and today i got my official paperwork:

i have adhd

i wont say its a relief, i wont say i feel vindicated. i want to feel those things, i think i should feel those things, but mostly im just fucking tired and i just want to fucking function for 5 minutes

and because of that treatment is gatekept behind a diagnosis

i kept being told, oh its hard to get diagnosed as an adult. you might have to go to different doctors. such and such didnt show anything

and it kept me from seeking it.

the fact i have high blood pressure kept me from seeking it

but things have gotten so bad in my life that i /need/ to do something about it, i /need/ treatment, and so i finally sought out a clinic, who referred me to a psych for diagnosis

im a firm believer of self-diagnosis. folk are in their own head more than mental health professionals and understand themselves better, though i do understand from a standpoint we can easily overlook and misdiagnose ourselves, but having a name to something, a problem, can really help in having power over it

but the fact of the matter is that the treatment for adhd involves controlled substances

but as i grow older, its been getting harder to concentrate. ill go days / weeks even at work unable to do anything at all because of a minor roadblock, unable to focus on anything. after work ends ill spend the whole evening unable to do anything i want to do or just stand there unable to to choose something

or hyper focus on something i dont want to hyperfocus on

i remember failing in college, ceasing going to class, not finding any pleasure in anything. it took me 11 years to finish college. i worked my way through it the entire time, and i finished. 11 years, but i finished.

somehow ive taken my career into success not because of how chaotic it is but because ive been able to find bursts of performance that have kept most of my bosses happy ( i have been fired before )

i remember when the struggle started in high school, and my mother being angry with my grades when the Cs came, then the Ds, and then the Fs and summer school, when i was previously a GT/Honors student

how i would fear giving her my report cards, lie about having lost it, hiding it until she asked, because of the anger and the yelling and one time she ground her nails into my arm