At 19, I asked my best friend why can't adults have ADD/ADHD? People had just started using Ritalin for their kids. Obviously, ADD or ADHD couldn't be a new phenomena so there must have been kids when we were growing up who also were affected by this. We wondered if at a certain point you just grew out of it. Think of all the children subjected to corporal punishment in school when they weren't being naughty, they were suffering from lack of focus.
Low and behold, the other day on television there was a commercial for a drug to help adults who suffered from ADD/ADHD. Crud, I should have followed up on that 30 years ago; I'd be rich! Now that I'm 50, I don't want to go to the doctor for this. Number one, I've survived 50 years, so what's another 30 or so more to put up with this? Also, people our age are at that point we have become inundated with pills.
Do I have ADD or ADHD? Do I have ADD or ADHD? Oh wait, I just said that. One thing should have clued me in years ago. It was between whether to be a missionary or a go-go dancer when I grew up. My interests have never been on one particular thing. Signed up for cake decorating at 25, ice skating lessons at age 30, returned to college at night to finish my degree in my 40's still not knowing what it is I wanted to be when I grew up. Other attempts have been dance class, scuba diving, photography, ASL American Sign Language and the list goes on.
All this time I have been attributing my distractions to getting older, but I just turned 50 and this has gone on since as long as I can remember. It is very exhausting to be thinking in so many directions at once. It's one thing to multi-task and another to run yourself ragged retracing your steps all day to make sure you didn't forget to do anything. You're ready for work, you get in the car. Oops, forgot the lunch. Back in the house, but where are the keys? You just had them. How can you lose keys when you just went from the door to the car? Oh my gosh, you took out the garbage to the curb. There they are in the top of the recycling bin. You snatch them up before the truck that's coming down the street reaches your house. And so starts your day.
It could be I'm just starting to slow down, but I prefer to pin it on a disease. As Kathy Bates said in Fried Green Tomatoes, " I'm too old to be young and too young to be old."
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