Well. Fuck.

Friends, I’ve been putting this off for quite some time now.

And I’ve been doing that for various reasons, but mostly it’s because my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on Valentine’s Day, and despite being one of the fortunate few with an operable tumor that hadn’t yet metastasized, he died unexpectedly on Easter Sunday. And then his memorial turned into a COVID super-spreader event, patient zero being my husband.

And that is just morbidly absurd after everything else, you know?

Nonetheless, here we are.

Seven months ago, I rebooted this blog after its one-and-done premiere two years previous. I did that because a year prior to that, I learned I’ve had raging undiagnosed ADHD my entire life, and I had finally found a stimulant medication that worked for my brain chemistry after nearly a year of trials. And since one of my main life goals has long been to just fucking write already, and since it seems likely the ADHD’s been the prime hurdle in actually doing that…consistently…and since I already had this handy blog made up of one single post that just so happens to be about continuing to start over as often and as many times as you need to when confronted with inevitable life failures, it all just seemed to come together of its own accord.

Then actual life apparently decided it would offer writing inspiration by lobbing grenades.

And although I haven’t written about him here (that I remember…significant caveat), this blog and my dad now occupy a lot of shared space in my brain.

Our relationship was complicated (surprise, we were very much alike), and I recently took a break from an active relationship with both of my parents for about a year, beginning shortly before my ADHD diagnosis. We had only just begun reconnecting when I started this blog back up last fall, and I was only ready for that because, through researching ADHD, I finally realized the why behind many of the grievances I had with my parents: At this point I’m positive every single one of my family members has ADHD.

But we hadn’t yet directly addressed any of this when my dad first got sick in February. He was concurrently dealing with multiple serious complications of the cancer, which is how it was ultimately found, as is often the case for pancreatic cancer (and part of what makes it so deadly). A few weeks before he died, he was stuck in the hospital for a week with an infection and he was bored out of his mind. My dad was in his 70s but still working almost full-time as an electrical engineer; his brain’s very survival depended on a constant influx of complex problems and intriguing puzzles to solve.

So it seemed to present a good opportunity to share some of these posts with him as a way of introducing the topic (he knew of my diagnosis but never directly commented on it, per his norm). I told myself it might relieve some of his boredom, if nothing else. But I knew he would see himself in some of the things I’ve written and some of the research I’ve linked to, and I would have loved the chance to offer him a different lens through which to view his struggles in life. I hoped maybe even a flicker of self-compassion might light somewhere within him, and perhaps that might carve out even the tiniest bit of mental peace in the face of such uncertainty…and death.

But I kept putting it off as the week progressed until I was finally like, nah, that’s stupid, he wouldn’t want to read any of this anyway.

So I never sent him anything.

And now I never can.

For real, friends. That’s how much I am utterly incapable of overcoming my paralyzing imposter syndrome and catastrophic rejection sensitivity. I couldn’t share something of utmost meaning and importance with my own fucking father, even after he received a medical diagnosis that amounted to a literal death sentence.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

That kind of shit probably isn’t what you imagine when you hear about ADHD, is it?

But that’s the kind of shit many of us are forced to navigate constantly, day in and day out, over and over and over, our entire lives. And there are tools and methods we can use to compensate for some of these things, or at least blunt their effects a bit. But they take an insane amount of effort and dedication and vigilance, ALL of which are included on the formidable list of key struggles we’re attempting to overcome in the first place. And that work must be put in on a perpetual basis because ADHD isn’t something you can fix or cure–it’s only something you can manage.

But you know what has to happen before you can even attempt to properly manage it?

You have to fucking know you have it.

And not nearly enough of us do.

Worldwide incidence of ADHD in adults is currently estimated to be roughly 2.5%, meaning there are over 8 million adults with ADHD in the States alone, and nearly 200 million adults with ADHD throughout the world. And that, of course, doesn’t even include the number of children with ADHD, the rate of which is more than double that of adults. Thankfully, far more children with ADHD are being appropriately identified and diagnosed these days, but the rate of adult diagnoses has A LOT of catching up to do: I’ve seen various estimates, as it’s clearly difficult to pinpoint something like this, but it’s thought that only 20-30% of adults in the States with ADHD have been properly diagnosed.

That’s not fucking good enough. Because not only does that mean the bulk of adults with ADHD in this country are likely mired right this very minute in the seemingly inescapable executive dysfunction cycle of try-and-fail-and-fail-and-fail, they’re also likely to be inching—or racing—toward the point at which they just stop trying altogether. And that sad reality is made all the more tragic by the fact that we already have significant supports in place in this country for people with ADHD.

Did you know ADHD is covered by both the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act? Really think about that for a moment. ADHD can be so thoroughly and enormously debilitating, it is a bonafide disability for which an individual is entitled to workplace and institutional accommodations under federal law. And those accommodations can absolutely make or break a neurodivergent individual’s success in their educational and career goals. Parents on average seem to be much more comfortable seeking appropriate and fair accommodations for their children at school these days, and that goes for many college students as well. But do you know how many adults with ADHD feel comfortable requesting their federal legal rights at work?

Hardly any. Why?

Stigma. That’s why.

You know what else that stigma contributes to? The mounting evidence confirming the positive association between ADHD and increased risk of suicide or suicidal ideation, which holds true regardless of age or gender. I was 10 years old when I first decided I would rather just not exist. I was 40 years old when the ADHD was finally diagnosed. And I consider myself lucky.

That’s why we need to be talking about ADHD: because it’s a BFD.

Internationally recognized psychiatrist and ADHD researcher Dr. Russell Barkley has noted: “ADHD is not about knowing what to do, but about doing what one knows.”

When it comes to “doing life,” I think a lot of people with ADHD spend a disproportionate amount of time making detailed, accurate, well-thought out and considered roadmaps for where we want to get to in life. Often these consist of endless lists detailing the kaleidoscope of imperative Things We Must Do in order to sync up the person we appear to be and the life we appear to lead with the far more authentic versions we can see so clearly in our heads. And while this may seem beneficial when viewed through the lens of knowing being half the battle, it becomes much less so when you realize we spend such a disproportionate amount of time on the first half because that’s actually the only half we (somehow) know how to do by default. The other half is shrouded in mystery and confusion, as if we wrote our map in modern English but the finished version has for some unimaginable reason been translated into Early Middle English, rendering it vaguely familiar in a general sense, but at least half the words are completely unintelligible and the furthest it really gets us is frustration in the end.

So we make a new one.

And while we do on occasion successfully arrive at some of the places located on our map (or we end up in places we realize aren’t even on the map but probably should be), there always seem to be certain areas we can just never get right. But somehow we’re convinced that if we can only make a better map somehow–a clearer and more realistic map, or maybe a more fleshed-out and structured map this time, or shit, maybe the map just needs more color, hmmmm–we can finally unlock the mystery of those smudgy, shadowy bits with the unpronounceable names that end up consistently dotting our life trajectory.

And our repeated failures in these areas are all the more frustrating because they don’t seem like they should be that difficult to get right, seeing as they’re often so fucking pedestrian (make that doctor’s appointment), or things we should have nailed down decades ago (brush your damn teeth every day), or places it seems like we shouldn’t actually need a fucking map to get to in the first place (do that one thing you REALLY love to do but never actually, you know, DO). But despite clearly wanting to get there, and spending, again, a disproportionate amount of time devising all manner of ways in which we might translate this desire into reality, these vital things just end up getting recycled and added to later iterations of the roadmap so we can try, try again.

Because honestly, despite the avalanche of failures we’re constantly having to dig ourselves out of, and despite the soul-crushing self-loathing we’re forced to overcome every day of our lives, for as long as we can possibly manage it, most of us do, in fact, just. keep. trying.

Over and over and over…and over…and over again.

There were things that needed to be attended to the morning after my dad died, because the rest of the world hadn’t ground to a halt overnight like our family had. At one point, I was looking through the Notes app on his phone for a certain piece of time-sensitive information we needed, an equally sad and uncomfortable task that felt like an enormous invasion of my dad’s privacy, despite the reality of the situation. I got stuck grief scrolling past titles well beyond where I needed to be looking, but I didn’t open any of the Notes until I got to one in particular that elicited a mental record scratch. And it did that because its title exactly matched that of various life roadmaps I’ve made over the years: LIFE TODO.

So I opened it.

It was a roadmap.

I didn’t know my dad made roadmaps.

He had it broken down by areas of life and had listed several actionable things he could and should do or pursue to either add benefit to his overall life, or move himself closer to his specific goals. And not only did it seem completely out of character for my engineer father to even have this written commitment to “doing what one knows,” I was struck by how heavy it was on the goals for his personal and family life, his health, and the things that truly brought him joy, areas he often struggled to prioritize in real life, areas he was at that moment clearly still struggling to prioritize.

My dad was in his late 60s when he wrote that Note—and he was still struggling to organize his office and make necessary doctor’s appointments and dedicate more time to the things that obviously mattered to him, things you might not have known were priorities, though, when viewing his life from the outside. I’m guessing that wasn’t the first roadmap to contain many of them.

The work section, though, was last and contained only one thing. My dad was extremely passionate about his work and he dedicated a huge portion of his time and energy to it, often working on cutting edge technology, keeping his brain racing along with exciting, complex, seemingly impossible problems to solve. He had that part of his life mostly sorted out, at least—or so it seemed. But the last line of his roadmap paints a very different picture, and perhaps offers the most insight of all into his overarching lifelong struggles.

It simply said: “More focus and time efficiency while working.”

That’s ultimately what he was still searching for after all those years; I’m awed to even ponder what may have been unlocked for him if he had found it.

So I’m going to keep doing this, friends, whatever it is I’m actually doing here. Hopefully connecting a bit, definitely catharting a bit (I know, I know, but why is that not a word, is the question we should really be asking, I think. If we release overwhelming gas through farting in order to feel better, should it not follow that we also seek to feel better by releasing overwhelming emotions through catharting? Mmmhmmm. That’s what I thought.)

Mostly, though, I just hope to keep the conversation going in some small way. I don’t think anyone should still be trying to figure basic life shit out in their final years. It’s unfair and it’s unnecessary.

And we can do better.