The above is from an article I link below. I think 20,000 is low, especially if you include all of the negative messages we give ourselves.
So, you have probably noticed how terribly I have been failing in my daily posting. I have wanted to post, really I have. I didn’t even have a very good reason, other than a feeling of general anxiety and, yes, fear. It wasn’t even like I didn’t have content or ideas about what to write about. I even had the time. But you see, I had missed a couple of days.
Allow me to digress a moment here and share a story of shame from my past. I was supposed to graduate high school in 1989. I actually didn’t graduate until 1990. I know, you are probably thinking that I failed a bunch of classes, and am basically dumb as a box of rocks. If I were just dumb, that wouldn’t really be something to be ashamed of, it would just be who I was. Also, let me just say here also that I don’t think I have ever told anybody about this. I didn’t fail the classes (well, I guess technically, I did). Sorry, I know that I am kind of beating around the bush on this one, but this is really really hard to admit.
Okay, so back to my high school. Wait, before I do that, let me tell you that my birthday is mid-August. That is relevant, because it is a sucky birthdate when you are kid. It is at the end of summer, and usually corresponded to the first week of school. Nobody was going to have a party for you, the teachers didn’t know you, nobody cared. Okay, back to the story.
I decided to skip the first day of school. It was probably a pretty day. It was probably NOT my actual birthday. I can’t tell you why I did it, or what I did, but just didn’t feel like going. And for some brains, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t do it. And honestly, it might even have been the second semester of the year, making everything above simple prevarication.
Anyway, the second day, I thought, ugh, I missed the first day of school. Who does that? I didn’t want to face people – either friends or teachers and admit that I skipped. Then it was three, then a week. If you miss the first week of school, you better have been in the hospital or in Hawaii. Allow me to digress here as well, because by now, you are probably wondering “what the fuck were his parents doing?” The answer to that, is that I had a single mom and she worked really hard, and had no idea what I was doing.
Okay a week turned into two, and before you knew it, the principal, my mom (very unhappy), and I just kind of all agreed that maybe it would be best if I didn’t come back and just finished off school the next year. Honestly, I don’t know the logistics. My mom just cleaned it up, and I went back to school the next year and graduated. Barely. A side note here – you might think I could potentially have gotten invites to two reunions, but it turns out I have never gotten a single one. I wasn’t really popular, and honestly I doubt anyone even noticed that I wasn’t there, or cared.
Anyway, it turns out that I am not alone – in fact, this is apparently fairly common for people like me with ADHD. I came across this article today (maybe it was yesterday, or the day before) “Children with ADHD Avoid Failure and Punishment More Than Others, Study Says” and when I read it, it resonated so hard with me. At the same time, Jessica from the How to ADHD youtube channel posted this:
So, I decided to just do a thing. I will fail again, I am sure. But I will try not to run, hide, or avoid.
Random Thoughts 