I stopped in the midnight calm

And looking forward

i heard echoes of voices

Singing back from a brighter future;

A discordant harmony

Reveling in things I could not see;

And hope blazed like fire

Kindled by this small certainty

Sent railing through time

I spent the first 55 years of my life being told I was lazy. I was told so often I came to believe it.

My teachers, friends, and various other people in my life said it and other things. The word cloud hung about me like a hair shirt.

Lazy. Unmotivated. Fidgets. Won’t sit still. Never shuts up. Bored. Strange. Unfocused. Forgetful.

Like the moons around Jupiter these words maintained a steady orbit constantly reminding me that I was not like the people around me. I needed to learn to be like the people around me because the me I was turning out to be was not good enough, not normal enough.

I learned the art of mimicry. I watched the successful, appreciated, well-liked people and began to copy their behavior. I copied they way they walked, the cadence and tone of their voice, how they dressed, and how they laughed.

I learned that I could get things done if it was an emergency and so I started creating emergencies to get things done. I called myself an agent of chaos and crisis. I was great in an emergency. I remember being stopped at a stop light in front of an apartment building when all of a sudden a human body plummeted to the ground in front of me across the street.

Instantly I parked and was out of the car and at the body. I ordered people to call 911. I told another to run and get a blanket to cover the person. I checked his pulse to be sure but there was no doubt, his eyes had already misted over…he was dead. And me – I was as calm as a stone.

Nothing like this had ever happened to me before but there I was calmly and clearly acting to control the situation.

Still in other areas of my life nothing worked. I remember writing four essays in one night at university from beginning to end, research and all. It took me 10 hours. It was brutal and I performed poorly (but at least I got them done).

I had known about these deadlines for months and had done nothing to begin them. Sometimes I would attempt a beginning and simply find myself staring at a blank page for hours nearly catatonic before giving up. I didn’t know how to begin a thing. They were just various trains in the distance on various tracks that all converging in a head on collision at my location. I could only sit paralyzed while they came closer and closer and my anxiety skyrocketed in response.

At 55 the longest job I have ever worked at is five years. Two of my kids have been at jobs longer. It’s not that I wasn’t good at my jobs…it’s just that the jobs became routine. I worked the chaos out of them and began to get bored and unmotivated still not sure how to work in a long-term, regular and strategic way. I would move on slowly developing skills at going into chaotic environments and bringing order and stability. This became my area of management expertise.

Relationships were also dysfunctional. I either over-shared (maybe like this) every last detail of my life with people I barely knew or maintained an unusual, uncaring, robotic distance from people.

Finally, a few years ago, I decided I needed to see a therapist to discuss and possibly deal with significant childhood traumas. I had come to believe much of what I had been working hard at masking or repairing had its source in these things.

Over time the therapist said something to me that caught me off guard.

“Perhaps you should consider getting a referral to a psychiatrist to discuss the possibility that you have ADHD?”

ADHD?!? This is a thing that children deal with, not adults. Not me. Nevertheless I did my research and asked my doctor for a referral. Who knows? It can’t hurt I suppose.

I grew up being told that everybody had problems and you just sucked it up and survived. Deal with it. You’re no different than anyone else. You have both your arms and legs. There’s nothing “physically” wrong with you. Stop being LAZY and just do it.

To even entertain the possibility of mental illness made me uneasy, as if I were cheating. There were people out there with “real” disabilities. Real obstacles to their lives. I had it good. It was selfish of me to pursue this – everybody knew what was wrong with me – I was just lazy.

I went to a psychiatrist.

It wasn’t long before he looked at me and said – “you have adult combined ADHD.”

What? Really? How? Why?

There are a number of potential factors. He believed it had never been diagnosed when I was a child because I never had a teacher or authority figure in my life long enough to notice anything beyond being lazy and inattentive. After all between kindergarten and high school graduation I averaged about two schools a year.

What now?

The psychiatrist spent a great deal of time talking about the nature of ADHD and treatments. While there are various non-drug treatments the research has shown that by far the most significantly effective approach was medication.

I told him I wanted to pursue the most effective treatment and now I am taking a drug called Vyvanse. An amphetamine. In the average brain amphetamines amp a person up. In the ADHD brain they lead to greater focus. No one fully understands why.

I can attest to the fact that my productivity has already started increasing exponentially. Focus and an ability to deal with deadlines better has reduced my anxiety. I am better able to actually start things without waiting for emergency and chaos. My executive functions are actually functioning.

Still there are times when I feel like I am cheating. Like the only thing wrong with me was laziness. The voices of my past remain strong in my head. People have come a long way but adults being diagnosed with ADHD are still looked at askance like it is simply fashionable and you never really had a problem…not a real problem.

But I can say that having carried the weight of this for 55 years has been hard. The effort to fit in with “normal” people has been enormous and ever-present. The reality that there is something broken in my brain that has led to all of this has been both frightening and freeing.

Frightening because no amount of personal effort can fully overcome this kind of brokenness and you are left with a sense that you are never really in control. Freeing because knowing about a thing gives you the handles to grab onto and, with expert advice, do something about it.

The journey ahead is still a long one fraught with stigma and stereotypes but the journey so far has been one of enormous hardship and turmoil…at least now the road ahead is bathed in light instead of hidden in darkness.

jazz is the sound
of a thousand broken chains
ringing out through time
in the cadence of piano and brass;

jazz is freedom
dropped light upon my shoulders
like wings to lift me into the skies
through a brighter light
than has shone on me in silence

jazz spills joy
like cream overtopping the bucket
to the upturned, waiting mouths
seeking to drink deeply of
this life that falls from above

jazz rises
like the morning mist
bathed in the newborn sun
resurrecting dead souls
to stand blind before it
that they might be washed clean
and warmed by its embrace

set a watch on your heart my friend,
it’s a darker death that now roams
disguised as the war-demon hate
cutting us in two with bladed tongue
and salting the world with our blood

set a watch on your heart my dear,
that black voice sounds like mine,
that black voice sounds like yours,
and there is sweet poison to its song
like antifreeze hidden in the fresh milk

light a fire on your rooftop my love
and i will run to your enshadowed side;
we can die together in the cooling eve
and watch the sun set one last time
before plague sweeps through this town.

what a dance of joy

with twists and leaps

whirling skirts and bare feet

through pools of newly fallen rain,

and the ruins of newly fallen home,

young girl squeals with delight

calling out –

“we can drink it, can’t we?

it tastes so good…

can we drink it, Baba?”

and the dead look on;

and the world turns away;

and i want to laugh,

but there are only tears

at smiles amongst the blood.

why does the cold stay
on bright days like today
hanging close about my bones?

no amount of warming sun
gives the strength to outrun,
as the frozen wind moans.

let me stay within myself,
let me crawl upon a higher shelf,
hidden save for my constant groans.

until the heat returns,
until the blazing burns,
and my singular self spurns,
that pain for which it yearns

now and forever amen.

i take my wolf for a walk
occasionally;

we go to the deep, dark;
we go to the quiet places
where the forest is thickest
away and away from people,
distant from the loved ones
where my wolf can tear me to shreds
in the mossy, green peace of isolation
without hurting another,
and the pain is the same
every time
’til the morning i awaken
a poor man’s Prometheus
ready for the tomorrow’s trip.

kill it!
lock it in a box
and throw it in the sea!

and i would,
if not for its hideous strength
that prevents it being driven away
no matter how hot the torches;
no matter how sharp the pitchforks…

so it sits and howls in my basement
until the next killing journey

bullets create the demons
that haunt us in our sleep
as their blood fuels fires –
the forever flames of fanaticism;

these are the ghosts of hate
that will tear us to shreds
in the end…

I can look at a person

Sometimes

And see the reason to love

And see the reason to hate

So I try not to look that close

Because it hurts as much

To love

To hate

They’re all so beautiful

They’re all so ugly

It tears me up…