I have ADHD and I have dreams about dead people sometimes. (Is that sentence proof enough of the ADHD?)
It’s not a self-diagnosed thing. When I was at the darkest point in my life and reached out for help, along with my other mental health diagnoses, I was diagnosed with “borderline ADHD.” By the way, I hate the word diagnosis. It sounds like you have a sickness. Really what it is, is an understanding (finally) of how and why our brains work the way they do. So let’s call it that – I got my understanding. Basically, I have it, but it isn’t to the point where I have to use medication if it isn’t debilitating. My psychiatrist tried to medicate me for it and I lasted two days. I thought my heart was going to explode. Truly, my resting heart rate was insane. I hated it.
So I chose to keep my racing thoughts instead. My body isn’t hyperactive (although I twirl my hair and pick my nails and constantly fidget somehow) but my thoughts are. A lot of things are heightened – my overstimulation, my forgetfulness, my hyper-fixations (I’ve obsessed over some wild things), my procrastination, my empathy. Good Lord, my empathy. And my ability to read energy. To read you.
I’ve always been sensitive, since I was a little bitty thing. I used to cry when my brother sprayed ant hills because I felt bad for the ants, they’d have to start all over on a new home. I liked to find worms but didn’t have the heart to put them on the hook to fish. I cried at movies if someone’s eyes looked sad, even if they were the bad guy (I still do). I preferred outside and alone time. I think I’ve always preferred being alone. Honestly even as a kid, I believe that’s because I was only responsible for me. My thoughts, my energy, no outside noise to add in. And I’ve always been able to feel people’s pain.
Their changes. Their shifts. I pick up on tiny cues and body language shifts so much so, that sometimes I feel like I can read people’s minds. Most of the time, actually.
But can I be honest?
It’s exhausting, my brain working this way. It races 24/7. Truly. I don’t sleep well because of it. My eyes will be closed for an hour and a half before I actually fall asleep because I can’t turn them off. They’re constant with no transition, sometimes several at a time somehow. I dream the whole night and wake up a lot. Then it takes me just as long to fall back asleep. I take magnesium. I diffuse lavender and frankincense. I do all the things.
But they race. They race so damn much.
I forget things a lot and I believe that racing is a big part of it. The moment I have a thought or am asked something, I get immediately side-tracked by my other thoughts.
If my husband asks me to turn on the oven while he’s on his way home with a frozen pizza, I’ll forget within seconds (he’s a patient, patient man) because I have four other thoughts going about other things I need to do. It starts a domino effect that’ll somehow land on the stray animal I saw on the side of the road the other day about to cross. I hope he’s okay.
Maybe the most exhausting thing, though, is that I can read you.
Good gosh, can I read you. Sometimes I really, really wish I couldn’t.
You can look me in the eye and tell me your name and my thought five seconds later is, “What’s your name again?”
I was busy reading your face. Memorizing you. I notice your pupil size, if your smile is genuine – if it reaches enough to wrinkle the outer edge of your eyes. If your head is tilted or not. If your mouth is open or not. What part of my face you’re looking at while I talk. You just noticed my hair. Now my teeth. Now eye contact again. Micro-expressions. Quick eyebrow twitches, corner of the mouth smirks.
I can feel your genuinity. If you’re happy to talk to me or it’s just being polite. If you love me. If you’ve been gossiping about me. I know if you don’t like me. If you’re lying – I can sniff out a lie from a mile away. If you believe what you’re saying or if it’s bullshit. I won’t call you on it usually, but I’ll know. Did you know that if someone looks to their left while recalling or retelling a memory, it’s a real memory? It’s how our brain gathers the memory again. But if they look to their right, it’s not a real memory.
I know what your body language means. Your arm position, feet position, body placement. I know how you feel, if you’ve been down but you’re pretending not to be for the sake of other people’s feelings and what we need to be a social norm (please don’t ever do that with me, I’ll be a safe space for you).
Sometimes those things affect my energy toward you, even if I don’t mean for them to. I don’t want them to. I cannot hold relationships with toxic people because that energy leaks. It leaks onto me and into me and it’s too heavy to carry. I can’t, I won’t.
I can’t not feel you.
I hate it and I love it.
It always made things easy when it came to guys. I knew when they had crushes before they told me, I knew when they didn’t care about me at all, I knew if I was genuinely loved or if the nurturing was just in front of me to keep me around for a bit. Whether I always chose to listen to the differences is a different story – I mean, I was a teenager. I just wanted to feel wanted.
It made picking friends easy. I knew if you really wanted to be or not, if they were genuine or not, if they use me and keep the friendship so that they can continue to or not.
It made meeting my husband so much fun. I could see all over his face when he was falling in love with me. I can still see on his face his soft spot for me when he looks at me. I’ll ask him some days if he’s okay because his energy has shifted, and he’s learned that because I am so sensitive to tiny shifts, to reassure me that it isn’t me.
I had a slight intuition before he proposed.
I knew the morning I woke up and tested before I had Porter, that I was pregnant. I woke up holding my stomach with both hands, protecting her already, knowing about her already somehow.
About the whole dead people thing – I believe it’s because I have what I guess I could call open energy. I talk to God a lot. I tell my angels I’m open to signs and messages. I try to do things in life to raise my vibrations (there are plenty of days where I fail at that). I genuinely want to be someone who makes people happy. If you’re not okay, I can feel it, and I’ll hurt with you. Heck I’ll hurt for you if you aren’t facing it yourself yet.
Before my Grandpa passed away, I got this dark feeling that I’ll never be able to explain, but the best I can is that a heavy cloud was everywhere I went, and the anxiety felt like a warning. I’ll never forget telling my Mom, “I can’t explain this, but I feel like someone we know is about to die.” A week later, my Grandpa was gone. A tragic, freak, sudden accident that none of us saw coming.
When my Grandpa died, he delivered a message to me in my dream. One time I had a dream – the only one I’ve ever had in black and white – where a lady came to me and told me her name, saying she just wanted me to know that she and my Nana were okay. She said her name was Jean.
They’re always wildly vivid.
I asked my Grandma the next morning if we had anyone in our family named Jean. Turns out we did. My Nana’s sister. I didn’t know she existed.
And while that may make me sound like a freak, I just believe it means I’m open.
I’m open to you, too.
I won’t remember your name but I’ll remember your face. So, so clearly. I’ll remember how you felt when you talked to me, because I could see it and feel it. I’ll remember the song you said your Grandma sang to you as a kid, the meal you said you’ve been trying to perfect for the last three months, that your first memory was when you were two and you can still clearly see. I’ll remember where you said you go when you need the perfect spot to think, I’ll remember a funny sentence you said 15 years ago that I’m sure you’ve long forgotten about, and the hug you gave me with an extra squeeze.
I’ll remember the nervous face of the Mom dropping her kid off with me, skeptical, not knowing yet if she could fully trust this stranger with the biggest part of her life (trust me, I get it!).
And I’ll remember the day we’ve made so many connections, maybe she sees her kid give me a goodbye hug, and it’s written on her face that she’s relaxed, that she trusts me now (such an amazing feeling).
No words about it ever have to be exchanged.
I know you. Even if I don’t know you, I know you.
If we have ever talked, even once, I feel like I do.
I have a love and an empathy for what I feel in every human. Maybe that’s why I hate small talk. What I feel is deeper than that, and what I see in you is deeper than that. Maybe it’s why I get jittery in crowds – too much energy to soak in.
And maybe that’s why I don’t want medicine to “fix” it. Because as exhausting as it is, it feels like this wild super-power. One that maybe sometimes I could switch off when it feels too much, but I’d rather have it than not, if I had to choose.
Maybe it’s part of my purpose here, to understand people deeply. To feel bad for the ants and the worms. To get joy, such genuine joy when I sit in grass and talk to my Grandparents in my head and then see them in my dreams – to hug my Grandma again while she’s in heaven.
Maybe it’s part of my purpose to look in your eyes and know who you are. Maybe it makes me a better me. Maybe it’s why I can love you so deeply. Maybe it’s why my intuition as a Mom is insane, and never dismissed because I trust it. Maybe there’s an importance in getting to hold such vulnerability.
I trust me.
And while I wish that came with better sleep, a memory I could count on without reminder lists that I’ll probably lose, a brain that would give me a freaking break, not crying at a kid’s movie about cars, not listening to a song 167 times in a row, and the ability to shake things more quickly; all of those things add up somehow to me trusting my intuition; and I just don’t think that trusting myself is something I’d ever want to let go of.
Sometimes I remember little things but not the big things.
I may not remember your name right away, but I’ll remember you.
And I promise, my brain will never let you go.