ADHD

Assalamulaikum, I’d like to talk about ADHD here. Mind you this is a super long story.

I was actually speculated to have ADHD in primary school, but my parents do nothing about it. So I was brought up as a normal kid and know nothing about it. I don’t remember much but I remember my mom never really like me. I remember everyone always mad at me. I guess because I was such a handful and never really a clean type.

I’d run around, jumping, climbing, talking a lot, messing things around. A very happy and energetic child I would say. My sisters had enough of me they always left me behind when they play or go somewhere. I’m the happiest at school with my friends. There is more space to run and explore.

I remember making my Science teacher cried because I always interrupt her teachings. Turns out she needs to finish the syllabus but I always ask her something out of context. I feel so bad though, try not to ask too much in her class anymore.

I am a really curious cat. I want to know everything and I want to know it now. I like oral quizzes better than writing exercises because it is fast. The faster the better.

It may seem like I was jumping around but actually I was trying to understand what teachers are saying. The more I move, the easier I understand things.

I have a kind of routine at home where I play with a tennis ball while walking in a rectangle path around and around at a regular pace until I sort my thoughts out. It calms me down. Well some people like me, some people don’t. I’m fine with it. Until I reach high school.

I was so rebellious with all the absurd rules. I skip classes a lot, I try smoking but thank God I hate it, I smuggle things, I join the night race. I have enemies, I have friends, I have boyfriends, I have backstabbers.

I’ve had my share of getting bullied, getting into a gang fight, going to a concert with strangers someone spiked my drinks I literally feel like flying and seeing colors melting and laughing like crazy, I was getting disciplined too many times and nearly send to Henry Gurney if not because I have to sit for PMR that year. I’m smart and the teachers know it.

They once asked me to be kind of spy and tell them everything I know about a few other problem4tic students so that they can help the students. I’m not sure if they mean it or not but I decline the offer. I’d never rat out my friends. But, I take note of the names. I was a PRS solely because I hate wearing the white school uniform.

I hate rules so I can’t be prefects and librarian wears chocolate which looks weird to me, so PRS it is. So I invite the said names to talk privately, I told them if you don’t come you will get a demerit.

Of course, I lied. I’d like to dive into people minds, I want to know how they think. The counselor asked why I don’t write anything much in the report, I just write ‘family issues’. I told her it was private and confidential.

I’m very athletic, always busy with competition especially tracks, badminton, and basketball. But I still can’t sit still in class, can’t focus more than 15 minutes. Always fidgeting, moving around. I may look at the teacher but my mind is elsewhere.

My thoughts are continuously bouncing around in my head. I tend to get hyper-focus and forget day and night when I’m into something. I don’t sleep or eat until I find the answer or finish what I want to do.

I’m glad about the invention of the internet, I spend a lot of time on the computer exploring everything I can think of. I have problem with languages especially in spelling and grammar, sometimes I write things backward, sometimes upside down, my writing is hideous, sometimes I give the class a good laugh when I spell incorrectly.

I have to get a one on one private teaching by my English teacher. But I really love math and sciences, I got no problem to ace any papers. I always got pretty good marks with minimum effort, although I also think I could have done better.

My high school was pretty much a drama. I suck at maintaining relationships. There’s always misunderstanding happens with my friends and I don’t know what’s wrong, how to explain myself, how things got so bad, I just so dumb I don’t notice things.

No matter how hard I try to change myself, try to be more attentive, try to understand people more, it never works. People are very hard to figure out I prefer machines.

If the same thing keeps happening and the only constant is you, it means something is definitely wrong with you. But I cannot point out what it is. I was extremely frustrated with myself. Most of the time I will apologize to not make things worse even though I have no idea what happened but I know it’s my fault.

Often when a friend tells me she’s feeling down, and I asked why but she doesn’t want to share why then I just don’t know what to do. I have no data to analyze on so I don’t know how I can help. It just ends there.

I feel bad because I know I want to help her and she also feels bad because I’m not helping. I mean it’s very confusing. Girls don’t say things directly as it is, you have to pick up the clue and I’m so bad at picking up those clues although I’m also a girl.

However, for some unknown reason, people keep turns to me for support and I will get nervous because there is a high possibility I will let them down. I figured it’d be better to distance myself a bit and keep my thoughts to myself so that I won’t hurt others.

You know when you hate yourself but there’s nothing you can do about it you just have to get used of being a disappointment to others. When you always wonder what is normal and how normal works.

When you always getting anxious whenever there is confrontation because you’re 100% sure it’s you again. When you have your own opinion but choose not to say it because you are afraid it will come out different or people take it differently so you ended up agreeing.

I learn the hard way that I need to look at people’s faces when they’re talking to me. I always doing something else while listening to people because I can grab what they’re talking better.

If I only look at the talking person directly I missed the points, I zone out, I interrupt, really hard to follow through. But that’s what expected of me so that’s how I’m going to behave from now on. I minimize the unwanted side effects by wriggling my legs.

Sometimes I can’t make sentences properly, I don’t find the right words. The other person has to connect the dots to understand what I was saying. Sometimes I messed up with the order of the words in the sentences.

Sometimes I said things that needs a little bit of thinking for it to make sense. Like I would say ‘move, like this, you know, then here’ when discussing basketball strategy and people was like ‘what?’

What I mean is in chess there is a technique where you can force an auto-checkmate on your opponent by moving three pieces, one for distraction and the other two are the real trap and that we might use the same technique in this game.

See I have this whole idea in my mind, but I don’t know how to convey them properly. Sometimes I even choose the wrong word with completely different meanings. Sometimes I repeat the same word or sound or phrases for like half an hour just like when you like a song you keep looping the same song through the day.

Sometimes I even say unrelated things out of nowhere. Actually I was saying what I was thinking at that time but to everyone else, I just saying random things. Like in the middle of the meeting I suddenly said ‘daun’ because I was thinking of elephant eating some plants.

I am a very creative person, always involved in decorating the class, painting mural on walls, enjoying art class. I learn coding from my boyfriend, he teaches me how to hack things, we build an inventory system for the school’s library.

I have tons of ideas in my head. I started multiple projects; novels, paintings, music arrangements, games, mobile apps, with very high enthusiasm and passion only to lose interest shortly after because it takes too long to complete. Sometimes I overdo things and ended up burnt out.

I was always doing something but never finish what matters, I don’t know why. It took me forever to finish a book except for comic books. When I’m in a roll, I’m very alive, alert, fun, energetic, talkative, eager, and then suddenly I feel beaten, drowsy, tired, wishing I can go home.

I’m awesome at trivial things but have a hard time remember the names of someone close. I really hate waiting, I’ll count the tiles, the people, the cars, the alphabets in advertisement nearby, basically anything that could be counted just to pass time while waiting.

I always forget things, appointments, meetings, events, deadlines, etc. I depend on my friends a lot they are my personal assistants. They even make a study schedule specifically for me when I’m not sure how to plan my study week.

They break down everything into 30 minutes blocks, I was so amazed I never thought of it. And they ring me up every morning to make sure I know what I’m going to do that day. I’m very forgetful everyone knows it. I left the fridge door open, I left the door unlocked, I locked the door but I forget the house key inside. I misplaced things very frequently especially my handphone.

Whenever I go out with my friends they will have to be extra vigilant so that I don’t leave anything behind. I don’t like holding anything in my hand, I don’t use a handbag, I put everything in a backpack if I have to although I prefer not to bring any bag.

I keep things as simple as possible. I hold nothing except my handphone, IC, and RM20 in my pocket. Everything else, the money, ticket, passport, keys, everything important, I ask my friends to hold them for me. And they are used to it. It’s better than have to track down every store we went because I dropped the train ticket somewhere.

My friends are truly my guardian angels who always had my back no matter how much shit I fall into. They are very great, amazing people. I won’t be what I am now if not for them, I’d be much worse. I’m so thankful I pray for them every day. This makes me feel so terrible because I’m unable to be a good friend to them.

I received an anonymous printed letter saying how bad of a friend I am. I don’t know who to send it but I’m pretty sure it’s one of my best friends. I feel very hurt because she doesn’t see how hard I try to be better.

But all her arguments in the letter make sense, she makes valid points. Thus it only means one thing, all my effort is not good enough. It’s painful but I accept the criticism. I need to double the effort.

I don’t know how to explain this but I see pattern easily, I can’t help but notice things others missed that sometimes I sort of know where things will go which kind of drive people mad when my prediction is not favorable to them.

But most of the time they do come true. I have extra sensitive hearing, only notice it when I realize people don’t hear what I hear. I listen to songs in a language I don’t understand like Japan or Korean, in order to study.

I turn the volume high up to block any sound outside but somehow I still get distracted, I count the instruments used in making the song, I count the beat, I hum and bounce to the melody, I feel like dancing, I imagine myself on the stage singing, strumming the guitar, beating the drum.

However when it’s too quiet, I got restless and bored, I hear the birds chirping, the cars, the motors, the buses, the lorries, the cats fighting, the neighbor talking, the neighbor watching TV, the neighbor cooking, how many plates she’s taking out, how many people walking into her kitchen, I have the habit of counting.

It may be favorable in games I can hear steps and movements, I know how many hit left is needed to k1ll the enemy, but when studying I have to read and reread like 10-20 times for every paragraph to understand because there is a countless distraction. So I stick with the song option and let my imagination flows within a limited distraction while studying. It works better.

I train my concentration by watching anime. I study for 10 minutes during the opening and ending song and try to recap what I read while watching the 20 minutes of anime. Very short attention span, but I make use the most of what I can. I learn a lot from anime too, especially about friendship and people generally.

I used the same method in university but I switch from anime to e-sports tournaments because I need to retain my concentration longer as there is more to read. I read until there are around 40 people left alive in PUBG then I allow myself to enjoy the game while recapping what I learned.

The same goes for LoL until 3 towers down and SC2 until the caster getting extra hyper. Thankfully, once I understand the concept of something I totally got it.

I never get bored by myself because there is always a party in my head. But I get bored with anything else easily. For example, people. I will get very interested in them at the beginning of knowing that we will chat for hours every day, then around a month after I will not contact them anymore.

It’s not because I hate them, but because there’s nothing left to talk about and I don’t do small talk. People said I don’t care about them enough which is very false. I do care. But still, when I think of it, I cheat on my boyfriend with multiple boys.

Maybe I really do not care of other’s feelings. Why am I like this? I hate me. I am very impulsive. Impulsive shopper, impulsive speaker, impulsive flirter. Yes, flirting is in my nature I do it effortlessly even unconsciously at times and I’m very interested in boys. For me they’re easier to figure out, I feel less pressure.

In my point of view I’m not really cheating I’m just getting to know multiple people simultaneously. Apparently it is not accepted and I hurt my boyfriend so badly. I’m really sorry, I should have known better.

Well, I was bullied for this. People hating on me. I learn my lesson so I stay true to my next boyfriend. It’s very hard to focus on one person only. I like him because he’s smart, he’s a senior, he knows a lot, I can ask him many things, we won the water rocket competition together. But he’s a little bit controlling and jealous type.

Not to repeat my mistakes, I follow his lead and give my best to control my impulsiveness. I can’t say I’m happy, but there’s always sacrifice in relationship right. I don’t know. It was very not like me but I thought it was what normal people would do. The relationship becomes very toxic when he knows I cheated with multiple boys before. I’m not going into detail but it was an ugly break up.

Things start to fall apart in university. I managed to enroll in a foreign university with a foreign language. I have problems waking up in the morning and missed classes. I can’t sleep in time because there are so many things in my mind. I always do but back at home, I have my mother’s yelling to wake me up or my friends calling me non-stop until I pick up the phone.

The bigger problem is I missed deadlines, I can’t keep up with the ever-changing schedules, always lost my way in the big university trying to find the right hall although then I realize it was the same hall as yesterday, 2-hour long class feels like an eternity.

Some lecturers only reading from the slide/textbook I don’t feel curious or intrigued at all like how I feel at school. I got bored, I play games in class. I realize I was really blessed with my school teachers.

I was a very difficult student but they don’t give up on me and even going extra miles to make sure I can be the best version of me. I owe them big time I pray for them every day too. If only I have tons of money I will pay for their holiday or something.

I try to work things around getting help from my friends; tutoring, remind me of important dates, walk to class together so that I’ll not lose, help me stick to my daily schedules.

I’m so thankful to them but I feel like a burden. I need help in nearly every aspect of life. I have a problem socializing so I always need them with me. I lost confidence. I missed my school friends back home. It is a very tough course I feel guilty taking their time.

Not to mention I started to have a nightmare of things that happened in my childhood that I don’t remember at all. I fall sick, had severe headaches, sometimes I can’t move, sometimes I can’t breathe. I even did MRI to check the nerves, everything’s fine.

It was a very challenging time with the exam just around the corner and I got into a fight with my best friend, I start to question why I’m alive, I was having a suicidal thought. Sometimes I feel like someone’s coming to hurt me, I sleep with a knife underneath my pillow.

I went to psychiatrists because my best friend pushed me to. It was a really painful experience. I have to narrate the dream I was having, in detail, to a stranger who’s ready to judge me. I was not ready for any of it that on the first few sessions I just sat there not saying a thing but feeling angry.

I never feel such immense anger before. I was diagnosed with PTSD and went through CBT, it was an extremely torturous and long process for me I never want to do it again.

The doctor doesn’t give a shit, she just put everything in front of me and force me to face it. It was harsh, I feel trapped and attacked. I don’t know if it supposed to be like that but I hate her. Nevertheless, I gain all the memories back and accepted what happened and recognized the triggering factors and how to handle them.

The doctor also diagnosed that I have ADHD. I take some meds for d3pr3ssion and completely ignore the ADHD part. I defaulted when we’re about to start working on it. One of my cousins has kind of dyslexia where he sees numbers moving around, and my parents and his parents really make it seems like he’s crazy. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me.

I already know I might have ADHD from my sister, she tells me before I go study abroad so I have a general idea what it’s about, but I never really look into it. In fact, I kind of mad because they are labeling me. So what if I have ADHD, it’s nothing. I mean I am a top student everywhere I go, it couldn’t have affected me much. I’m inheriting the stigma towards mental health as my parents do.

Actually it scares me to dig deeper. Who knows maybe I’m a psychopath. I definitely have the urge to harm people from time to time. I want to k1ll my sister so badly that my hands are shaking trying to hold myself back.

I was so nervous afterward why am I having such thought out of nowhere. I had a similar experience when I was a kid with my other sister, I drag her from the bed and kicked her in the stomach quite badly.

I hope she already forgets this. I destroyed my neighbor’s bicycle into pieces. Sometimes I just want to hit weaker people because I can. I feel like there’s a demon in me just like the song demons by imagine dragons.

I curb this by playing badminton, I will smash as strong as my desire to hit anyone. Or I will go berserk online, I play fps and shooting people down like a madman, or drive NFS recklessly and crash as many cars as I can. The sound effects are really satisfying.

My whole life consists of trying to find who I am, to understand why I always feel different, why it was such a struggle to be a good friend, why it’s very hard to keep organized and tidy, why I was really slow and oblivious to some of the things that I feel like everybody knew about but me.

I was always finding things out on hindsight which I wish I would have known ahead of time. There was like a door I can’t open. Am I really stupid? But I score on average 142 in IQ test.

I took it at school, I took it again online, I took it every single year just to reassure myself that I’m not stupid. I did a lot of personality quizzes, but still feels like a loser. I make people I care about took the personality test so it’s easier for me to understand them and give them what they need accordingly.

I memorized their personality and habits so that I don’t get into problems later. This is very hard to pull off because people change.

When I got my first job everything’s going well until I met a kid who had leukemia and he died in my shift.

One of my close friends died due to the same illness when we’re in high school, I never really acknowledged she’s not here anymore, I don’t even go to her funeral, it shook me so bad I told Mom about it but she’s not listening, so I keep it inside. When this kiddies, all the feeling comes back flooding me.

I don’t know what to do, I don’t have time to process my feelings. Suddenly I want to k1ll all the ungrateful patients who are giving a hard time to their families. Why the bad guy always live? Why good people die early?

I thought of ways to k1ll them, it’s definitely doable. Then I feel miserable for trying to play God. I supposed to heal people. I was so disgusted at myself. I hear voices laughing at me, telling me I belong to the dark side, I’m rotten inside no matter how nice I look outside. It’s war in my mind.

For days I go to work with this war. I thought before things got out of control, I better k1ll myself. I don’t want to be remembered as a bad person. So I intentionally speeding and nearly got into an accident before I snapped out of it. I scared of what I’m going to do so I go to the emergency room for help.

I hate both psychiatrists I met, the medical officer, and the specialist. Especially the specialist. She said everyone (in the medical profession) going through what I’m going through and that I need to be a little stronger to stay in this profession, that I’ll be fine after some time. Maybe she’s tired, maybe she has seen thousands of housemen like me, that she doesn’t even bother to ask me what happened.

She said this without knowing that someone close to me died the same way and I still can’t get over it and that the urge to k1ll people has nearly got out of control and that the system I build to maintain as a highly functioning human being not the problem4tic person I once was is very greatly challenged thanks to the ever-changing environment.

I took medicines, MC, went to appointments, follow their instructions, being a good patient. But I don’t trust them. They look down on me.

The counselor is a thousand times better. She’s like a sister I never have and she allows me to meet her whenever I feel like it. I know no one will totally understand me but I appreciate her for at least trying to. My department’s specialists, most of the MOs and all my friends know I was seeing a psychiatrist and they are very supportive.

Even the JKN officer knows about me. I tried many strategies to get by but nothing works. I was exhausted. I was falling deeper. I feel useless. Everyone was also quite stressed I don’t want to bother them.

In the midst of all this, my mother passed away. She has kidney failure and diabetic and had been hospitalized for a stroke. I’ve been requesting a transfer to another hospital closer to home since the first month of work but it takes forever to approve. I don’t want to stay away from my family anymore, I want to be with them when they need me.

My grandma passed away when I was studying abroad and it sucks. I love her a lot. She always there for me, believe in me no matter how much trouble I brought upon myself, she always says I’m going to be a good person when I grow up. I’m not that close to my mother but at least my mother did not abandon me.

I feel nothing when I heard the news, just empty. I was like, ah, really, how can she go first when I have many questions that need answers. Remember I said I have a nightmare about things I don’t remember?

Yeah, it’s something to do with it. Now no one can tell me the truth. The irony is my request to transfer was granted one week after she passed away and that I cannot decline it because everything has been processed.

Working at the new hospital was a blessing at first. My father makes sure I have something to eat every day because sometimes I forget to. I have internet, I have games, cinema is nearby, I can meet my high school friends, I mean I have many things I can do so that I don’t spend too much time lamenting in negative thoughts. It was perfect.

But the working environment is very different, it is very toxic, cursing is heavily rooted, favoritism is very apparent, I don’t know how to kiss ass as other people do, I have no connection to people with power, my father doesn’t own a hospital.

No one said anything afraid of getting extension if you get extended there’s very slim chance to get a permanent post, the shift was stretched thin because there is not enough houseman, too much paperwork/process / procedure to follow,

Everything depends on the MO or specialist in charge, everyone does things differently there’s no standardized way of doing things I was so confused, nothing is organized including the building arrangement, senior dump things on junior.

MO don’t care as long as the job gets done, the kind ones always ended up getting chewed on because they are the one who did the job, their chop is everywhere, of course, the prob**ility of them doing mistakes is higher than the one who did nothing. I thought it was just the department I’m currently in, only to find out my next department is even worse.

I’m so doomed. There’s no way I can survive all these without going insane. There are just too many things I need to look at, to build a new system that works for me. But I have no time to think neither time for trial and error. There’s not enough consistency around, everything always changing, I have to always adapt. I hate routine but this is too much, too overwhelming.

My brain suddenly got stuck, error 404. I was literally a robot, one that is not very efficient, just like NPC. I have no emotion whatsoever only doing things that I was programmed to do without knowing why it should be done a certain way. I have no interest to know why or what or how I’m busy surviving. I was unable to receive new inform4tion, I was overload.

I got the sk1lls but not enough knowledge which is very dangerous I know. How I complete my logbook is a mystery, I don’t remember a thing, I just passed. I can’t picture myself doing this for the rest of my life. I was really struggling to cope. There’s no one to help, I have to do everything myself.

And suddenly my father announced he’s getting married and will be living with his future wife’s family in another state. It was very shocking, I think it’s a little too soon. I haven’t really wrapped my head around my mother passing, and now this.

When I dreadfully need some structure in my life, here comes another unwanted variable. I keep on thinking why is he also leaving me alone? He was always being my backbone, so why now?

What happened? Why did he change? Am I missing something? All my aunts supported his decision, why? My cousins talked about it like it’s nothing, why? Why are they happy? They should not because I’m not happy.

But I guess who cares about me right now, right? I don’t know anymore. Everything crumbling down, I lost control of my life. I’m losing myself. I’m so angry at everyone. It was the darkest time of my life. I drive around with no specific destination.

I don’t go to work, I off my handphone, I ended up at my old hospital. Meet the psychiatrist and tell her I can’t do it anymore, I’m dying. I asked her to send my medical report to JPA I want to quit. I desperately need a break. She gave me some medicine, sleeping pills, and a referral letter.

I call my team leader and tell him I’m quitting. I crash into one of my friend’s house there and sleep like a baby. Peacefully. I don’t remember when was the last time I have such a long deep sleep.

I wake up feeling refresh like I can see things clearer. I’m not sure if it’s the meds but I feel good. I had a cold shower, clean the house a bit, drive to the grocery store nearby, buy some food to fill my friend’s empty refrigerator before I leave. She’s already going to work before Subuh.

I drive through McD, got a burger set with sundae chocolate, McFlurry oreo, iced mocha, eat them beside the river, feeling the nature, and do some thinking. The first thing I need to do is turn in my resignation letter.

I was singing happily in the car on my way back home, speeding, feeling like I’m in a racing track I don’t care if I got tickets I’m so over the moon. I’m not a reckless driver don’t worry I memorized the road already in fact I focus more when I speed and my car can only go up to 180km/h at most.

It’s one of my main criteria in choosing cars because I know if I buy a supercar I’ll get into more trouble. Anyway, my brain slowly starts functioning. I never thought breathing could feel really good.

I’ve had 5 jobs since I quit medicine, and I’m currently unemployed just do some dropshipping. The problem is I’m getting bored doing the same things every day. I want to explore, invent new things, going to places, I actually enjoy changing jobs frequently. I get to know new people, new culture, new things, new sk1lls, new romances along the way, I love everything new.

Also, people don’t get to know me deeper so they won’t know my drawbacks. I take time to analyze all the unsettled emotions and address all the negative thoughts I have. It’s a process to heal my damaged soul, to love myself with all my weaknesses.

Slowly but surely, I try to tackle things at my own pace. My creativity starting to pour like a waterfall, I see a rainbow, I see colors, everything looks more beautiful, I start to draw and design things again, I can feel the child in my brain jumping happily and hell she talks a lot, goofing around cracking jokes.

I become my usual curious self, I make peace with my father, I’m not trying to please anyone anymore, I will just be me, I observe myself carefully. I found that I’m better at doing a quick task one after another rather than working on a big project which needs long detailed planning. So I need to break down my daily life into small parts and try to do one small thing at a time.

This PKP is really a heaven in disguise. I finally decided to look into ADHD and I was really surprised that everything is very me to the tee. I have no idea that ADHD would affect every part of a person’s life, I thought it just affects the learning part. Even my sleeping problem is one of the most common ADHD traits. And my relationship issues finally have some sort of explanation.

I realized that my life is always messy, there are stacks, heaps, piles everywhere. It takes a really long time to clean up my room and it is such a relief to know that it’s not only me, that I am not lazy, I just got distracted a lot. I very rarely make my bed.

I’m very clumsy. Many times I caught myself wearing clothes inside out, sometimes front to back. I got lost easily in the shopping mall I have to make sure my handphone is fully charged when I go out just in case. I forget where I park my car quite often.

I always fall asleep watching movies, unless I watch the movie while doing something else. And only after halfway through the movie that I realized I watched it before.

People who take a long time to choose what to eat from the menu drives me crazy as much as people who talk a lot before getting to their points. Sometimes I know what I should be doing, what I want to do, how to do it, why it is so important to do it, and yet still not doing it. I don’t know why.

It’s very hard to finish something, it took me more than two months to complete this eleven pages story, and this is my fifth trial too. Auto-correct definitely helps, but I’m sure there are many gramm4tical errors. Pardon me for this.

I discover a lot about myself but I’m still not sure what to do with my life. I always just go with the flow, but seeing my friends’ success makes me feel like I need to achieve something too. I’m happy with my life but I’m not content. I want to be able to pay back to everyone who helped me before. I want to give back to the community.

I want to help more people like me. But I doubt myself, I’m too dysfunctional to succeed in anything. I cannot expect to do big things. I’m not being negative here, just being rational.

I’m thinking of getting professional help like a coach or something, but my experiences with psychiatrists weren’t that encouraging. And I’m sure it costs a lot too. I don’t know. I hope God has something in store for me.

If you know anyone who might have ADHD, please help that person. The struggle is real. If you think you have it, please get some help. You’re not alone. You are not stupid. Losing interest in something doesn’t mean you failed.

It just means that you have very rich stories to tell. It just means that you’ve got the chance to experience a lot of different stuff. Never feel sad if you started studying something and then you didn’t do it as a career.

You’ve had a phase where you are really passionate and excited to be doing that stuff. And that’s beautiful. No matter how long it lasts. Just because you find something new to love and to learn doesn’t mean you failed. It means there’s a lot to you, and that you’re an interesting person. And that’s okay.

Keep on being you. Don’t be afraid to make friends. You might not understand them completely but you will see the pattern.

When you’re always alone, when you live in your own cave too long, you become hypersensitive to small changes and minor embarrassment because you don’t have the perspective to know how small it is. It seems huge to you, you overthink.

When you step out from being a very isolated person who’s afraid and alone into a group of multiple types of people with their own issues and thoughts and feelings, you gonna feel scared, you not gonna perceive everything perfectly. There’s gonna be misunderstandings.

There’s gonna be awkward jokes. Sometimes you not gonna be able to empathize properly and it makes the situation worse. I’m sorry but the side effect of shutting yourself away is social awkwardness. And the key to go forward is not to be afraid of that. The key is to know what you’ll do when that happens.

Because down the line even if you get past this awkward stage, and you have so many friends, you still gonna fucked up from time to time. So understanding how to deal with that now and how to have a mental attitude for that now will carry you through these phases. Because it’s coming.

I was once socially awkward too, I was terrified, sometimes I was sure that people hate me when they didn’t. I misunderstood conversations and I was paranoid at times because I still have a lot of self-loathing. And I would project that into others and think they see me the way that I did.

I was really struggling. And you know what really helped me through all those awkward blunders? Honesty. I tell a friend that I don’t really know how to interact and I still finding my feet and I think I might lead you to misunderstand some things and I’m learning and I’m sorry.

I thought she will really hate me because it sounds like excuses. Instead, she just goes, yeah that makes a lot of sense, we’re cool, I’m glad it’s behind us, let’s just move on.

And I was like, ah. That’s it? And yeah we had a laugh, we had a drink together, we ate cookies together, we texted stupid memes sometimes, we had fun. And it was fine. It wasn’t the end of the world. And you know how it changed me?

When I came across people who were like that I resonate with them. And I extended to them the same forgiveness that I needed when I first started socializing. There’s a lot of nice people out there. You just need to explain your situation a bit. These little challenges will melt away slowly.

Alongside socializing, what I did is relearning how to interact with people, relearning about perspective, about what people say, about how they behave. I also have to re-appreciate my life and see the positivity that this brain fog was clouding my vision and stopped me from seeing.

Simple awesome moments will do wonder. Today my cat finally came and hugged me I don’t have to go and grab her she actually wanted to be with me and it felt really amazing to gain her trust and I achieved that today.

Today my friend remembered my birthday and bought me a little gift. Today I went to walk on the beach and the sunset was beautiful.

It was when the tide is turning and the whole area turned flat there were no waves and it became like a mirror of glass that reflected the gradient of whole rainbow colors of the sky and I couldn’t tell where the sky ended and the sea began, it just merged in this beautiful band of colors and I never got to appreciate it I don’t realize how beautiful it was.

When I was d3pr3ssed it didn’t matter how many these beautiful things happened, all I know is my misery and the things that went wrong. That’s all my brain could get fixated on.

Once I started looking for positive moments and recording it, whenever I felt suicidal, whenever I was like I can’t do this anymore, people are letting me down, every time I try to build a future it keeps fucking up, and I’m still a failure, and I’m just useless and I don’t wanna be here anymore.

Whenever this happened, I will read all these beautiful moments I wrote down and remember that my life is good. I’m just hurt. And this moment will pass. Not only it helped me to reconnect with this beautiful world, but also the reason why I’m still living, and the reason why life is such a privilege.

Everything was dead for most of the existence of this universe. There was no life, there was no beauty, there was no consciousness, there was no taste, no fear, no pain, no happiness, no nothing. And I’d only exist for a tiny blip and then I’d be dead for trillion of years again. And in this brief moment, every experience is a privilege. Even a hard one.

To know pain is still a fucking privilege because every experience is a rare opportunity. Yes I have to be brave, yes I have to endure but if I exist long enough I’d be able to see the beauty in it. It wasn’t gonna always be perfect. If I need the world to be perfect to be happy, I’ll never be happy.

So I need to remember to take joy and the beauty of the world even when things still not fixed. Nope, I will never get fixed, I will live with this disorder my whole life, but I will learn how to work around things. We’ll never be going to be happy with anything that’s why progress is made. Yeah it hurts, yeah it sucks but it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.

Take care of your physical health. That was the foundation for everything that comes after, I promise. Once you are in a healthy place, start working on your mind. Dare to go and do stuff that makes you uncomfortable.

Go hang out with people, be a social fucked up for a while. Make a mistake. Learn your lessons. Keep building and trying. Make a system that works for you without having to sacrifice your mental health. Laugh at all your clumsiness, inarticulate-ness, all those weird perks you have, that’s what makes you a fun person.

Don’t be shy to get help for your executive function, it just needs training and you will get better. Don’t sell your life, your happiness, your well-being to someone who doesn’t give a shit about you. Get out there, it’s worth it. Don’t mind what people say.

It’s never too late to change the direction that you’re currently in. Don’t over-invest in things that don’t make you happy. Stop looking for happiness where you lost it. Sometimes letting go is when you gain the most. All that you risk by sticking in a miserable situation is wasting more of your precious years.

And this part is for everyone who reads even if you don’t have ADHD.

When you were listening to people expressing an opinion you don’t share, it’s okay to keep quiet, it’s okay to try to understand where they’re coming from, it’s okay to learn from that instead of desperately need to change their opinion, or get offended by it.

Don’t get indignant just because people don’t think the way you do. They’re not attacking you by being different, they just being themselves.

One day you gonna be the weirdest person in the room, you gonna have the most different opinion, the most different lifestyle or whatever. One day you gonna be with a bunch of people who are not like you. Very much so.

And in that moment if you think that you have the right to be treated fairly and with kindness and respect, you gonna have to not be bratty and you gonna have to extend that same thing to everybody else. Right? So try to put yourself in other shoes. It seems obvious but sometimes people just need to hear it.

Sometimes people don’t realize how much of a bigot they’re being. Let it go. Because everybody is an opportunity to laugh, to connect, to learn.

There are billions of years worth of experience under the belt of all of us collectively. You have not been alive a billion of years. Their life experiences have so much to offer you if you just let it if you can just see the pass of the things that aren’t the same. Be respectful and embrace the differences.

– Lulu (Bukan nama sebenar)

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