I Wanna Be Impulsive...Reckless

So I am a bit competitive, in general. So you can imagine my joy when my formal assessment of ADHD status came back and I'm not just kind of ADHD. I am wicked ADHD.

I kind of knew before going in that I was likely to be diagnosed that way. The whole conversation started about 3 months ago and I dragged my heels on getting assessed. But as soon as I started down that road, I started reading up on indicative behaviors and it was like reading a report on who I am. Things I thought were just part of the joy and pain that is me, turn out to be ADHD stuff.

I'm relieved. It all kind of makes sense now. The things that used to confuse me (why do I blurt out stupid stuff all the time? why do I have such bad insomnia? why do people regularly accuse me of not caring about them as much as they care about me?) now seem to all kind of fit together. And it doesn't excuse anything - just because I've learned this doesn't mean that I've never been selfish (I have) or that I can't control the endless chatter thing (I try). But it does sort of frame it for me.

Maybe I am not a total jerk because I do stuff impulsively and unintentionally trample other people. Especially since I always feel horrible about it afterwards. And I mean really horrible. I still carry around guilt about stuff I did 20 years ago, despite being a good wife, solid mother, and a decent friend.

So then the bad news is this. Why didn't I know? What's worse is that since I've been talking about it, I've heard from multiple people that they thought I knew I had it and that I'd made a decision not to medicate. Now, I may or may not medicate and that's a whole separate story. But I guess I am just surprised that so many people saw it clearly. And that even though an old boss told me about it in 1994, I dismissed it. Boys have ADHD, not girls. And besides, I am not hyper. I just talk a lot. Which I just have to focus on not doing. And everything will be fine.

Here's the biggest problem these days. My ADHD diagnosis is becoming a distraction in itself. I'm thinking I should just Tweet about it and feed the blog that way. 140 characters, I can do. A whole well thought out blog post? Now that is a challenge.

P.S. I do love Wilson Phillips.