Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

Greetings, y'all! 👋😄

I'm going back in time with this post; back to when I was young and didn't have bills to pay, when $5 was gas money, and when MTV still played music videos.

When I was in early elementary school, I was a straight-A student, and by late elementary school, I was still making mostly As, with the occasional B grade on my report card (but they were very few and far between). I wasn't one of those kids who never had to study, but I didn't struggle to make good grades. I read well above my grade level, and I was really good at spelling. 😄 At that point, we were learning the very basics of math, and back then we learned "math facts" mostly by memorization. Once I got the math facts down, I did pretty well in that subject, too. 

By the time I got to high school, I was still making pretty good grades in everything but math (I got my first F, ever, on my report card in algebra, and I barely passed geometry). It was during this time that I discovered I might have ADHD.  

My reasoning for bringing this up is not to brag about how smart I was in school, but to highlight the fact that back then, a lot of kids who were struggling with ADHD fell through the cracks because they weren't disruptive in class, and they made good grades. Additionally, ADHD was thought of as a "boys' disorder", which meant that a lot of girls went untested and untreated. My younger brother displayed all the "classic" signs of ADHD by the time he was in 2nd grade, and the school recommended that my parents have him tested. He was diagnosed and started on medication, and the difference was night and day (he has other issues that weren't diagnosed until he was an adult, but that's a topic for another day). As it turned out, I was one of the "smart girl" kids who fell through the cracks due to the medical consensus at the time.

I didn't know it then, but by the time I reached adulthood, I figured out that my struggles with the more advanced math had very little to do with my intelligence, and a whole lot to do with my ability to organize, in my mind, the information I was being given.

Imagine a filing cabinet stuffed full of folders with papers sticking out here and there. There's some semblance of order, in that each folder's contents match the label on the folder, but there's no real organization in each folder. Each time you're given papers to file, you put them in the correct folder, but not necessarily in the correct order. Later on, when it's time to retrieve those papers, you know which folder to look in, but you have to sift through all the papers to find the ones you need, and by the time you finally find all the correct papers, you're given more papers to file, and the cycle continues. 

This is what I mean when I talk about the "noise" in my mind - all the information is there, but there's very little order, and I have to sift through all the random bits that are somewhat related before I can get to the important parts, and I need that information sorted and collated and ready now. An illustration:

It gets exhausting. 

Over the years, I've tried different strategies to manage my ADHD. Some have worked well, such as making a schedule and sticking to it. Others, like making lists, not so much. I've tried several "natural supplements" that claim to help you focus and deal with distractions - "herbal Ritalin" so to speak, but they didn't do a thing for me except lighten my wallet. What I found that does work for me is actual Ritalin, and since I've started taking it, it has made a big difference in how I feel and how my brain processes, stores, and retrieves information. My care provider and I are fine-tuning the dosage, but I feel like we're very close to what I call "just right".   

Be blessed, and be a blessing!

Megan