The effect my first ADHD support group meeting had on my was profound. When I attended the meeting, I was, for the first time in my life, really and truly validated. For the first time, I was not different from the people around me. I wasn't on a wavelength that was utterly foreign to them, or talking too fast, or picking topics that were too vaguely connected for my words to be followed. I was in a room full of people on exactly the same wavelength I operate on. I was able to glance to my left, see a man messing around with a miniature rubber chicken, catch his eye, and know that he basically knew what my thought process was—because he was able to catch up. In the seconds between when I caught his eye and when I started laughing, he figured out what I thought was so funny! (And it certainly seemed to amuse him, too.)
So yes. I felt validated for the first time in my life because in that room, people who think like me were the majority. You know what the kicker is? I didn't know I had any feelings of inferiority or isolation because I have ADHD until I got home, went to wash my hands, and ended up crying.
I think that's actually the first time in my life I've cried anything close to tears of joy. I felt so relieved. I finally knew that the way I think wasn't abnormal—because I never knew whether my mind was like that because of ADHD, or if I was just a freak. Events in the last three years had caused me to lean unconsciously towards the 'freak' answer.
But guess what? I'm not a freak. I'm not the only person in the world—I'm not the only person in my neighborhood!—that will stand up to go do something, get to where I was going (or not even that far) and have no clue why I got up beyond the fact that I was going to do something. To be so clueless, in fact, that I have to go back, sit or stand exactly where I was and look at exactly what I was looking at and try to think exactly what I was thinking before I remember what I had intended to do!! I'm not.
I'm also not the only one who tends to eat sugar before bed just for the sugar crash. I'm definitely not the only one who wakes up in the middle of the night because, as I was indirectly told at the meeting, the sugar crash that made me sleep had come to an end. One of the great mysteries of my life (literally. No, really, I'm not joking) solved just by listening to three people talking about self-medicating with candy bars.
I'm not the only one who will think of something and get so obsessive over it that nothing else (not even, really, eating or sleeping) is anywhere near as important.
I'm not the only one who has a hard time remembering to call people when I don't have anything in particular to say to them. Not the only one to realize that when said people show up at my door asking if I'm mad at them because I didn't call/text/e-mail/tweet/facebook/what-freaking-ever them that the friendship is probably not such a good idea.
So you know what? If you're reading this and ADHD, or depressed, or god forbid both, like I am, then I in all sincerity urge you to find a support group for whatever your 'problem' or 'condition' is. Joining one doesn't mean you're weak, or screwed up in the head, or a freak. It just means that you can recognize the fact that support would be beneficial.
On another note, this is probably much more like what the rest of my posts will be like for the next few weeks, until I really get a good idea of what I want to say/do.
Ja na!
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