My name
is Denyse and I have ADHD. Which is probably pretty evident if you’ve even met
me for 30 seconds. If not, just read any post and you’ll get it in under 3
sentences. ;) And yes. I’m weird. I talk weird. I act weird. I look weird. I
believe weird things. AND I do reaaaaallly weird things. Sometimes inappropriate
and sometimes, “what the..??’ I know. I’ve
been told it all and for a long time I believed that was a bad thing to be. That’s
what I was being told anyway. But here’s the thing; as it turns out weird is a
really spectacular thing to be. It’s joyful and funny and dynamic.
Yeah, I
walk into rooms about every 30 minutes forgetting why I’m there. Then I have to
walk back into the last room to reconstruct what I was originally thinking that
GOT me in that room. It happens so much that sometimes I want to stick myself
in the eye with a fork. The other day, I kept losing pairs of glasses I was
using. I couldn’t figure out where I was forgetting them! Until I touched my
head and found three pairs up there. I had that, “ugh” moment and then just laughed
my ass off. That’s the part where funny comes in. Because really you could just
stay frustrated n miserable or you could laugh at yourself because it’s utterly
ludicrious. I like laughing way more.
And yes,
some of the things I do are very strange. In my house, bananas are phones.
Unfortunately because my DNA is at play in my children, you will likely have to
answer a banana just about anywhere. Last year, it was in the car. We were
driving a friend home from school. My eldest had a banana and said it was for
me and then stuck it in my ear because it’ll illegal to talk on the phone and
drive at the same time. *sigh* I can’t let stuff like that go by. That’s a
smackdown. I'm a single Mom. If they win on even ONE smackdown…you are screwed! So I took the
glob of banana out of my ear and mashed it all over her head and chest. :D To my chagrin, I’d given everyone bananas for snack (there were a total of 7 weapons!) and thus the Great Banana War
broke out inside the car. We arrived at the friends house covered in mashed
banana. Our friend just stood there with wide eyes of disbelief and confusion. So
yeah, ok, a good word here might be “unorthodox.” But you know what? I can see
the joy on my kids’ faces when they retell the story. There are SOOO many
stories that are off the charts that they belly laugh when they remember. I don’t
see a downside to that.
So ok, my
brain wasn’t designed to do the simple, basic things other brains accomplish
without so much as a thought. No. My brain was designed uniquely by ADHD to
serve a purpose. And here is where the joyful part comes in; I
wouldn’t be able to paint if I didn’t have ADHD. I can’t focus a damn on
inconsequential details but I can hyper focus over a piece of paper and get so
lost that I forget to eat. My brain is lacking an emotional filter too. Sounds
like a bad thing but actually, it allows me to love other people all the way to
my toes just like a little kid. Because I act on a lot of my emotional impulses,
the people I care about know without a doubt that they are truly
loved.
And if
you look at any painting you will see the world through the lens of ADHD. That
really IS the world through my eyes. I’ve seen your world on TV. It’s way different
from mine. Things are bright and busy, detailed yet disgustingly simple. Shapes
are organic because life is constantly moving with a rhythm. But the important part is
what you see in total; happy. It’s a lovely place to be. It’s gratifying when
you’ve spent your life on a pilgrimage to anywhere "better" and wind up at HAPPY. It's like climbing Mount Everest or running the Boston Marathon.
The funny
part about happy is that when you get there, you look around to find out if
others made it with you and who they are. What’s sad is that there aren’t as
many as you’d hoped. And it’s a tough thing to see that because if you’ve EVER
been unhappy or in horrible pain – you never want anyone else to feel that. Ever.
And yet you know there isn’t anything you can do because no one gets you there
but you. So you stand there to cheer the others on toward the finish line
loudly. And hope they won’t give up. Yeah..being weird is a good thing. Now I
think I’ll go see if I can find a banana. I have a teenager to mess with :D
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