ADD--My Oldest Friend

I've never been calm. I've never had a quiet mind. My mind has always been restless, and so has my body. I need white noise or some other humming noise to fall asleep, I have vivid dreams, and I wake up with my mind "on." Though reading and writing are part of my very being, I have a certain type of difficulty when it comes to both. I am a slow reader, not because I have a problem with comprehension or with understanding the words on the page, but because I love words so much, I tend to go off on tangents of various kinds when reading.

If a piece is well written, I'll read certain passages--even phrases and words--over and over, to savor them. If I fall in love with a word, phrase, or adage, I'll look it up and, before I know it, I'm researching the etymology. When--and if--I go back to the original passage, I'm in a different "place" and, unless what I'd been reading is so compelling that it pulls me back in, I find that I have to put that particular book or article down and go onto something else: the moment is gone.

I especially have difficulty with fiction. I am fine with short stories, poetry, and plays. It's the novels that are difficult, though I've read many--likely hundreds. If a book is slow-moving, though, I'm done. I cannot read under duress, and I just don't have the patience to hold on until the train picks up speed. I may jump around and, like a three-year-old trying not to open her presents before Christmas morning, I have to consciously tell myself not to look at the ending. More often than not, I do, and once I know the ending, unless the writing is phenomenal, I will skim through parts rather than read every word.

When it comes to nonfiction, my M.O. is to start with the index and look up all the people, places, and things I'm interested in. Once I've done that, I read the parts that seem interesting. Then I go through the rest of the book. I eventually read everything--I just do it in an ass-backwards way. And books with no indexes are the bane of my existence. If I'm in a bookstore and flip to the back of a book I'm interested in and there's no index, my attitude is "No index, no customer!" Unless it's something I'm dying to read, I won't buy it. I know--totally immature.

But it's also, as I've discovered just in the past two or three years, classic: a classic sign of ADD. Though I haven't been formally diagnosed, there's no doubt that I have ADD. I've taken several ADD assesments, and in every one of them, I scored well above the "blank and above" indicator for ADD. On one test, a score of 70 or above indicated ADD. I scored a 91. Terry Danko told me that means I have "ADDD."

I think he may be right. As my family physician has told me--more than once--I'm a "textbook case" of adult ADD. The last time she told me this (she's not very subtle) was recently, when I missed an appointment because I lost the notebook--the one I bought so I could keep track of things like appointments instead of forgetting them--in which I wrote the time and date. I'm sure that notebook is somewhere among the scores of half-filled notebooks in the notebook graveyard in my office.

I lose things constantly--not just incidentals, but big things, expensive things, important things, priceless things. I can't tell you how many times I've lost my engagement ring. I've lost my birth certificate, my social security card, my car keys, mortgage statements. I even lost my Mother's locket--which was and is so precious to me. Thankfully, I've found all of these things, but losing and misplacing important things is extremely frustrating and disheartening. It also makes me feel guilty though, try as I may, I can't seem to change it. My husband helps me tremendously by reminding me of things and by being exceptionally organized himself. Before I met Michael, my car problems were like something out of the Keystone Kops. I probably ran out of gas and either had to be towed or had to call a friend to bail me out by bringing gas two or three times a year--which is a lot, since it happens to most people once in a lifetime, if ever. Michael told me that he never knew there was an "empty gas tank" icon on cars until he met me!

Is it because I am careless? Reckless? An adamant "no" to both. I consider myself a perfectionist and try to be meticulous in everything I do. Usually, I succeed. It's just that it takes more effort--or at least a different kind of effort--for me than it does for someone who doesn't have ADD.

Luckily, I have another classic sign of ADD, and this has helped me more than I can say, as a writer, editor, and publicist: I have the ability to hyper-focus for long periods of time without getting tired or daunted. That means, I can edit, search for just the right word, make lots of media calls, and stay on task until a project is done--or until a particular part of a project is done. Or until I get restless again.

My restlessness is not limited to reading, writing, and keeping track of things. I have always been physically restless, too. If I stay in one place too long--and by place, I don't mean city or even neighborhood, I mean room, chair, or desk--I get antsy and sometimes even irritable. Snowstorms--forget it. Just the idea of knowing that I am "stuck"--even if I had no plans to go out--is enough to send me into a panic attack.

My mind wanders the moment there is a lull in conversation or activity and I am easily bored. I can tune out entire conversations when they bore me and know (usually), just by some innate sense of rhythm, when to "zone back in" so as not to offend the speaker. Afterward, of course, I avoid that person like the plague :-)

Then there's structure. While self-imposed structure is great--even necessary--for me, particularly when deadlines are looming or when I have a goal that I'm working toward, it's external structure that is sometimes hard to handle, depending on the form it takes. Some types of physical structure are welcome. I realize that part of my love for cities has to do with the fact that they are structured and grid-like and generally easy to navigate. But give me a black country road and I freeze. Having lived in a semi-rural environment for nearly a decade and a half, I don't panic the way I once did~as long as there is a streetlight or signpost somewhere.

The structure that is hard for me to take physically has to do with being--or feeling--closed in. From closed-up rooms with no ventilation to offices without windows to boxed-off workspaces to turtleneck sweaters to hats and hoods to neck scarves and chokers, that kind of "structure" and I do not mix. I am a free spirit--always have been, and that means physically, too. I can't remember the last time I had a pair of shoes on my feet for more than thirty seconds after stepping inside the house.

ADD is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a way of thinking and doing things. Lots of my heroes, including Rick, had or have ADD. I interviewed Tom Paxton just yesterday and found out that he, too, has it. It can be very conducive to creativity and productivity of certain kinds but, unless and until you realize you have it and adapt accordingly, it can cause depression--because you think you're just "scatterbrained," when that's not always the case. I've taken many steps to adapt. And at least I'm in good company.