The other morning, I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge to get the milk for my cereal. The milk jug wasn’t there. You might think that I had just run out of milk, but you’d be wrong. I’d just used the milk the night before, and I knew the jug wasn’t empty. It wasn’t on the counter, so I hadn’t forgotten to put it away. So I opened the freezer. I blinked. The milk jug didn’t blink back, but that’s probably because it couldn’t do much of anything, since it was frozen solid.

I don’t frequently put the milk in the freezer. I do, however, frequently put things away in the wrong places by accident. By now you may have guessed I have ADHD.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is such a funny name for the way my brain works. Especially because I have plenty of attention. In fact, some might say I have too much attention. The problem is, I just can’t decide how I want to use my attention, so I end up wasting it scrolling on Pinterest and looking at all the cool crafts I could be doing.

I didn’t know I had ADHD as a kid. I just thought I liked to daydream. It was rough on my mom too, because I was homeschooled. She had to sit next to me at my little desk when I did schoolwork. Every time my eyes glazed over as I stared at the blank wall in front of me, she’d say, “Focus!” You’d think that if there’s only a blank wall to stare at, I wouldn’t get distracted.

Never underestimate the power of boredom and a blank wall. Blank walls are absolutely the silver screen of the ADHD brain. As any person with ADHD can testify, I can never guess what’s going to be showing. Sometimes it’s that weird dream I had when I was five, and sometimes it’s all the embarrassing moments I’ve ever experienced on repeat. Like the time I walked into a pillar at Disney World and bounced off it in cartoon fashion.

I think my mom gave up on getting me to focus by the time I got to high school. I don’t blame her. My school days lasted from ten a.m. (thanks to my teenage sleep schedule) to midnight (also thanks to my teenage sleep schedule). To be honest, most of that time was filled with reading books instead of doing my homework. It would get to be supper time and I still didn’t have much done. At that point, I only had a few hours until bedtime, which is when I would panic and wonder why I couldn’t get six hours of work done in two hours.

Procrastination is sneaky that way. People with ADHD don’t have an accurate internal clock. In fact, I think my brain even missed the memo that there’s such a thing as time. I’m sure I have enough time in fifteen minutes for a two-hour task, but when I have a ten-minute task, I freak out because six hours is definitely not enough time to get it done. Either way, no matter how much time there actually is to do anything, the settings are controlled by the ADHD cat, whose favorite button to press is “wait until the last minute”.

The other side of the coin is actually remembering to do stuff I have time limits on. And don’t tell me to write it down. If I don’t forget in the two seconds between knowing about something I need to remember and opening my notes app, the chances of me remembering to check my notes to actually do the thing is about as dicey as flipping the aforementioned coin, which the ADHD cat has definitely batted under the couch. And whether I actually want to do the task doesn’t even enter into the equation. I promise I still want to finish the painting I started and haven’t touched in three years.

Not to mention the rabbit hole of forgotten hobbies, most of which never made it past the researching stage. When people ask me what my hobbies are, I ask them if they would like the list alphabetically or chronologically. I recently began saving all the glass jars of my used-up candles. I ordered wicks, I ordered wax beads, and I checked through all my essential oils to make sure I had all the scents I wanted to use. I made candles as gifts for Christmas. And all my supplies have been sitting in a box since then.

I’ll get asked what I like to do in my free time. I’ll start to say sewing because I really like sewing, but then I remember I haven’t sewn anything in a year. I won’t say beading because I liked that when I was a kid, and although I still have all my supplies, I haven’t actually enjoyed making jewelry in a long time. I won’t say drawing because then I’ll have to show them my art, and I don’t have pictures of anything I’ve drawn newer than two years.

So I’ll say I like to watch movies with my friends, because that’s easy enough. And then they’ll have the audacity to ask what kinds of movies I like to watch.

I didn’t know I had ADHD as a kid. Who would have guessed that the quiet girl who procrastinated on everything, was always daydreaming, and was constantly late had the trouble-sitting-still-disorder?

R.J. Catlin

R.J. Catlin is a twentysomething homeschool graduate from the shores of West Michigan. She recently moved to Appalachian Ohio for a writing apprenticeship where she is growing her craft and her relationship with Jesus. When she’s not writing, R.J. enjoys going on adventures with her friends, quoting movies, and reading books.