ADHD Journey: The Theory of Me

My friend Arwel tricked me into taking a test for ADHD, you can read about that in part one - ADHD Journey: Do you want to take a test?

Have you ever had to research something?

It's a bit of a process, isn't it? Spending hours finding the right sources, learning out how to ask the right questions and then there's the reading. Oh my god, the reading!

It's a lot. But for some reason, now that my friend Arwel has tricked me into thinking I might be ADHD, I have to do it. I'm compelled.

It's almost as if I were being driven by a motor or something.

Sometimes, in my daily life as a writer, I'll find myself researching things that I think I know a lot about and find out I'm utterly wrong. On other occasions, I'll find myself researching something that I don't think I know anything about, only to find that I understand it very well.

Researching ADHD is.... both of those things?

How do I not know this?

Apparently, ADHD is not what I think it is. The chronic annoyingness of white boys, that I'd been socialised to believe. There are multiple presentations, up to 9, definitely 3. It could be a part of literally anyone and you don't have to be a kid to be it.

Or at least you do, but it doesn't go away when you grow up and not being diagnosed with it as a kid is not the same thing as not actually being it as a kid.

And then... I started reading about what life with it can actually be like.

I didn't give permission for this biography

Some people seem to have been writing about me. How odd.

I don't know about you, but I'd never really thought myself important enough for someone to go to the trouble of writing an instruction manual for my brain.

It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm reading some clinical website or a personal blog, the whole world seems to know about my impulsivity, my procrastination, my memory, my.... ability to fully focus on exactly one thing and learn all about it in a very short time before ultimately getting bored and moving on to the next thing.

Oh, I've been at this for a week now.

I should probably eat something.

This is me then is it?

Now. Here's the thing. I've never really been a fan of labels. To me, it's data, roughly as important as the colour of my eyes or the fact that I have toenails.

Of course, there's also the very real fact that presenting the way I do is hugely advantageous and often not feeling an affinity for labels is, like... a sign of privilege.

But I understand the desire, the necessity for many, to find your tribe. Leaving Wales certainly gave me an attachment to my nationality I'd never had before. My working-class identity became similarly important.

But. I have never understood it quite like this before.

Because this... this explains everything.

Those things I care about, the things I don't care about, the things I'd never even thought about, all fit under this label of ADHD.

It's the theory of me.

A Brief History of Geraint Evans.

G=ND squared.

Have you ever had your entire life recontextualised? The founding principles of who you are and how you move through the world redefined? Explained to you. If you have, were you bloody well 34 when it happened?

I can't just say I am something, though, can I? Not about something you need doctors for. Surely not.

Time to phone the GP.

It's been two years - I hope I'm still registered.