Overshare 02

Attention Deficit Hottie Disorder

Clem started Kindergarten in 2023 and for a long time after I was fixated, unhealthily so, on the fact that when I went into labor with her, my phone was at 3%. I had planned to use all of the seven days that were neatly lined up between the day my water broke and the day of my scheduled c-section to get my life together. I called my doctor, downplaying the whole situation—“Maybe I just peed myself. Does it feel like I just peed myself? Well…no.”—and managed to negotiate time to take a shower before coming in.

Nothing was clean. Nothing was packed. Clem’s first night on earth was not obsessively documented, as was her right as the baby of an iPhone-tethered millennial. I left the hospital three days later in a black nightgown that could almost pass for one of those cheap Old Navy shirtdresses. It was fine, everyone was looking at the baby anyway.

The thing I kept fixating on is that if I could travel back in time, if I could plug in my phone when I got back from the idyllic afternoon at our apartment pool, current-day Emily would be fine. The house would be clean, the kids would somehow be sleeping in their own beds, I wouldn’t be powering myself from obligation to obligation using only expensive cold foam chai lattes and pump-up songs.

I know this is one of my bad habits, wondering Where It All Went Wrong, how I lost my chance to be on top of things. I know there is no being on top of things. Or that there is, but that it isn’t constant. There’s the finding of balance and the losing of balance; the necessary readjustment, again and again, forever.

In 2018 shortly after Bear got his autism diagnosis—while I was holding a one-month old Clementine, lol—a colleague who also had an Autistic child asked me if we had pursued genetic testing, as there are a number of co-morbid conditions. “Where did it come from?” I remember her asking. This thought had never once occurred to me.

TikTok recently (and by recently, I mean a year ago) served me a video of a woman talking about the diagnostic testing she had to do for ADHD. I know that it’s a running joke that the internet is trying to diagnose everyone with something, but the video did unlock a memory of taking the same test when I was in high school. There were different shapes and you had to hit the spacebar when certain conditions were met. I failed. The psychiatrist I was seeing at the time told my mother that I had ADHD. I associated those letters with boys who couldn’t sit still in class and recoiled. I told them that I absolutely did not have ADHD. I was a well-behaved teacher’s pet, thank you very much. For some reason no one pushed back and I forgot about it for a full quarter of a century.

There’s a trope about parents slowly discovering their own neurodivergence in their children’s appointments. Behaviors that are diagnostic red flags don’t seem like that big of a deal. Shortly before he got diagnosed, Bear responded to a gentle greeting from a barista by folding over on himself and weeping. That reaction made sense to me in the marrow of my bones. It still does. You have to say Clem’s name four or five times, often in increasing volume, to get her to pay attention to you. I frequently only hear my name when it’s being shouted at me.

The nudge from TikTok coupled with a constant sense of overwhelm led me to make an appointment with a psychiatrist to get a diagnosis. When I explained that I had failed the spacebar test when I was a teenager, the psychiatrist said that was enough information for her. People don’t really grow out of ADHD. I cried with relief in the little faux leather chair—I hadn’t expected it to be that easy.

Lots of things clicked into place. Memories of not being able to do math in my head and trying to explain to my teacher that the numbers wouldn’t stay still. I had to write them down to see them. My ongoing fuzzy concept of geography. States and countries are like balloons, floating around in vaguely regional clumps. Having to make a series of lists to remember a single thing at home or at work. Having two Autistic children. That’s where it came from. It came from me.

the harvest / the needle / protect me / from evil

Florence and the Machine has a new single out and I’m fully obsessed with it. So much so that I am so tempted to buy the lyrics printed on a silk scarf, it’s so delightfully witchy.

Links

I’ve had Fetch the Bolt Cutters on heavy rotation lately, which has sent me into my Instapaper archive to re-read the interviews she did at the time. They’re all so good and open and raw.