Re: They DO NOT GET IT….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

I was really shocked, when I was diagnosed at age 58, to find that the buzzing cloud of questions I’ve asked or problems I’ve dealt with in my life had a SINGLE answer/cause! I’d long ago accepted that I’d always find people’s behaviour odd and their thinking, slow — and that people would find my behaviour odd and my thinking inexplicable. The house-of-cards reasons I’ve found and theories I’d developed to account for these things suddenly collapsed into a single, quasi-logical deck!

That’s freaky, but good.

But when I tried to tell my brothers and nieces about it, dinner conversation came to an uncomfortable halt, then hurried off in some direction that was *other*. Opinions drifted back through the grapevine to the effect of “She’s talked herself into not being able to work anymore.” (Oh, I can work just fine — I just can’t NOT get fired!) And I tried to tell my nieces to watch out for symptoms in their own young children — that, if ADHD was present, it could be caught early and affect the kids’ lives sooooo much less.

You could’ve made ice cubes in that room, it got cold so suddenly!

One brother I was once very close to hasn’t spoken to me in about five years. His complaints about me? Well, that I’m lazy, self-centered, don’t listen well, don’t follow through on promises, procrastinate, forget family birthdays, ask for help with crises that I could easily have avoided if I’d just been more organized . . . you’re probably familiar with the whole list. I wish I could tell him that these faults — which I’ve always been aware of, and always worked hard (if rather unsuccessfully) to overcome — are all a part of my ADD. But he’s fed up with me and has entirely stopped listening.

They don’t get it, and possibly never will. I would LOVE to have the support of my family these days, but I just can’t expect it. It’s a lonely feeling.

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