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) So I am 9 again or I am 17 again or I am 14 again or I am 4 again. But I also hear a song and I’m 20 again and in the back of a 2-door Golf hatchback with two other girls and our arms are intertwined and we are singing along with the song at the top of our lungs, exhausted and hung over and invincible in this moment. I am 29 and holding my daughter for the first time. I am 13 and whispering at 2am with my best friend. I am 18 and winning team champs. I am 22 and dancing and dancing and dancing. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/all-the-waves.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) There is trauma, but my ADHD brain is just as likely to recall a memory that blankets me in joy as it is one that causes me to shake and collapse. And sometimes it happens all at once, so I am not only reliving one moment, but 3, 4, 5, all at once. It doesn’t come in waves, but instead as one massive tidal wave crashing into me. It is all there, all at once, with the same force as when I lived those individual moments multiplied by each other. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/all-the-waves.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Fit", "Handwriting", "Always Writing", "An End", "Definitions", "SlipSlideFall Back", "Waves", "Drowning")) I was convinced I would not live past the age of 40. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Fit]] [[Handwriting]] [[Always Writing]] [[An End]] [[Definitions]] [[SlipSlideFall Back]] [[Waves]] [[Drowning]] <audio src="media/all-the-waves.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) I learned how to read a watch when I was five because I was always late for school, no matter how early my parents sent me out to walk to school. I would get lost in all the wondrous details that I came across during my short walk: the tree whose leaves, when the wind blew through them, looked like pixels, or the worms on the sidewalk after a heavy rain. I had no friends who I was eager to see before the bell rang, so my walk had no urgency, and I was late every day for a week before we went to get that pink and grey Timex watch that weekend. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/household-clock-tick-002.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) There are only two times for people with ADHD: now and not-now. I don’t know if something happened yesterday, last week, last month, last year, a decade ago. I have to reach into context clues like where we were living, what job I was working, who the kids’ teachers were, what car I was driving, what I was wearing because that would tell me what size I was and thus what year it was or maybe at least what season it was. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/household-clock-tick-002.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) We can’t picture the end of things. The hardest thing for someone with ADHD is finishing something because unless we’ve done it before, or there is a model for us, we can’t see ourselves finishing it, literally stopping us from doing it, no matter how much we may want to. It’s one thing to help your son finish a project, it’s another when you’re, I don’t know, trying to do a Twine essay on what it’s like to write with ADHD, which is something no one has done before. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/clock-ticking-sound.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) I have no idea how long things should take. I hate project management software that asks me how long I spent on a task or to estimate how much time something should take. I say yes to everything and anything interesting, because a) it’s novel and new and YASSSS and b) I literally think that I have time for it because, hey, time has no meaning. I can’t finish things because I can’t see the end and I get bored and I look for something else to do instead, to start, to give me a dopamine hit of novelty. I can’t start things because I don’t know where to begin. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/household-clock-tick-002.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) Somewhere in the middle, we get lost in it, and we forget to come up for air and time once again has no meaning because it stops moving for us, and we are one with whatever we are doing. Time falls away, everything falls away, but once that spell is broken… (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/tspt-alarm-clock-ticking-loop-002.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) I am a terrible cook because I forget that I am cooking. I have burned rice and melted a pot and almost set the house on fire multiple times. There is now and not now, and if the cooking isn’t ready now, then it is in the not-now realm that can’t be processed properly. I set timers, calendar notifications, alarms, haptic cues…And I am still late, miss meetings, burn dinner, forget to eat. I let everyone down. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/household-clock-tick-002.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Analogue", "Now and Not-Now", "No Endings", "Guestimating Badly", "Lost", "Cooking", "No Time", "More Slipping")) I can’t see time the way everyone else does, and I keep moving in and out of time, and a page, words on a page, are now where time moves how I want it to and I can control something, anything when everything else is out of control. It is a place where time doesn’t exist while I write, but I write is bound through the words and the page and my fingers across the keyboard to a present, a now, that I can narrate and make tangible, something to hold on to, even if I have no idea how long it took or how long it will be to re-read or if it even makes sense. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Analogue]] [[Now and Not-Now]] [[No Endings]] [[Guestimating Badly]] [[Lost]] [[Cooking]] [[No Time]] [[More Slipping]] <audio src="media/tspt-alarm-clock-ticking-loop-002.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) When I was growing up, there was a word that I used to call something completely unrelated to the actual thing. It drove my parents nuts, and when they finally asked me why I was misnaming this object, I had a perfectly reasonable explanation that led you down a road of free-association that got me from point A to point B. Great story. What was the word? (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) They never bothered to write it down. So I am stuck forever with a perfect story about what it’s like to have an ADHD brain, free-associating, jumping from topic to topic, incomplete. It is symbolic of...something. And now, as I am trying to come up with an example of what my co-host calls “spider-maning”, swinging from building to building, however precariously, never falling, but also not quite sure where we are going, either, and I cannot for the life of me. Have a meme instead. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) Except, I can’t find the damn meme. I saw it, and thought it was perfect, but I didn’t note where it was, and I looked on facebook and instagram and twitter and of course it’s an image of text so I can’t search for it, and maybe it isn’t even from someone I’m following and it was just algorithmically suggested to me, and so now I am left with the same story of the word that means another word, and I don’t know which word it was or anything. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) The opening anecdote. About nachos. I’m making nachos, reliving trauma, and hey, great opening anecdote. Because my brain is reliving the trauma, while also doing this: huh, this is an example of trauma time and ADHD time, and you also need a random, completely unrelated hook for the opening of your essay, so hey, at least this little time slip won’t be wasted! That’s not too many steps, but not the steps a normal brain takes when having a moment of traumatic memory slippage. Ask me in person one day how my friend and I devised a way to remember that flame cells were for excretion in preparation for a biology test. Ask my why I thought about that one particular moment in biology. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) I am terrible at memorizing things, unless I have a needlessly complex system of association. I will forget your name, but remember everything else about you, unless there is something about your life story that I can latch on to. If you ever meet me and want me to remember your name, tell me a story about your name, who you were named after, how people made fun of you for it, how people butchered it. I will probably remember the wrong name, but at least there’s now an anchor in my memory. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) Where is your mind? It looks like nowhere, but really it is everywhere, thinking about a million different things, and hoping that one or two of those things are relevant or useful or of interest to anyone else other than yourself, ideally the person who is currently trying to engage with you. But usually you’ll blurt out a random fact about elephants or an existential question or what you had for breakfast. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) You’re also trying not to adjust your bra or underwear because they are uncomfortable, never in the right place, or pick the sides of your fingers, or sway, or make a sudden movement, or fix your hair and glasses and bag and watch. Trying to keep your eyes focused and not darting around, trying to convey body language that is appropriate. Trying to stop spider-man, stop the slot machine from spinning, stop the free-association and wondering why you aren’t better at improv or jazz where these skills could be useful, but of course they don’t show up on demand and instead you are stuck lost in a conversation you started. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "A Word For Another Word", "Gap", "Lack", "Missing", "Back to Nachos", "Empty Spaces", "Nowhere and Everywhere", "Fidgit", "You", "And Then Tears")) Other times, my hyperfocus is you, and I become intensely into you which can be off putting for you. Or you mistake it for flirting because of the intimacy. Or you're flattered at the attention and completely forget I exist, which is hard because it would be nice for someone else to be interested in me the way I get interested in other people rather than being dismissed as a weirdo. Maybe if I pay enough attention to someone else, someone will pay attention to me in return and listen to me and connect with me. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[A Word for Another Word]] [[Gap]] [[Lack]] [[Missing]] [[Back to Nachos]] [[Empty Spaces]] [[Nowhere and Everywhere]] [[Fidgit]] [[You]] [[And Then Tears]] <audio src="media/card-shuffle.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Silence", "Volume", "Tidal Wave", "No Words", "Spilling", "Desperation")) My son, on the other hand, decided that he was going to not talk for six months, choosing silence as a coping strategy for his own neurodivergence. An introvert in a house full of extroverts turned up to 11. But he was always listening, and the words don’t spill out of him, but they are now there for him when he needs them. While his sister and I crash into things, he prefers to wait until he knows he can do something, watching, observing, learning, waiting. He sometimes sounds like he has a stutter, because his brain sends the words to his mouth faster than he can say them. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Silence]] [[Volume]] [[Tidal Wave]] [[No Words]] [[Spilling]] [[Desperation]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-nature-waterfall-small-chute-top-30540.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Silence", "Volume", "Tidal Wave", "No Words", "Spilling", "Desperation")) We are a loud family, as people with ADHD actually have trouble controlling the volume of our voice. Seriously. Look it up. I also talk fast, trying to get all the words out at once, wanting to say entire paragraphs at once, the way I read them, not word by word or sentence by sentence, but entire paragraphs at a time, but talking or even writing works that way, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Silence]] [[Volume]] [[Tidal Wave]] [[No Words]] [[Spilling]] [[Desperation]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-nature-ocean-waves-heavy-surf-20m-distance-13798.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Silence", "Volume", "Tidal Wave", "No Words", "Spilling", "Desperation")) If there is a tidal wave of thoughts, ideas, emotions, timelines crashing into me, then my words are my attempt to direct the sheer force of the water somewhere, elsewhere. But there is so much water, and as it recedes, that tidal wave, there is debris left on the beach in its wake, but also the sand stripped back to reveal what is underneath. The metaphor starts to fall apart, because are you in the water, floating and letting the water take you, or are you on the shore in the exposed debris? The ground is soft, unstable; the water is still rough and unpredictable. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Silence]] [[Volume]] [[Tidal Wave]] [[No Words]] [[Spilling]] [[Desperation]] <audio src="media/skyes-audio-waves-huge-beach-1m-distance-calm-hissing-both-close-and-distant-waves-060.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Silence", "Volume", "Tidal Wave", "No Words", "Spilling", "Desperation")) My daughter’s theater class worked on The Miracle Worker. I used to teach the famous essay from Helen Keller’s biography where she learns the word “water” for the first time. Can you imagine not having language? Can you imagine having everything inside of you and everything outside of you and not have language to process it, to interpret it, to express it? All sensations and cravings, needs, that you grope for in the hopes that they are met, or try to avoid, not knowing what ANY of these are beyond their most primal expression? (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Silence]] [[Volume]] [[Tidal Wave]] [[No Words]] [[Spilling]] [[Desperation]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-nature-ocean-waves-break-shore-medium-stormy-rocks-slight-distance-43572.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Silence", "Volume", "Tidal Wave", "No Words", "Spilling", "Desperation")) I have to narrate, to tell, to name, to express. To try and make sense. To try and connect. To try and find rest, to sleep, to find peace. I have to be able to do…something with all of this inside of me that won’t even rest or even be momentarily silent, still. I have so many words, and I throw them up and out and on paper and into the air. Too many still stay locked inside because there isn’t enough time, not enough outlets, not enough people, because I know it is all too much and that there can’t be this much, so don’t share it or show it, just enough to keep them impressed and engaged, but not so much as they find out the truth. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Silence]] [[Volume]] [[Tidal Wave]] [[No Words]] [[Spilling]] [[Desperation]] <audio src="media/stormy-wave-sounds.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) A flowchart comparing the storytelling styles of someone without ADHD to someone with ADHD

A flowchart comparing the storytelling styles of someone without ADHD to someone with ADHD

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]]

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) My husband won’t let me tell stories anymore at social gatherings because I can’t tell it straight. So he tells it, the flat, linear version that everyone appreciates but lacks the color and life that I know I can bring to it, but no one will appreciate. I love blogging and social media because it’s a twisted vine of narrative which I can grow and grow and lose control a bit over but that’s ok because that’s what’s supposed to happen on here. I like blogging and tweeting because the writing can be fragmented, incomplete, random, under-researched, in-progress—just like I am. You can read it. Or not. You can engage. Or not. But when everything comes together just right, it can be beautiful. But if it doesn’t, there is no such thing as too much, or if there is I am somehow, miraculously, nowhere near that line and so am the normal kind of weird, rather than the kind of weird that I am in person. But also you can keep circling back, adding and adding and refining and moving and growing and enriching. There is no straight-line narrative, but also no clear beginning and end, space for re-telling, space for digressions, space for ADHD to be itself. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-horror-dark-discordant-hit-long-decay-atmosphere-tension-darkness-sinister-pads-70841.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) I interviewed Dany Laferriere, the Haitian-Canadian author I study, and asked about blogs and social media, which he told me he had no time for because of their impermanence. But this author, he has written and rewritten and rewritten and adapted and readapted his life story through fiction, through poetry, through movies, through tv, through essays, through straight memoir, and now even through graphic novel. I was always jealous of his deceptively simple prose, his economy of language, even though he wrote in French, a language notorious for linguistic flourishes of unnecessary verbosity. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-horror-glissando-bright-mysterious-yet-sinister-and-dark-014-70407.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) We Find Ourselves in Other People’s Stories: On Narrative Collapse and a Lifetime Search for Story, by Amy E. Robillard, a book written for me, in the same way Laferriere wrote for me. In the same way Goldberg wrote for me. Could I tell my story, the way I wanted to tell my story? Was it ok to not only have all the words but get to choose which words I used, and how, and how much, and how many, and in what order? Even if it wasn’t the way others had done before, or how people wanted me to, or expected me to? (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-horror-musical-dark-stabs-piano-low-pitched-strings-drama-tense-70413.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) In the same way that these books, these authors, came into my life when I most needed them, I have to trust that my brain will make the right connections at the right time so that I can unlock something necessary, something hidden, something important, something significant, something special, maybe even something approaching beauty. That my brain will produce something that someone else will read and they will find themselves in my story the way I found myself in other people’s stories. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-horror-water-reversed-dark-ambience-roomy-reverb-001-68499.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Stories", "Circle Back Again", "Telling and Retelling", "Permission", "Trust", "Escape", "No Escape")) That if this story is too much for you, then maybe this story isn’t for you, but for someone else whose brain works more like mine and less like yours and maybe this is an experiment in empathy for you, to try and understand how this works, 24/7 in our own minds and this is barely a drop compared to the tidal wave. It’s ok. This is why I made this story the way it is, so you can choose to get out, choose the (slightly) easier path. But you’ll miss out, I promise you. Depending on how you got here, we’re half-way there. You get to take a break and come back if you want. Or not. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Stories]] [[Circle back Again]] [[Telling and Retelling]] [[Permission]] [[Trust]] [[Escape]] [[No Escape]] <audio src="media/zapsplat-horror-drone-dark-scary-tense-airy-68576.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) When I was in 6th grade, I wrote a poem. I got it back from the teacher all marked up with (color: red)[red ink]. I clearly remember getting into my dad’s car at lunch (text-style: "shudder")[sobbing]. I don’t even remember getting,upset previously at any assignment or test score, although I knew better than to complain about my teachers or a poor grade, as this was the time where the problem was with you, and not the teacher. I also never got upset at poor grades except to fear the consequences at home. The sincerity and depth of my hurt over the (color: red)[red inked-stained poem] moved my parents to actually write to the teacher about it. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) Turns out, she just wanted to correct my punctuation and spelling. It took me a long time to get over not being able to spell, the punishment that was spelling tests and having to write out the words correctly over and over and over and over again and still get them wrong when quizzed again. Of having to write out copy after copy after copy of projects and essays because we weren’t allowed more than three Liquid Paper marks on our essay. (color: red)+(text-style:"double-strike")[I would sit in dread as my mom corrected my good copy, counting the marks she made, hoping against hope that I would not hit more than three, but then there would be mark four, five, six, and there would be tears streaming down my face as I tried once again to do a good copy with only three mistakes so I could finally go to bed.] (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) That poem, though, I wrote it on my own, more for myself than for my teacher or my parents or anyone else. That poem sprung from me, whole, where there was an idea and I was able to articulate it in language in a way that made me happy. I only remember it happening one other time, when I was in first grade. That time, the teacher took my little story and shared it with the whole class. (color: red)+(text-style: "blurrier")[This time, I got it drenched in red.] (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) Except, it also ended up on the Honor Board and included in that month’s school newsletter. (text-style: "fidget")[I don't remember how that felt.] (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) I had two kinds of writing—the writing I was invested in and the writing I did because I had to. I would write book reports in high school during the class before it was due and get a 16 or 17 out of 20 which was fine because I didn’t care and it was good enough. I rarely wrote anything meaningful in high school, at least not anything I would submit to the teacher. But I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and finally decided that I was going to be a journalist. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) On my second co-op work-term during my BA in Professional Writing (“journalism” was not a practical degree of study, so I instead chose one that had paid work terms and was more broad), I burst into tears during a meeting where my writing was discussed. I was really excited about this job at a small tech start-up, where I was going to be doing copy, translating, writing press releases, as well as technical writing. This was my chance to prove that I was a good writer, that I could be a writer. (color: red)+(text-style: "shudder")[And I was terrible. I was a failure.] (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]] <audio src="media/kettle-boiling.m4a" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) Looking back, that was so unprofessional and naive of me. But I couldn’t stop the tears. My stomach felt like it was getting (color: red)+(text-style: "rumble")[punched from the inside.] When we left the room, I threw one of the biggest (color: red)+(text-style: "rumble")[temper-tantrums] of my life. I had rarely felt so…utterly defeated. And then, once I had calmed down and realized the extent of my blundering behavior, I never wanted to return to work and spent the rest of the semester (color: red)+(text-style: "rumble")[getting very drunk and doing other destructive things in an attempt to forget those two moments of twin humiliation.] (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]] <audio src="media/kettle-whistle.wav" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Red", "More Red", "Even More Red", "Honor Board", "One or the Other", "Seeing Red", "Completely Wrong", "Only Two Things", "How to Save a Life")) I spent my life thinking I was only good at or for two things: swimming and writing. In every other way, I was completely and utterly wrong, but at least on the pool and when I wrote, despite all the other weirdness, people had to admit that, yay, I guess she’s pretty good at that. It was a small win for a kid who learned how to humiliate herself before anyone else could. To try and make herself small because to be her actual outsized self would be to invite and incite violence. Eventually, my very real physical limitations made swimming impossible, or at least not sustainable. So I was left with my writing. For a long time—too long, really—I was completely and utterly unable to receive any sort of feedback on my writing without falling apart. If my writing wasn’t good, what was I good for, then? I didn’t know how to make my writing better, only seeing that I had made spelling and formatting and grammar mistakes in my haste in writing. Trauma upon trauma, and yet I kept crashing into writing, first in an MA, then in a PhD. And then in academia. You never really shake the feeling of being a bitter disappointment, forget what being punched in the stomach from the inside feels like, the powerlessness as you sob so hard that you can’t breathe but also can’t stop, because of a piece of writing. But then it’s also when you make a mistake in your job. Or when you forget an appointment. Or when you accidentally scratch your baby. Or when you think that the world would be better off if you just…disappeared, or at least were able to become anyone else except who you actually are. That’s when ADHD and RSD curdle into depression and anxiety, at least it did for me. But I didn’t stop writing. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Red]] [[More Red]] [[Even More Red]] [[Honor Board]] [[One or the Other]] [[Seeing Red]] [[Completely Wrong]] [[Only Two Things]] [[How to Save a Life]]

(set: _list to (array: "I Digress", "Insomnia", "Unlearn", "Relearn, Rediscover", "Hope and Anguish")) My writing is cluttered with random (but related! Somehow!) thoughts and strands and digressions, because my mind is cluttered with them. I’ve learned to live in the clutter, to enjoy the clutter, because what else was there to do? This is who I am, who I have always been, even if I didn’t know it, didn’t have a name or a reason or an explanation for it. I may have hidden it away from people when I realized that most people’s minds weren’t like mine, full of clutter, overflowing with clutter, but it came out, always came out in my writing. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[I Digress]] [[Insomnia]] [[Unlearn]] [[Relearn, Rediscover]] [[Hope and Anguish]] <audio src="media/expos.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "I Digress", "Insomnia", "Unlearn", "Relearn, Rediscover", "Hope and Anguish")) I used to write at night, in bed, when I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t shut off my thoughts, so I would write and write and write in an attempt to empty my brain, to exhaust myself both physically and mentally so I could finally sleep. It never worked, but it made for hours and hours and hours and pages and pages and pages of practicing writing that was never meant to see the light of day, writing that reflected my thoughts, who I was, how I experienced life. I didn’t know it, but I was finding my voice as a writer, all in an effort to try and sleep. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[I Digress]] [[Insomnia]] [[Unlearn]] [[Relearn, Rediscover]] [[Hope and Anguish]] <audio src="media/mini-mini.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "I Digress", "Insomnia", "Unlearn", "Relearn, Rediscover", "Hope and Anguish")) But of course, I had to try to unlearn my voice in school. English (or Language Arts, depending on where you went to school) was my worst subject. I hated writing 5-paragraph essays, I couldn't write the way I was supposed to write when it came to essays, couldn’t imagine fictional worlds when it came to creative writing. But I was writing infinitely more for myself than I wrote for school, so the voice never really disappeared—I just learned I should be ashamed of it. Graduate school almost killed my love of writing, almost led to me entirely losing my voice. I could never replicate the prose of an academic essay or even book, and I was broken by the French Feminist writers who so materfully combined beautiful language and high theory. I couldn’t get published. I couldn’t please peer-reviewers. I couldn’t be the writer I needed to be to become a successful academic. We all feel imposter syndrome but I felt disconnected from the field while also becoming increasingly disconnected with myself. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[I Digress]] [[Insomnia]] [[Unlearn]] [[Relearn, Rediscover]] [[Hope and Anguish]] <audio src="media/ex-says-it-all.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "I Digress", "Insomnia", "Unlearn", "Relearn, Rediscover", "Hope and Anguish")) Twitter is the clutter my brain was meant to embrace, the style of writing that I could experiment with, start to enjoy again. Blogging was a way to write for myself again, but also to get some validation for my writing, validation I had never really had received before. I could write, but it was never quite right. More practice spaces, more rediscovering my voice, more words, more places to put the clutter of my brain, to clutter the world with words. Why do you write like you’re running out of time, like your life is on the line? It’s a sprint-marathon, like trying to clean up a cluttered room, because the more you dig into the clutter, so tightly packed, the more mess it makes. The clutter of my brain becomes a sprawling mass of words as I try to make space, but there is always more clutter hiding behind it, and it all feels like too much, too many words, too much clutter. What am I going to do with all of these words that won’t stop coming, that need to come out, that need to be unleashed on the world? (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[I Digress]] [[Insomnia]] [[Unlearn]] [[Relearn, Rediscover]] [[Hope and Anguish]] <audio src="media/coke-diet.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Introduction", "Nachos", "Trauma Time", "Time Blindness", "Shuffle", "All The Words", "Tripping, This Way", "Tripping, That Way", "Living Life Twice", "Now-ish", "Clutter", "Embrace the Chaos", "Bridging the Gap", "Indirect Answers")) Hit publish, move on to the next one, because there is always more, always a next one, because the clutter never ends. Give me something to write about, something productive, give me something to focus my words, to give them a purpose beyond releasing the clutter in my brain, make use of this cluttered brain, please, so that these words aren’t in vain and just more clutter. The clutter is all I’ve ever known, and if my mind went quiet, if I lost the words, I don’t know what I would do. What does a quiet brain sound like, feel like? How do you think of nothing? I meditate and manage to calm it down to two or three narratives, rather than, well, more than that, but that is the best I can do. I’ve stopped beating myself up over not being able to meditate properly because I don’t think I ever will be able to, but also, down to two or three isn’t bad, all things considered. And don’t tell me to count sheep, because they’ll just get stuck in the clutter, just like everything else. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Introduction]] [[Nachos]] [[Trauma Time]] [[Time Blindness]] [[Shuffle]] [[All The Words]] [[Tripping, This Way]] [[Tripping, That Way]] [[Living Life Twice]] [[Now-ish]] [[Clutter]] [[Embrace the Chaos]] [[Bridging the Gap]] [[Indirect Answers]] <audio src="media/zellers.mp3" autoplay loop>

Clock with the word now in place of all of the numbers

(set: _list to (array: "Présent Historique", "Temporal Confusion", "ADHD Excellence?", "Everything is Present Tense")) The French have a verb tense, or at least a writing style, called the “présent historique”. History is written in the present tense. There is an immediacy to that approach to history, to temporality, that I always admired. I tried to write the chapters about the months I was focused on making sense of in the present tense, like the French, while the Now-ish chapters were written in the past tense. But the tenses got confused, misplaced, and like my own mind and memory, the past and present got confused and collapsed into each other through my verb tenses. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Présent Historique]] [[Temporal Confusion]] [[ADHD Excellence?]] [[Everything is Present Tense]]

A tunnel painted like a clock spiraling downward

(set: _list to (array: "Présent Historique", "Temporal Confusion", "ADHD Excellence?", "Everything is Present Tense")) I wish I could keep the temporal confusion, because ultimately when something happens doesn’t matter because it will always be present, a presence, an immediacy in my mind when it is unlocked and it might as well have just happened, and not decades ago. In those moments, I am 16 and 24 and 35 and 40 all at once. It all stops being not-now, and all of it becomes now. Or not-then. Why did we start counting the passage of time, standardizing it and measuring it, accumulating it? Is this when people with ADHD started to lose their dominance within society and those without ADHD took over, imposing schedules and plans and recordkeeping and lists on society? Because ADHD must have been a hell of a survival skill for a long time: impulsive, quick-thinkers, endlessly curious, always turned up to 11. Restless. Impatient. Time doesn’t matter, just now and not-now, an immediacy to surviving, to living. And now we have concepts like being on-time or late, deadlines, forms filled out in triplicate, timesheets, spreadsheets and expense reports, filing systems, efficiency strategies. Gone is the need for people who are good enough with “close enough” because there was no opportunity for precision, and that we had to act fast and decisively, but never perfectly. Perfection was the exception, not the norm, and now we expect perfection and exacting precision from just about everyone at all times. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Présent Historique]] [[Temporal Confusion]] [[ADHD Excellence?]] [[Everything is Present Tense]]

(set: _list to (array: "Présent Historique", "Temporal Confusion", "ADHD Excellence?", "Everything is Present Tense")) This is not to say that ADHD cannot produce anything except good enough—Simone Biles, Micheal Phelps, Solange Knowles have been driven to excellence, to excel, through the details. The combination of their hyperfocus, their skills and talent…And to quote the musical Hamilton (whom I suspect had ADHD, at least how he was portrayed in the musical), they will never be satisfied. That restlessness, that relentlessness… I am a good writer because of my ADHD. I am a good writer in spite of my ADHD. Both statements are true. I can say this about myself, and only myself: I write not in search of some perfect standard, in search of excellence, I write because I have to write, because I love to write, because one day I may write something that will live on beyond me, that will carry meaning forward into other generations. I might be thinking quantity over quality, but all these words are practice for the next words, so as long as I keep writing, they will keep getting better, and maybe I’ll get there someday. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Présent Historique]] [[Temporal Confusion]] [[ADHD Excellence?]] [[Everything is Present Tense]]

(set: _list to (array: "Carrying the Past", "Bits and Pieces and Fragments", "Too Much Attention", "The Smallest Things")) Even my journals, which were never meant for public consumption, those letters I never intended to send, they nonetheless got a third, fourth, fifth living when I rediscovered them, re-read them, used them as raw material for a memoir I wrote. It wasn’t just my words and photographs—I kept programs, swimming heat sheets, newspaper clippings, the decorations I had in my room, my annual agendas that I turned into scrapbooks, wall calendars, posters, birthday and Christmas cards… They all sat in boxes first at my childhood home, and then when they finally reached me in Kentucky, they lived in six different houses, in two different states, carried with us each time, each move. Every time, my husband would ask, why do we still have these? Why are we still carrying these around? Because, they carry a life with them waiting to be relived, stories waiting to be retold. To you, you see a mess of random objects, but to me, they are a puzzle waiting to be solved, again and again. An open folder with pages of poems

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Carrying the Past]] [[Bits and Pieces and Fragments]] [[Too Much Attention]] [[The Smallest Things]]

(set: _list to (array: "Carrying the Past", "Bits and Pieces and Fragments", "Too Much Attention", "The Smallest Things")) These boxes are like what my mind is like: bits and pieces and fragments both significant and insignificant tucked away quietly in corners waiting to be opened, or rather waiting for their moment when they will come spilling into the forefront of my mind, ready to make some connection to something happening in that moment and life will then fold in on itself, like some strange origami figure that one minute is just paper and then next it is a swan. You never start with nothing, but often start with too much, because it is all there and I don’t know or can’t tell or both what is important and what isn’t. So it all has to come with me, all has to be carried, because there isn’t a choice, I don’t know the trash from the treasure but it is all both trash and treasure. Next time, it won’t be nachos, it’ll be something else, and I’ll need more materials, more lives to relive to write what needs to be written, to create something out of disparate pieces. How can you only live twice? I have lived so many versions of myself over and over and over again. They spread over the vast expanses of my memory, of my identity, of my travels, of my interactions, of my loves, of the traces of myself. And over the pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of words I have written. Box that says Lee's binders on Dany Laferrière

Box that says Lee's binders on Dany Laferrière

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Carrying the Past]] [[Bits and Pieces and Fragments]] [[Too Much Attention]] [[The Smallest Things]]

(set: _list to (array: "Carrying the Past", "Bits and Pieces and Fragments", "Too Much Attention", "The Smallest Things")) ADHD is not accurately named because it’s not that we are lacking attention, it’s that we have too much of it and no ability to direct it where it needs to go. So you notice everything, not understanding what to keep and what to throw away, but you also notice things no one else does, retain a sense of wonder, remember so much and so little all at once, but then when you do crack the code and the spinning wheels of the slot machine align, then what glorious things are produced, things that no one else could create, could see, could do. Clear bins stacked ontop of one another labeled Lee Stuff

Clear bins stacked ontop of one another labeled Lee Stuff

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Carrying the Past]] [[Bits and Pieces and Fragments]] [[Too Much Attention]] [[The Smallest Things]]

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Introduction]] [[Nachos]] [[Trauma Time]] [[Time Blindness]] [[Shuffle]] [[All The Words]] [[Tripping, This Way]] [[Tripping, That Way]] [[Living Life Twice]] [[Now-ish]] [[Clutter]] [[Embrace the Chaos]] [[Bridging the Gap]] [[Indirect Answers]]

(set: _list to (array: "Difficult", "Unruly", "An Eventual End", "Hindsight")) I want to write this as myself as much as possible, more than I ever have before, but I also want people to read it. But why is it my job to come to you? I’ve spent my entire life coming to the reader; this is the first opportunity to have the reader come to me. My job in this piece isn’t to bridge the gap, it’s yours. That this is perhaps difficult, unfamiliar, confusing, cacophonous, frustrating, and outright annoying is the point. Not because I don’t like you, reader, but because this is what it is like to be inside my brain, how I write, how I think, how I experience and process the world. My job in this piece is to make the gap legible, to help you actually see it and understand it. Think of this as an exercise in empathy and understanding. Where you find this difficult, I find it liberating, fun, exciting, exhilarating, because I finally get to write the way I want to write, instead of the way I am expected to write. Fully and completely, using not just words, but this platform that allows for me to recreate some of the ways thinking and writing works for me. I am savoring this process, this experience. This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time creating something. I don’t know if the joy comes through in the experience of reading this piece, but it’s there, behind every word, every Twine decision, every gif, every sound, every single thing I have done here comes from a place of joy and liberation. I’m not throwing away my shot. Yes, I am making this difficult for you, but not because I want to prove my skills or to impress you with my cleverness or to be that kind of writer who is having a laugh at the reader. No, I am writing fully like myself, to see if I can, and to see if anyone will get it. Maybe you won’t. You might not ever read this part of the essay, having long ago given up, or because the Twine random function never took you here, so this explanation of what this piece is will go unknown. Maybe you’ll come to this insight on your own, and this portion will be redundant. Maybe this section is the first part you read and none of what I just wrote will make any sense because there is as of yet no context. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Difficult]] [[Unruly]] [[An Eventual End]] [[Hindsight]] <audio src="media/tibetan-bell-sound.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Difficult", "Unruly", "An Eventual End", "Hindsight")) I fell in love with Twine the first moment I learned about the platform. Anything that tried to embrace the possibilities of the semantic web was a wonder to me. My mind works in some ways like the web; instead of a set beginning-middle-end like a regular linear narrative, my narratives start where they start and branch out in multiple directions, getting tangled, growing up and out in multiple directions. My writing blooms, explodes really. I wrote once that the writing I had been doing up to that point were like indoor potted plants on display or tiny, precise bonsai trees. There is skill there, yes, but that approach to writing was unnatural to me. Give me a large, unruly forest or jungle, teeming with life and endless possibilities. I wrote this in a flurry over the space of only two weeks. It would have been shorter, but life intervened, and I had to learn how to use Twine again, because in spite of long loving the tool, I never really had a reason to use it, and thus no reason to really learn how to use it. I can create a multi-sensory experience for you, reader, and that is what I want to do. Because ADHD isn’t just about too many words, but too much of everything, because we notice everything all the time, even if it seems like we’re not paying attention. We’re just not paying attention to the thing that you think we should be paying attention to. Twine provides some confines, of course. I have to resist the temptation to keep writing, to keep adding layers and options and bells and whistles, to make it almost infinite, because it would never be finished, which is a really big ADHD thing, but also defeats the purpose. Or maybe it doesn’t. Should I create an unending, unfinished thing because that is what ADHD is like, ever unending, but also where we can’t stay interested long enough in anything to finish it, because the new is always more interesting to us? This whole piece is just one more piece in my long, long, long, semantic narrative that lives all over the web and elsewhere. My blogs, my social media, my academic writing, my freelance writing, my books, my essays…And all the writing that is going to come after this piece is published. It is but one moment in this longer narrative that is my writing career, my writing life. I wrote that piece about forests and house plants a decade ago, before my diagnosis, before I changed careers completely. And here I am, a decade later, going back to it for inspiration, for context, for more words. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Difficult]] [[Unruly]] [[An Eventual End]] [[Hindsight]] <audio src="media/rural-village-morning-ambience.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Difficult", "Unruly", "An Eventual End", "Hindsight")) This essay has an end, insofar as I will eventually stop writing, stop coding, stop editing, and it will be published, and you will read it (or not). But it is just one more stop, one that will be lived and relived over and over in all different ways and context, even within my own narrative. Nothing I have ever written exists in a vacuum, and even the writing I have lost will relive in one form or another in my memory or the memory of someone else. And even if they are truly lost and forgotten, they still live in these current words, as they were there to help me get here, to find my voice, to write my story. I don’t know how long it will end up being, but I am about to cross 12,000 words as I type this. There is no TL; DR version of this, at least not one that I can write for you. This is the experience. This is the experience. This also may be the first time I am sad to finish a writing project. It would be too easy but also so satisfying to keep writing this for as long as I can still write. I will miss how much joy I had writing and creating this, that finishing wasn’t an obstacle but a destination I wanted to take just a little bit longer to arrive at. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Difficult]] [[Unruly]] [[An Eventual End]] [[Hindsight]] <audio src="media/calming-waves-sound.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Introduction", "Nachos", "Trauma Time", "Time Blindness", "Shuffle", "All The Words", "Tripping, This Way", "Tripping, That Way", "Living Life Twice", "Now-ish", "Clutter", "Embrace the Chaos", "Bridging the Gap", "Indirect Answers")) I created this while listening to my collection of playlists that started as mixtapes almost 30 years ago, in chronological order. I stopped too many times to live and relive moments while I listened to a certain song, unable to not fall into my own memories. This writing will be another one to add. Copyright keeps me from recreating that particular part of the experience for you. Maybe if I haven’t already completely lost you, you can try reading this piece while listening to your favorite playlist. You can fall in and out of your reading while you fall in and out of your own memories. Maybe I should have thought of that sooner. I created this at the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home, with the kids and the dog and the rest of life all around me, without escape except for noise-canceling headphones, playlists, and words on a page. It took me a long time to get started writing this piece, partially out of fear, but also partially because it was so damn hard to get started with everything else going on. I couldn’t write this until we were closer to normal because writing with ADHD is one thing, writing with ADHD during a global pandemic is another thing altogether. I understand that now, as I write this, as I process the past year and then some, as I look forward for the first time in a long time. There is space now, to find the words and write the thing that wanted to be written. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Introduction]] [[Nachos]] [[Trauma Time]] [[Time Blindness]] [[Shuffle]] [[All The Words]] [[Tripping, This Way]] [[Tripping, That Way]] [[Living Life Twice]] [[Now-ish]] [[Clutter]] [[Embrace the Chaos]] [[Bridging the Gap]] [[Indirect Answers]] <audio src="media/calming-sea-sounds.mp3" autoplay loop>

(set: _list to (array: "Exhaustion", "Tenuous Existence", "Flourishing", "Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much")) When I was diagnosed with ADHD, all I wanted to do was lean into it, hard. I got the diagnosis as I was about to turn 40 and started calling them my “fuck it 40s” because I was tired of the masking, so tired of trying to stifle being too much, trying to write the words everyone else wanted me to write in the ways they wanted me to write them because that’s how you’re supposed to write. I was tired of being tired all the time, not because I couldn’t sleep but because I couldn’t be myself, not really, not ever. I had crashed so many other times in my life in the past, picked myself up, and kept trying to do the same things, only to crash again. Physical collapse. Mental collapse. Depression. Burn out. No more. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Exhaustion]] [[Tenuous Existence]] [[Flourishing]] [[Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much]] <audio src="media/exhaustion.mp3" autoplay>

(set: _list to (array: "Exhaustion", "Tenuous Existence", "Flourishing", "Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much")) I grew up hyper-self conscious and hyper-aware, but also completely oblivious and always still caught off guard because I had no idea what I needed to be hyper-aware of, or rather, no idea how to react to what I was being hyper-aware of. My existence in the world felt tenuous, at best. How could I survive, let alone thrive, in a world that I didn’t really understand, but that definitely didn’t understand me beyond telling me that I didn’t fit, wasn’t right. It’s jarring to those around me that I am finally ready to be who I am and not what is expected, not really. Some expect me to hide my ADHD, to be ashamed of my diagnosis, to not talk about it lest I make them uncomfortable. My radical comfort with my ADHD places their discomfort in sharp relief. I know, I know, I still have to work and be a good colleague and a good wife and a good parent and a good friend, but I’m actually better at all these roles I inhabit, because I am finally coming to them as myself. To be myself, to be able to explain myself, to have the right language to understand myself, is a gift. That others don’t see it as a gift, as my daughter would say, “sounds like a you problem.” But they want to make it mine, to make me into a problem that I have to solve, a secret that I have to keep, a shame I have to bear. My refusal is like a slap, a disregarding of norms that they don’t even realize they are reinforcing. (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Exhaustion]] [[Tenuous Existence]] [[Flourishing]] [[Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much]] <audio src="media/tenuous-existence.mp3" autoplay>

(set: _list to (array: "Exhaustion", "Tenuous Existence", "Flourishing", "Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much")) My writing has flourished, but the audience has not which…I have often said that I write to feel less alone and help others hopefully feel less alone, too. I’m thinking a lot more about audience these days, the people who are willing to come on the journey that I want to take them on, those who are open and ready to try. But also, mostly, for those for whom my writing intuitively makes sense, where they stare blankly at others who do not get it, or even aren’t willing to try. I remember the first time I read To The Lighthouse, how I was warned over and over about how challenging the writing style was going to be, how frustrating it was. It was assigned to me, and everyone dreaded it, dreaded the narrative they had all accepted about how hard the book was going to be. I believed it too, too young to know any better. And then I finally read it, I couldn’t see what everyone was making a big deal about. The prose was gorgeous, but the style wasn’t challenging for me at all. It flowed in a way that made sense to me and I couldn’t understand how it didn’t make sense to anyone else. Was it because she was a woman and her style challenged men who didn’t like to be challenged by a woman? Was it because she unapologetically subverted the norms, not caring what others through? (link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Exhaustion]] [[Tenuous Existence]] [[Flourishing]] [[Not Ever Enough and Always Too Much]] <audio src="media/flourishing.mp3" autoplay>

(set: _list to (array: "This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For", "Always Already Written", "Freedom", "Answer the Question Already!")) Now, that’s not the answer anyone is looking for, at least from me, because they want the process, like when Will is solving equations on his bathroom mirror, or going to the library to read economics textbooks to share college dude-bros at the bar. I have terrible writing habits—I word-vomit, binge-and-purge, have no set writing routine or schedule, will spend weeks, months without reading a single book, but I keep reading anything and everything that crosses my screen, and I am never not writing, but often those words are so mundane as to be meaningless, but they are still words of all kinds that I produce and consume, everywhere and anywhere. And lest you think that I keep comparing myself to the true greats and geniuses and mistake myself for one, relax. I already admitted that I am terrible at fiction, the most celebrated form of writing. I am admittedly too idiosyncratic and still too stubborn to be any other writer than the writer I am, where my writing that matters most to me is the writing I am least willing to compromise on, change. What makes me a good writer also makes me a terrible writer. Gif of Matt Damon saying how you like them apples?

Gif of Matt Damon saying how you like them apples?

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For]] [[Always Already Written]] [[Freedom]] [[Answer the Question Already!]]

(set: _list to (array: "This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For", "Always Already Written", "Freedom", "Answer the Question Already!")) I publish so much because I am not worried about what everyone thinks of it, but I also keep writing in the hopes that something will someday be good enough. Words are what I have in abundance, so I speak them and write them and then cast them out. The more I write, the more words I have, and so I have to write more. Writing is my superpower, that thing that I do better than most. But I also work at it, practice it, every time I type or write even just one word. When I write, it is both already written in my head and is being written in that immediate moment as I type or write. I don’t worry about perfection, precision, but instead I focus on getting words out, down, across, through. Think of a bend in a hose—the water pressure builds and builds, and when the pressure is released, the stream is uncontrollable. That’s what writing is like for me—I know that the pressure has built up, and there is “water” there, but I don’t know for sure where that water is going to go and what it is going to do when I sit down to relieve the pressure. Gif of brown-haired woman saying I word vomit

Gif of brown-haired woman saying I word vomit

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For]] [[Always Already Written]] [[Freedom]] [[Answer the Question Already!]]

(set: _list to (array: "This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For", "Always Already Written", "Freedom", "Answer the Question Already!")) I am getting better at editing my own writing, at accepting feedback, but I still want to be finished and move on to the next thing to write because I am already bored with what I just wrote. But I also love my writing the way I wish I could love myself: completely, with their imperfections, mistakes, idiosyncrasies, and quirks in tact, because fuck it, that’s what it is and that’s who I am. If you can’t love me or my writing, at least I can love my writing by constantly setting it free in a way no person can. Writing is a small moment where I get to be free. Where I get to be all of who I am in that moment, but also become someone completely new in the next. I feel invincible when I write, like if I write enough words, I will be safe forever. I write so much because it feels so good to write, even when it feels terrible. There are no other moments that feel like I feel when I write. It is beyond joy, it is far from ecstasy. It is a compulsion that thankfully has not curdled into self-destruction, that I can channel constructively. I know that writing isn’t like this for most people. I had to learn how to teach writing, how to be patient with writing, how to explain writing, but mostly, how to convince others that if they opened themselves up a little and just let themselves be vulnerable that writing can be better for them than what it was. And usually it was someone else who fucked up writing for them. Let me be the one who un-fucks it up. My ADHD means that my default setting is overshare, heart-on-the-sleeve, always an open wound. Vulnerability is hard for most, but my normal mode of operation. That writing is easy for me is because what is necessary to write is what I have an abundance of. That too-muchness of ADHD is what fuels my writing, what facilitates my writing, what inspires my writing, what sabotages my writing, what burns my writing to the ground, what will save it in the end. Bob Ross painting a cloud with the phrase find freedom on this canvas underneath

Bob Ross painting a cloud with the phrase find freedom on this canvas underneath

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[This Is Not The Answer You're Looking For]] [[Always Already Written]] [[Freedom]] [[Answer the Question Already!]]

12k words later, and I am no closer to getting to an answer of any of the questions about writing with ADHD, about writing in general, at least not an answer that is easily generalizable. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s the divergent part of neurodivergent. Writing is the only place where I can stray, diverge if you will, in the ways that make sense to me. Sometimes I can write myself into giving a short answer, but in this case, there isn’t one. I write because I have to. I write because I want to. I keep writing to remind myself I am alive. I keep writing to be free. I keep writing because it’s mine. I write because… I write because of you. Type writer adding a question mark to the end of text that says the end

Type writer adding a question mark to the end of text that says the end

[[Fin->Start]]

(set: _list to (array: "Sundays", "Again and Again", "Starting")) A chip with the phrase ceci n'est pas un nacho underneath

(link-goto: "What's Next?", (shuffled: ..._list)'s 1st) [[Sundays]] [[What is it?]] [[Again and Again]] [[Starting]]