This series is one that I’ve been working on for the last few years - personally however, not so much visually. You see, living with ADHD is complicated. The world often rises so quickly, only to come crashing down in the blink of an eye. While ADHD has affected my life in a plethora of ways, the last year has shown me the influence it has wielded over my relationships with others, particularly with those I love deeply.

Somehow, my most recent chapter of life, one that I expected to yield the least for my love life, allowed me to discover what loving with ADHD really was like. And it was a fucking beautiful mess. With my highs as high as the mountaintops and lows as low as my uncontrolled blood sugars, the wiring of my brain became a recipe for destruction, sparing few in its way.

It isn’t so much a disorder, as much as it is a gift to be fumbled with. At times, it feels like I climb every peak. At other times, it feels like the list of tasks my therapist suggested I create for myself would stretched longer than any movie credits. When courted properly, my mind would propel me to go to the furthest reaches to show care for those in my life. And when managed a little more tightly like a mile pace during a marathon, the action potentials jumping from neuron to neuron could color my life, and the lives of those around me so wonderfully.

The mind of one with ADHD is beautiful. The intricacies of the wandering mind, layered with intense yet brief emotions, make every day feel like a movie, a rollercoaster, and a deep sleep, all at once. It is a blessing and curse to be wished only to the most cherished of friends and fiercest of enemies.

This brings me to my point, illustratively made at the end of a winding road of compliments and criticisms of my own handling of my neuro-atypical existence: ADHD is not to be fucked with. The mind is a malleable piece of intricate design and welding, and with ADHD, each and every part is moving in different directions, all at once. And until I fell in love, I had only thought of myself as a product of my experiences for scholarship and university applications. Never had it occurred to me that hard wiring of my mind could so profoundly impact how I would love unconditionally, and properly.

This project serves, more for me than anyone else, to provide me with an artistic outlet to understand, reflect upon, and hopefully reconcile the intersection of my emotions with my ADHD. Inevitably, I hope binding myself to this project would serve my intention of holding myself accountable to my own growth.

chapter 1

flees under pressure

Few things feel permanent in the mind of someone with ADHD. The chaotic nature by which things in life drift into and out of their consciousness, seems almost destined to happen to most things in life, both good and bad. While often a good tool in the fight to maintain a level of sanity and calmness in the face of accumulated life trauma, it brings about a type of conditioning most accurately categorized as a fear of losing loved ones, titles, and stability in life.

To the ADHD mind, it makes more sense to disappear at the sight of increasing weight, rather than putting their battered but resilient mind to the test of pressure. While cognitively dissonant, the persistence of this confidence conflated with avoidance permeates each and every undertaking.

The unlearning begins not with a clear unconditional support or love from others, but a confrontation of the limitations of the physical existence. Confrontation, met shortly thereafter with an open but intimate criticism, seems to be the only way of unlearning. Without this growth, the individual will eventually succumb to even the slightest pressures of life and not be able to sustain even the most arbitrary of relationships and responsibilities.

is overwhelmed by responsbility - final.jpg

is overwhelmed by responsibility

To the ADHD mind, more always seems to equal better. The way the sun goes down and the moon comes up, the mind alternates between the state of loading up and breaking down.

Do more. Prove yourself more. Show others you can do more. Take it all on. Succeed. Take more on. Slip up once. Drown in responsibility. Gasp for air. Collapse. Rest. Rest some more. Fail a little. No time to rest anymore. Now kick back into high gear. Now do more. Prove yourself more. Show others you can do more. Take it all on. Succeed.

It’s a relentless and vicious cycle touching every aspect of life, intensely. Work really hard in this part of the cycle. Drift away from the ones you love in this part of the cycle. Care for your physical health in this part of the cycle. Do the things you love in this part of the cycle. Love passionately in this part of the cycle.

What is both beautiful and crippling about this cycle is that to the neuro-atypical, it seems normal. A strong day. And then a weak day. That’s okay. That’s just how it goes. But then you get older. And you realize that it isn’t how it goes. And while you’re constantly struggling with too much of this or too little of this at any given point, the rest of the people around you are going through life a little differently than you are.

See the key is not to limit indefinitely the sporadicity of the ADHD mind. To do that would be to destroy something beautiful. The key is to first find one cord, and hold on to it - one that is a little more stable than the brain innately pushes itself to be. And without succumbing the mind to the comfort of the comfortable, add more and more cords until life looks a little bit more normal. And no, not normal normal, but normal in the context of the ADHD mind that demands some excitement to turn itself on.

loves by reminder

At times, it feels like there is so much love to be shared. Often, it has an unmatched intensity - one that would be envied by screenwriters and hopeless romantics everywhere. Other times, it’s like the wires in my brain are singing asynchronously and what is most exciting, isn’t the love that so frequently carries the mood.

It feels irreconcilable too. And overwhelming. And intense. And the only solution is to write an endless list of “to-do” lists. God I fucking hate lists. As if a written list that can be easily lost, will be the solution to my neurocircuitry’s inability to maintain something that isn’t acutely exciting at the forefront of my frontal cortex.

Loving with ADHD is a fight. It’s a fight between your heart and your brain. And more specifically, a fight between you and your friends, your family, and your lovers. Whatever we have collectively agreed upon as a society to show affection - it doesn’t cater to the distracted brain. And that’s okay. It’s the responsibility of the distracted brain to figure that part of the equation out. But sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, those who we love the most become damaged by inconsistent shows of affection. A skipped text here. A missed call there. An ignored reminder to say hello, tattooed to the inside of my eyelids. Still always an afterthought of forgetfulness.

In the logical evolution of the attention deficit brain, it’s a series of reminders to show love that go forgotten, compounded by close relationships lost along the way. And then somewhere along that way, the closet of forgotten reminders breaks open and destroys everything in its path.

Cheers to remembering a little more, tightening the circle of closeness, and reconfiguring the neurons to prioritize the not now and the now a little more equally. The key is to understand the way the ADHD mind works, and to anticipate its lapses. And more specifically, give it the tools necessary to give those easily forgotten things some automaticity.

chapter 2

The former is more a sense of excitement, than it is a deep critical reflection. See, with ADHD, the passion and investment phase precede the grueling difficulty of the maintenance phase. The mind remains bustling with ideas, but in an almost ironic play of events, some of the ideas are novel and unrelated to the intense fervor that planted the seed of productivity.

I mean, it wasn’t even poetic. In the creation of this series, I literally word vomited ideas into a journal filled with lists and emotions, and immediately began shooting. Within the first hour of contemplation, I had envisioned every part of the photo, the presentation, and the future. And somewhere at the intersection of my tears, the feeling of overwhelming despair, and a half consumed sugar free red bull, I did it.

Didn’t even give the idea a second thought before getting to work. Like, seriously. I didn’t think twice. I just went for it. Patience is not a virtue given to those with minds like mine. And I didn’t need it either. Well… I mean, not until now. The second leg.

This part sucks. Or maybe everything after the beginning sucks. Nothing energizes the way it did before. The exorbitant workload at the start, however difficult, was easy to manage - I mean, anything seems easy when the entire brain directs all of its energy in one direction. But now, the excitement has dwindled and the laziness has set in.

I could sleep. I could exercise. I could cook. I could clean. I could answer some of the few hundred unread texts on my phone. I could rearrange my closet. I could download tiktok and waste away there too. I mean I could literally do a million fucking other things. But please god don’t ask me to lie to my psyche. I can’t. I won’t. I mean… I will. I have to. Fuck that.

And with it, the work carries on. At a slower, but steady pace. The brain has not given up. And despite the impending lysis of a mind slowly filling with a desire for so much more, the ADHD mind will often persist.

feels all at once, or not at all

At times, my mind feels like an ocean. Relentless forces coming from every angle, pulling my thoughts in any and every direction. And more often than not, the relentless forces make it hard to pause and feel the waves. At times, it feels as if no emotion can be understood. For me, the emotion is the exhale that follows the intense high of productivity. Like, hell yeah. I did that. I finished one of the 8 to-do lists lining my kitchen counter. I told off my transphobic uncle. I invested a copious amount of energy showing love to someone I care about. Whatever the emotion is, feeling it is too much an investment.

My ADHD doesn’t render me emotionless - I mean I feel them sometimes. But it feels as if the only emotion I have time for is fatigue or success… until the rain comes. Then all of the roots that I buried deep into the ground, each with its own intense memory and feelings, are pulled up all at once. As the rain grows more intense, the feelings begin their own dance with one another. And as the thoughts fracture, I collapse.

After the storm, the rebuilding begins. And this time, I lays a foundation stronger than before. And so it proceeds, tossing each and every ounce of love, heartbreak, and anger into the cage. “DO NOT ENTER” written in large and bolded letters. The ADHD mind exists in its own world. And so long as others don’t get close enough to expect more intimate feelings in return, then there is no need to confront the endless store of emotion.

And it’s powerful. Like, so fucking amazing. Seriously. No need for emotions? No casual crying or faulty senses of happiness? I don’t want to feel the emotion if it doesn’t serve to help me tackle the mountain of responsibility I undertook yesterday night, last week, or last month.

Try explaining to someone who can hardly focus on the words coming out of your mouth, why living and feeling in the moment, is the solution. It’s literally so hard. And when you’ve learned to tackle anything with a 0 or 100 style approach, taking the hand of each of your emotions as they come along is really daunting.

I’d imagine it starts with somewhere between a healthy processing of emotions with the support of others. Maybe some journaling. Maybe a lot of journaling. Honesty too. Maybe. Who knows. It seems much more of a task than I am capable of completing. For now, the journaling.

struggles to be patient

Patience is not a virtue given to those with ADHD. My mind is literally either running a hundred kilometers an hour, or is completely off. Why do things take time? Why could they take time when they could just not take time? If they didn’t take time, we could just move on. I wouldn’t need to heal after the heartbreak, I wouldn’t need to show up late to my 3rd class of the day, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have to wait for that seed I planted 3 weeks ago to finally fucking sprout. I mean I fucking planted it 2 weeks ago and I can’t be more impatient. I would almost rather it die at this point.

See it isn’t so much that all good things take time. A lot of good things come quite easy! It’s that being a mature adult takes a lot of time. And not just time, but practice, and learning, and making mistakes, and for fucks sake all of that shit takes so much time.

Like is anyone fucking listening???? I have 8 lectures to catch up on, 14 meetings this week, and I haven’t slept more than 5 hours a single night this week. And now I have to invest time and thought and critical thinking skills into all of those things that will make me more “mature” ???? No. I mean. I have to. So yes. But why.

Patience is not a virtue. It is the little seed I planted the first time my teacher told me that she would call home if I didn’t sit still. It’s the plant that everyone helped me water as a child and I aggressively ripped when I first moved out of the house. And so it begins again. Take the seed. Put it underneath the soil. Pat it down a little bit. Water it. Give it sunlight. Wait. Wait. Wait some more. Are you bored of waiting? Well you need to wait more.

With time, it gets easier. Maybe it’s acquired through trauma. I mean I’m sure I got more patient, the more stressed out about the world I become. But for the wiring of the ADHD mind, it needs to be a little more conscious to become part of the routine. And once it’s part of the routine, the beautiful chaos of thoughts can resume. This time, with just a slightly better hold on that pause button.

chapter 3 - the day to day

The smallest thing. It’s like, my brain tells my heart to start pounding. And wow. It’s amazing. It feels like I’m on top of the world. My mind is buzzing. I mean, it literally is. Right now. I can halt the world if I want and do it all. Fergalicious is playing in the background. I’m vibrating. I mean, not really. But the world is what I feel. It’s all coming at me at once. And it’s all at my fingertips.

It’s a humbling sensation. The rush. It reminds me that I do in fact feel. And I feel beautiful things. This is the upswing. Sometimes I think it’s manic. But then I realize all I’ve done is cross the midpoint of my race. Pick up the pace, switch the playlist, feel each step on the concrete sidewalk, imagine each car driving by you is your audience, and fucking run.

This is the day to day. The ideas bustling from right brain to left brain and back to right brain, my mind to my fingertips to the tweet I’m about to share, my foot tapping to the speed of each and every raw thought. Maybe it is a little manic... and god it feels so good.

The small price I pay is a slow and conscious drowning under the pressure of life. But I know this. It’s almost conscious. I wrestled with my mind for the past however many days. Rematch. Win. Get greedy. Rematch. Win. Win. Rematch. Lose. Lose. Lose. Rematch. Lose. Lose. Lose. Lose. Now shut the fuck up and get back to work.

My reflection staring back at me, slowly repeating its deep breaths. My eyes are darting all over. My head is pounding. He offers his hand. “Just hold on.”

It flashes and I’m back on two feet. My heart is beating fast, but not too fast. I’m in one piece and conscious. Suddenly, my watch vibrates: “reminder: review lung physiology equations stupid.” The rest of the memory is gone. Fergalicious is still playing, but now it’s in the back of my mind. My mind is buzzing, but just a little this time. I’m energized. I can feel the cortisol is flowing through my veins, ever so slightly. I’m back.

I’m back. Another chapter begins. “Now go and get your shit done” I write on the white board.

dozes off

“Are you listening to me?”

God, that fucking question hits me across the face every time I hear it. Was I listening? I don’t remember. But now that you’ve reminded me of my inability to focus on your unexciting words, I have now failed to listen to you AND lost all desire to ask you to repeat yourself.

Should I ask them to repeat? I’d like to, but then they’d think I actually wasn’t listening… which I wasn’t, but it wasn’t intentional! Whatever. I’ll just add it to the cvs receipt long list of shit I have to remember to do later. And maybe it will take me more time because I have no idea what they were asking me to do, but I have a stick up my ass and don’t need to let others know that I am as absent minded as I actually am.

In my ideal world, I’d have my very own pause, rewind, replay, fast forward, and skip 10 seconds forward buttons. I can’t help it that I’ve relegated hundreds of topics to the storage closet of my mind, only to accidentally stumble across it all at the most inconvenient of times.

Yes, I’m actively fighting my mind to stay focused. But there is literally an infinite number of more exciting things happening elsewhere right now.

You heard me right? RIGHT NOW there are enthralling conversations waiting to be eavesdropped on, politicians doing literally the opposite of what they were hired to do, natural disasters uprooting the lives of thousands of people, a new doughnut shop opening down the road and I saw them post something on instagram and I want to try it, and also I’m incredibly frustrated that instagram updated their app and ….

Pause. Rewind. Play.

Okay. So it’s not easy to stay focused when all I crave is the next most exciting thing. And the whole “in it for the long haul” thing is a joke. Like what does that even mean. Four years to complete this degree, four weeks waiting for that plant to grow, four hours to clean my apartment. NO! No.

Ugh. Adulthood. Numbness to everything in the world that sucks. Everything that’s more worth my attention because it’s enraging and everything that’s more worth my attention because it’s new and shiny.

It starts somewhere with reminding myself that nothing good comes quickly, citing a million examples of where that’s not true, and then pausing, rewinding, and playing. Remember the time you did invest and wait? Yeah. That happiness. That’s what you want right? All you gotta do is focus. Now focus on the conversation you’re having before they realize you’ve drifted off again.

forgets to love oneself

Ok so you’re over him NOW. Now. Ok. Are you? Did you resolve that shit? Ok so why not. What’s keeping you there?

To love oneself in 2020 is an act of defiance - a middle finger to the productivity focused society your ADHD brain has fallen prey to. And good for you, you love defiance! It’s exciting. It brings you that feeling you crave. So why is it so hard to do?

Maybe it’s the lack of time. I mean, it’s probably mostly the lack of time. But maybe it’s because of a lack of introspection. So you’ve figured out that you were the problem. So now grow from it lol. You don’t get to love yourself right now. Not until you fix what you did. The friend you lashed out at. The lover you took advantage of. The colleague you offended. No I mean it. Literally do it. It’s gonna suck. And once you do it, you’ll have so little energy, you’ll forget to do anything for yourself.

Self care is a joke. I tell the internet my self care is impulse ordering food on uber eats even though my fridge is full. But that’s not self care, is it? The ADHD mind has convinced itself that it is though. I mean, I feel something! And it feels good! This must be what loving oneself is like, right? Anyways, you’re on a time crunch. You have more things to do. Study for that exam, reply to that email, send that friend that text… I mean you can love yourself by checking those things off your to do list.

I’ve been practicing it recently. Just not giving a fuck. And not the kind that comes after you’re exhausted. But just, reflecting and vibing. And no - not in the meme way. In the “wow I can just, think about stuff, and come up with a plan to stop things from spiraling out, before they spiral out.” My mind is busy racing all the time. But obliging oneself to some self reflection time every night is humbling and beautiful. The mind is busy, the pen is pumping out the thoughts, and the paper is filtering out the dumb shit from the valid self roasts.

Oooooooh. That feels good. Yeah. I fucking do this really hurtful thing to others when I forget to pause and think about my racing thoughts from their perspective - let’s work on that. I make myself miserable when I let all the chores around the house pile up and maybe I’d wake up a little easier if I didn’t have to stress about them in the morning - let’s work on that. I haven’t just paused to breathe in what’s happening right now for a while - let’s work on that.

Call that self care for the ADHD mind. Caring for the thoughts. Caring for the mind. And not the dumb instagram post shared on everyone’s instagram “caring for the mind,” but the wow take a deep breath and think slowly “caring for the mind.”

not a thought in the world

Sometimes it’s so easy to care about literally nothing. Other times, notably the times I need to slow down the most, thinking about nothing seems to be the most difficult thing to do.

There’s always so much going on in my mind. It’s a storybook with tales from a hundred lives, a hundred loves, and a hundred impulses. The hike in Peru, the unfolded clothes in the corner of my room, the ethics behind riding a camel, the iced coffee that I inhaled earlier, the doctors appointment I never scheduled, the flickering sign in Morocco… So many things. So many fucking things.

The anxiety comes with the ADHD. They hold each other, hand in hand. Often one stepping one foot ahead of the other. The other stumbling over its lead.

Too many thoughts. Worry about this, make sure that’s perfect. Ok. It’s almost there. Just kidding, it failed. Do it all over again. Or collapse. Try again after you rest. And then when you get to worried you’re forgetting something else, you’ll fuck it up and try it again. “Good luck” - the rapid thoughts say to the endless worries.

Once you finally get it all under control. It’ll feel easy. It will be refreshing. You’ll feel new. Just don’t slip up this time again. But you know you will anyways. Just be more graceful and think about those that you love, the next time to come crashing down.

chapter 4 - the regular pains

A perfectionist by trauma, not by trade, I’m constantly measuring myself by the standards of others. Did you finish enough work? Did you give others love in the right way? Did you present yourself in a way that tarnished how those around you see you? It’s easy not to measure up.

The ADHD mind is undoubtedly great at facilitating distraction and disproportionately intense emotion. However there exists a more subtle, and often painfully aggressive string of weapons in its wheelhouse… This isn’t the experience of complete collapse from exhaustion, or even dissociation from the things I love following intense workload. It’s something different.

It’s the little things. The day to day challenges. Some of them are benign. I mean, most of the things are benign. But they nevertheless hold my mind ransom while I work relentlessly to meet the expectations I set for myself when I wasn’t crippled by some arbitrary thought. These are the things I worry about when I wake up in the morning, and reflect on when I lie in bed waiting to fall asleep.

forget something?

“You didn’t forget them did you? Holy shit dude you went back inside 4 times before we left and only now are you realizing that you fucking left them?”

Some variation of that string of words. It rings in my fucking ears. Like always. When I’m almost done with something and ready to start something else. When I’m getting ready in the morning. When I’m moving between place to place. And to clarify, when you live the way I do, that means about 20 times a day.

I wish I’d stop forgetting things. It sure would save me a shit ton of time (like seriously, a fuck ton of time). But then I’d remember less of the things I forgot from before. To send that friend the address of that cute coffee shop that they asked for last week. That I told myself I I needed to fill gas before the weekend and it IS before the weekend now. Or maybe to read that article I was emailed a month ago from that professor that thinks I have the executive planning skills to not need a reminder until I see “meeting with XYZ” on my calendar. Or I could even reminisce on how horribly painful the last “fling” I had was. Or I don’t know. Something.

Fuck it. I’ll just get the fucking phrase tattooed on my wrist. I always look there because I’m constantly aware of my weird tan line that doesn’t look anything like that of my more visibly Arab sister or mother. And I’ll get it in arabic so that I don’t get any weird questions from my colleagues who will realize I am pathologically forgetful and crack a joke about it or expect me to be less intelligent because I can’t remember the 10 unrelated symptoms of arthralgia that they fucking listed off to me without writing them down.

Whatever. I forget less things now. I can’t complain.

taps constantly

*tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap*

“You’re shaking the table. Can you please stop?”

My eyes pivot down toward my thigh, back to the plants hanging on the walls, and back to my thigh. I’m looking to see what else was shaking. Was it just the table? Or was it like… more. Ok. Good. It was just the table. Or was that plant shaking from the vibrations of my leg? Fuck. Ok. I’ll stop. Just stop.

I hold my thigh and smile at my friend. “Sorry I got it! I didn’t knock anything over, did I?”

I’ll go running later. I’m tense. I can feel it. Maybe I should just get up and go running now. Yeah. I’ll go running now. I can think of the millions of things that are darting around my mind while I’m on my run, and then when I come back, I’ll be a bit more calm and can reply to these stupid emails in peace. Or in stasis. Or whatever.

exists in flux

Things have been a lot. I mean. I guess it always feels like that. Yeah. It’s actually no different now than it was before. Everything is always moving. Why is that? When I’m stuck in place, the world is rushing by me so fast I can barely read about it from my little cubicle in the library. And then when I’m on the move, I can’t seem to find anything that is static the way I once was. Or maybe I can and I just choose chaos.

My friends say I bring with me chaos wherever I go. I blame the ADHD. They also blame the ADHD. There’s just always so much going on everywhere. And like, why in the world would I want to stop experiencing it? The happy, the sad, the excitement, the boredom, the pain, the passion, like what the fuck... no way! I loathe the idea of feeling the same thing every day.

Maybe that’s why I hurt so much sometimes. Why do I jump in head first from the cliff without looking back. I guess it would behove me to reflect. But I just want to do what feels good now. It’s hard wired in my brain. And the only long term investment I want to make is the one that brings me immediate stability. Like graduate school. I can do that. But the iced coffee? Now. All 10 episodes of the netflix series? Now. The random thought about that guy that I’ve created an image in my mind about? Now. Now now now.

And if I don’t do it now, then it will come back to hold me by the throat later, when I’ve lost control of my critical thinking skills and impulsivity has taken over. I’m still in one piece though. Just kind of emotionally, physically, and mentally fucked up. But I’m good I guess.

Just smile so they don’t realize that in the back of your mind, behind your “mhms” and your “oh shits!,” that you’re trying to calculate the utility of every distraction that will come your way in the next 10 minutes.

a series in process... chapters to come (?)