ADHD is Like a Phone Battery

Some take longer to recharge than others. Others need a system upgrade or battery replacement, but don’t know how to get it.

This photo licensed via Adobe Stock basically encapsulates my current state, bedspread and all.

I’m open about my struggles with ADHD, but it’s a disorder that’s widely misunderstood — especially in women and femmes. It tends to go undiagnosed in marginalized genders and races because we’re all assumed to have higher pain tolerance and that we’re just exaggerating or being dramatic.

Or that we’re just lazy and that’s why we don’t get things done.

WRONG. If it’s not a chronic physical condition, you’re probably somewhere on the ADD/ADHD spectrum.

Neurodiversity itself is still not understood very well, though we’re making strides. Things are definitely light years better than they were when I was a kid in this respect: when I was growing up in the 1990s, ADHD was thought of as a “rowdy boy disorder” and I remember being shamed and bitched at for not paying attention. I’d dread doing things that bored me, and I longed for privacy and headspace that I didn’t get at home or school.

But in my numerous essays about grief and starting over, I ended up making a breakthrough when I realized how much my grief is literally exhausting the living crap out of me: the phone battery analogy about…