FYI this is a super ADHD way to struggle with cleaning/things in general. It’s specific enough that it made me search your blog for “adhd” to see if you have it/think you might have it

I DO suspect, but I worry about it because I only began to suspect after learning that two people I both really love and really relate to have it, so that’s how I started learning about it, and I don’t know if I’m sitting around here like, ‘Yeah, cool, I’m gonna have the same disorder as the cool kids!’ on some subconscious level. Do I notice the ways I behave that line up with it now more because they’ve been brought to my attention? Am I inflating things?  

But then I remember every time I have ever been forced to pack for moving in my life and how I was absolutely paralyzed and just started sorting small objects because I was so overwhelmed with what to do and how to do it.  And I would get yelled at for not just putting things in boxes and then I would do that and get yelled at for not putting things in boxes in a way that could be labeled and then I would obsessed about the category that the box could be called when it was packaged up and

It turns out that I either need a very very long time to do something like moving to sort out brain logistics or I just need someone else to tell me what task I need to be doing right then, because otherwise there’s too much that needs done, too much potential, and my brain tries to address it all at once and then just bluescreens. 

I have to make a list of tasks to calm myself extremely regularly, which helps with the anxiety that ramps up when I can’t figure out what or how to start.  But I’ve always just thought the inability to do things I knew I had to do was lazy and anxious.  (I’ve known I had to deal with the litter box since yesterday - or earlier, if we’re being honest - and it has taken me until right before I started this post to put together all the required resources to do it.)

Or how my brain races Constantly and that’s why I had 95 browser tabs open and wake up to rabbit hole searches for Things I Had To Know Immediately like the flag of Kyrgyzstan or divorce rules in the 1860s. 

Or how sometimes I’m listening to a song or show as background noise and I think, “I could use some background noise for this,” realize I’m already listening to background noise and then I get frustrated and stuck trying to find the right amount of sound.  And that fucks me up ALL THE TIME.  Can’t clean or write or paint or shower or work or cook without the perfect balance of something happening.  And I’ll sit and not do the thing until the balance is achieved.  Sometimes it is not and then the thing doesn’t happen.  

I don’t know if you’re from the same television generation I am or not, but getting a task together feels like I’m on Legends of the Hidden Temple and I’m putting together the fucking Silver Monkey.   From the outside, I’m screaming, “TURN IT THE FUCK AROUND, THIS IS NOT HARD,” but inside my brain, I’m a dumbass 12 year old unable to figure out how to stack three chunks to make a basic ass animal shape.

I feel like it’s gotten worse since I’ve lived alone and my actions are no longer highly controlled by feelings of judgement, worries about intruding, desperation for acceptance, and fear.  

I feel the same way about this as I do as about the nonbinary thing. Like I’m appropriating someone else’s thing.  Somehow.

I don’t know how to ask anyone about it, I don’t think anyone will bother to test me or do whatever they do with it.   But I bought a book recently. 

So I don’t know, thanks for independently mentioning that?  I hope I’m not just making stuff up because I read some books.