ADHD in adults: ‘Don’t make such a fuss’
Forgotten appointments, constant self-doubt – and the sentence our author heard for years.
By Laura Schepers
Photo: Philip Jackwerth
I’m standing in the kitchen. Something smells odd, and suddenly there’s smoke. The oil has burnt. I fling all the windows open to let the fumes out. That was a close call. Later it happens again: a foul smell, and I realise the rice ran out of water to cook in long ago. The bottom of the pan is pitch black. At that very moment the people for whom I have spent two solid hours in the kitchen walk into the flat. The curry is ready – just without rice, which is not how I had planned it.
These are the moments when it overwhelms me: a rage like no other. A whole load of emotions crashes down on me, and I am unable to regulate them. For 23 years of my life I didn’t know that things like time blindness are symptoms of a disability. I always thought I simply didn’t have myself under control and just needed to pull myself together. After all, other people manage.
Comments like ‘Don’t make such a fuss’, ‘Have you forgotten that again?’ or ‘Stop daydreaming!’ are nothing unusual.
It’s called ADHD, and it has been getting more and more attention since it became known that it affects women too – and that people don’t simply ‘grow out of it’ as adults. Comments like ‘Don’t make such a fuss’, ‘Have you forgotten that again?’ or ‘Stop daydreaming!’ are nothing unusual. Situations like the one I described above happen to me all the time. I forget a lot, find it very hard to regulate myself, feel restless inside and struggle to filter out external stimuli. That has often made my life feel out of control. I only just about manage everyday tasks that others find easy. To this day, that eats away at my self-esteem.
So there I stand in the kitchen, dejected and seething. I remember something a therapist once said to me: ‘Suddenly everyone has ADHD – it’s become a fashionable diagnosis.’ I throw the rice away and put the pan in the sink to soak. I don’t feel fashionable at all, and if I really had the choice, we would have eaten long ago. Curry with rice, that is.
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