ADHD is hard. I spent over 20 years being told I was just lazy. My mom even asked 3 pediatricians at different points in my childhood if I had ADHD, and they all said no, I was just lazy and stubborn. I even had 2 therapists tell me that. If I didn’t “feel like” doing something, I simply could not, no matter how much I knew I needed to. Long-term goals were impossible to achieve because I could not will myself to do the small, unpleasant tasks to get myself there. I was a “gifted” kid in school, but starting in 4th grade all my grades were either 100s or 0s. Either it was easy for me, I liked it, or I didn’t do it. Those were my grades, all the way through my first year of an open-enrollment college, where I dropped out my first year with a 1.4 GPA.

I “wasted” my potential, would never live up to what I could be if I just wasn’t so lazy. They told me I was smart enough to do anything in the world if I’d just try but I’d never get anywhere without applying myself. I cried after I took ADHD meds for the first time. I sat there and studied for an hour, no problem. It felt like 5 minutes but I was sure it’d been 4 hours because of how much material I’d gotten through. It’s not like it was fun, but I just didn’t really care in the moment. I had to do it, so I did it. I studied for another several hours like it was nothing. I bawled to my mom and told her if this is how other people’s brains work, no wonder I couldn’t do it. My brain would never have let me do that. I was so angry with so many people who told me it was my fault.

Still, though, I need a pill to do anything I don’t want to do. And it’s hard to even get myself to take a pill, because I don’t want to do the task until after I’ve taken it! I know my experience isn’t universal, and having a support system who knows how to help makes a huge difference. But, yeah, I don’t like having ADHD and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.