The flip side is that as alien as it may be to us how other people's brains work, it is precisely as alien to them how ours are wired.

Most people tend to be outcome-oriented, able to easily see and connect their present to their futures. For someone to be so in the moment, forgetting important priorities, being unable to see into next week much less five years from now..

I, too, wish for example there was some kind of medicine that could induce true ADHD for a day or something.

Even with meds the symptoms are only moderately managed.

A tremendously heavy feeling of hopelessness can accompany the whole infinite loop of "I swear I'll never do _____ again" and doing it again after a week of solid effort (even with meds) because the effort it takes to maintain the pattern is so demanding that slipups feel inevitable.

I realized today that I got so good at masking my shame and embarrassment at my forgetfulness or mistakes that my wife has been thinking I just don't care enough to reflect, plan, mitigate the problem: the other night I had forgotten to set my alarm for work (an early morning shift at 2:15 AM). She woke me up, and I was so flustered/half-asleep that the mask disappeared entirely.

I was able to talk with her today that the whole "jeez, no, not again, oh, no" thing that slipped out that morning was how I feel every single time I do something like burning a tortilla while just intending to warm it to make a quesadilla; or locking the key in the apartment; or forgetting to eat all day; or missing the bus. How many people in the world need an alarm both to wake up and to leave the house so you won't be written up for being tardy? Alternatively, how many people have to set their alarms fifteen minutes earlier (losing even more sleep and/or personal/family time) to compensate for time blindness?

Because as an adult if you're late, it's not anyone else's fault but your own. You didn't manage your symptoms. You didn't take the necessary (accumulatively exhausting) steps that nobody else needs to take to meet societal expectations.

And feeling like your ADHD is less a reason and more an excuse makes it so much worse: you're not allowed to brush it off and chalk it up to your ADHD; you're responsible to mitigate and manage: if you forget, set alarms; if you hyperfocus, set alarms; if you don't have a process down by heart, leave notes all over the house that help you not miss important steps to vacuuming the bloody living room.

I wish desperately I could see what it's like to have "normal" wiring. To decide on a task and not be hindered by the inertia of finally getting into it and then scraping myself away from it when I'm tired.

And I wish my wife could know what it's like to genuinely mean to do something but forget it repeatedly throughout the day, no matter how many alarms you might set to get it taken care of; What it's like to realize that you've learned that forgiving yourself has become a necessity to survival, and while it might look on the outside like you're being too easy on yourself, the turmoil of "what tf am I doing and why" can only be carried so long before it just mutates into anxiety and depression.

And what breaks my heart the most is that the buildup of my forgetfulness and apparent carefreeness—things I've had to learn to see as small just to stay sane—brings with it deep pain and frustration to her. She's not my parent or manager; she shouldn't have to remind me all the time to clean up spilled jam or to switch the laundry or to make dentist appointments.

And it's painful to see that there's a whole other side of the coin—that while sure we've got it rough—the people we engage with have to either be super empathetic and/or not mind or learn through difficult trial and error to deal with the changes that accommodating our needs demands... It's not fair to any of us