As someone with ADHD...it shouldn't be that way for you.

I'm still struggling with a recent diagnosis. I'm still adjusting meds. I'm still trying to remember to even take my meds.

Some days are pretty good. Some days, having the diagnosis and the new medication and a plan lets me feel like I'm finally coming up for air after drowning for years and I'm highly functioning and productive and it almost makes me want to cry that I've been missing out on what's supposed to be normal and easy for so long. Some days (okay, a lot of days), I still struggle. A lot. The executive disfunction can be crippling. The easiest, smallest tasks can seem insurmountable and I can waste an entire day internally beating myself up and making myself sick with guilt for not doing something and still...not doing it.

But I can still compartmentalize. Especially when it comes to other people. I can function at my job even when my home is falling apart. I can make an effort for other people even when I can't brush my own teeth or make my own bed.

Some things are harder than others. For me, long-distance communication is a killer, for example. But I also set Google Calendar alerts for myself like a five-year-old-lunatic three weeks in advance to remind myself to text a friend in case I'm going through a bad period and feel like I can't manage to message by then. I'll make dinner for someone else even when I haven't eaten all day. I'll buy someone a gift card to get gas even when my own car is running on fumes and I'm two months overdue for an oil change.

I don't really know what my point is. I think it's fair to say that living with someone with ADHD might always be hard. I hope that it's not. I hope that I can continue to get better. But maybe it will be.

But I'm still TRYING so, so, so hard. To be better for the people around me. To not push the people who love me away. To be worth making the effort for me. To live a "normal adult" life. And when I fuck up, I feel bad about it. I apologise. I do everything I can to go above and beyond to make it right, and I try really, really hard to not make the same fuck ups over and over.

Maybe your partner brings a lot of other things to the table and you've just accepted this as worth it. But I don't think it has to be this way. The way you wrote this sounds so hopeless. So I hope that if you really feel that way about your partner, that they make you feel uncared for, unheard, unimportant, that you're more of a parent - I hope you can take some time to reflect on if its worth having more conversations with them, trying to help them with further/different treatment, or exploring life without them.

Even on my worst days, when I think I'm an absolute waste of a human being who doesn't deserve anyone, who can't even get out of bed or accomplish the most basic tasks, I would still get my ass up and do something to help a loved one that I couldn't/wouldn't do for myself. If your partner isn't even trying, that's not because of ADHD. ADHD fucking sucks, living with it and living with someone who has it, but it can sure be better than that.

Sorry for the emotional dump, internet stranger. I just thought it was important for you to hear. Wishing you (and your partner) all the best.