When you’re used to the way you are, you can’t help but think of yourself as normal. Growing up, I thought I was just a chatterbox. Back when the word “chatterbox” was commonly used as a way to describe a person. I was a sensitive kid. I loved hugs & I cried when mildly inconvenienced. I spoke to strangers and just wouldn’t shut up. It wasn’t until someone called me an annoying bitch that I was devastated and stopped talking for a while.
Personality, that’s all I thought I had. I was a cry baby. I was an ex-chatterbox, possibly social butterfly. I loved moving around, never satisfied with just my own projects, but with everyone elses too. I tutored, I was an office aid, teachers aid, library aid. I was part of ASB (Associated Student Body; I.E. student council). I was the kid who was told I was gifted in elementary school and placed in honors in middle school & high school. That’s all screaming success, no???
I’ve been through countless traumatic moments, collected PTSD. It took a while for me to admit that. Depression & Anxiety were concepts I had to learn and understand and grow comfortable with in my early 20’s. I was asked if I had ADHD by people in high school, but ofc I didn’t understand that. I just thought “Of course I can sit still to read a book?”.
I started suspecting I had ADHD last year, and we love irony, so of course I procrastinated seeing a doctor. Of course it took me 2 years to get bloodwork done. Of course I was stalling to find out if I had ADHD, because I felt too guilty and bad about not having done the bloodwork yet. My husband kept telling me “I don’t get it, all these things are just normal” and I mused that maybe he had it, too. I think that was a hard pill to swallow right away. There was some dismission and maybe the longer it sat with him & the more he studied on ADHD for me, he started to learn that maybe he had it, too.
It wasn’t until he decided to take the test for himself to find out, because things started to click for him more. That I decided this was important to figure out. Of course, I had doubts of having it myself, because what are the chances that two people with ADHD both have undiagnosed ADHD together & married. Ha! As if chance has anything to do with it. As if I can’t have ADHD, if he has it. Silliness aside, I started to accept all over again that we might have it. So it became important to get tested.
Low & behold, we both passed the ADHD diagnosis. If passing means, we have it. Not to brag, but I totally aced it.
We got our medication almost immediately & by this point we were excited to start it. There were obvious fears before, but we had time to research and talk amongst ourselves. Talk about our feelings. The idea of “the voices are quieted” just made zero sense. Maybe I could understand it a little when high, but being high felt more like I was slowed, numbed.
Everything made more sense after taking the magic blue pill. I can see my own behavior. I can understand how my body wasn’t making enough dopamine or whatever. I felt like I was always in the negatives, on the pill, I’m on a nice +1. I’ve come up with so many silly metaphors to explain how I feel.
- It feels like I’m a clock. Normally there is no face, just the hour hand & minute hand revealing all the mechanisms ticking behind it to make it function. But with the pill, I feel like a normally clock, no longer distracted by the mechanisms.
- I feel like my house finally has walls. Before every room was smashed together. The fridge next to the tv, the bed next to the toilet, everything was visible all at once. Now I finally have peace and the walls are up & I finally have privacy from those thoughts.
- It’s just automatic dopamines now, before I was manually getting my own dopamines. It was actual work to maintain my life before, while also looking for how to give my brain happiness.
That last one, isn’t really a metaphor, but I can feel the reward system. I had NOTHING to make me happy, only me trying to find that all the time. With a song, with a new show, with video games, from a book, with a drawing, from food, from pressing a button to online shop. Anything that gave me a dopamine was used and obsessively abused until it no longer could give me that easy dopamine I so needed. I wasn’t getting enough of it, so my sole dopamines felt like my only 100% in a world of 0, even just negative. No wonder apples felt like mini mouth orgasms. No wonder other people couldn’t understand just how precious these things felt to me. They were my only rewards of happiness for such short bursts. I didn’t realise how out to sea I was, how much I was on a life raft & stranded.
Now on this medication, everything is normalized. I can still feel that reward, but it’s not my life line. I can eat an apple and it’s not the most delicious thing I’ve ever had the privilege of eating. It’s an apple, it’s still tasty, but I’m happy & content just naturally without having to earn my own happiness. I’m not being heavily rewarded, nor am I being heavily punished. My god do things feel punishing. Sour foods don’t reward my brain, in fact they make me recoil. It’s the opposite of a reward. It hurts! I’m sure people thought I was overexaggerating when I didn’t like a food. I’m being too picky. With this medication, I can suddenly eat foods that were punishing and they’re okay? If it’s healthy, fantastic!
I won’t lie, it’s also frustrating. Feeling ‘normal’, but then feeling it suddenly disappear and I’m left back in a barren waste land. I was just floating on a cloud that I never thought I would be able to reach ever in my life, and suddenly I’m kicked off the cloud, back in my pit that I’ve struggled in. I care a lot about personal growth, mental health. I want to do better for myself. I love my fellow man, I want to love and be loved. I want to care. I cannot help others if I cannot help myself first. Loving yourself is important. All this effort and struggle for normalcy. For having better habits. For having a better life. For feeling happy. I even tried to make my peace with being okay with where I am with myself. Maybe life isn’t ever really the happiness we think it is. Maybe life is just bleak, and the small moments of joy are all we get. & Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it has to be enough. Otherwise you’ll just drive yourself into depression. But this pill makes all those thoughts and struggles stop. Being happy is so easy.
I know I have a good life. I know I lived a fun & happy life despite all the traumas that involved people. Despite that, I did my best. I’m proud of myself for it. I married my best friend. We have a house. Honestly, it’s a dream house in the making. We have our dogs. We’re happy together. On paper, we’re so fucking happy together. To everyone it’s so obvious. But how can that feel not enough or not come through with all this depression??? I’m on a pill & I’m just happy. That is everything. I can finally feel what I’ve wanted this whole time. I can see my life clearer, it’s going pretty well now. I still struggle, because of my brain. Of course, I’m angry about it. Of course, I’m depressed about it. Was all that struggling and effort pointless? I would never have reached the state I wanted to be in without this pill. My body came with a missing patch, and now to fix that I have to pay a subscription dlc for the fix.
I feel like I’m going through the stages of grief as I learn to accept my disability, as I learn to accept myself, & as I learn to accept this updated version of myself who I now have to relearn. It’s weird to say I have to re-learn who I am. I have mixed feelings continueing on this pill. It’s frustrating. Admittedly, it hasn’t been even a week on this pill yet. I hope for feelings to pass, to reach the stages of acceptance on all fronts. But damn am I angry that a little pill is giving me a boost I never knew I lacked or needed. Fuck biology.