When I was very little I would get frustrated and ornery when around other people, especially when there was a lot of talking and "stuff" going on around me. I would begin to cry and throw fits. My mother would put me in my crib and when she would shut the door, I would be content. She says she would peek in and I'd just be laying or sitting quietly, playing with my fingers, toes, or my blanket.
I was very quick when it came to reading and writing. I could read short, simple books before entering Kindergarden and my comprehension was very high; however, MATH was a whole other story. I struggled in math. I struggled with anything that required me to see things in a "logical" way and certain kinds of teaching methods did not "gel" with my way of learning. I learned to hyper-focus. Hyper-focusing is when you focus ALL of your attention on one thing and exclude all else. I know that if I hadn't developed that particular coping skill, I would not have made it through school with decent grades. I excelled in grades, which is not typical of an ADDer, though most ADDers are smarter than the average "Joe".
I was often the last to get the joke, the last to be picked on a team for sports (I would daydream and not see the ball coming at me until it was too late....), I would "space out" when people were speaking to me, and earned the reputation of "air-head", "spacegirl", and "dumb blonde".
My mouth frequently gets ahead of my brain. I guess you could say my BRAIN frequently gets ahead of my brain.
When someone tosses an idea at me, many different scenarios go through my mind and it takes a while to sift through them and find the connectors. I have some great ideas. The problem is that I have so MANY of them that I come off, well, scattered!
I'm highly disorganized and I forget things at the drop of a hat. I'm constantly misplacing my purse, my keys..... I have locked my keys in my car numerous times and left my purse at restaurants, stores, on the top of my car...... I learned from my psychologist that this is due to memory interference. Something distracts me and those other things are... POOF... gone. I forget things and events that are very important to me and sometimes others feel I just don't care, because logically, if you care, you remember, right? Not always so.
The difficulty I have in dealing with the outside world developed into anxiety. I always had a fear of looking "stupid" and have been known to avoid social situations where the possibility of looking "stupid" might come up. Eventually, the anxiety became much worse and I was diagnosed "borderline agoraphobic" along with having attention deficit disorder.
I still struggle some with anxiety, but knowing what is "wrong" with me has helped me to understand myself better and I'm learning new coping skills every day. I placed "wrong" in quotation marks because I have a bone to pick with that.
There are so many of us out there in the world that it seems silly to believe that we all have something "wrong" with us. We are DIFFERENT. We learn differently, we do things differently, and the way society generally works is DIFFERENT than the way our minds work. Being different does not mean we have something wrong with us. It means we have to do/think things through in our own way. Granted, it makes it difficult, but we can do it, just give us some time. You may be surprised at how much we ADDers have to offer the world.
So.... for all you people who have felt ignored by me, I apologize. I do not intend to "ignore". I really can't always help when my mind drifts off. I will try to do my best to be here and in the present time, but when I'm not, I am not trying to insult you and I am not trying to be flippant.
My hope is that when non-ADDers read my story and that of my son they will get a new perspective and hopefully understand the ADDers in their lives a little better and when ADDers read the stories, they will know they are NOT alone, they are NOT "crazy, lazy, or stupid", and that there are ways of dealing with it.