Since my diagnosis of ADHD, I’ve started observing my own brain like someone trying to understand a language they already speak but have never studied. I discovered that ADHD isn’t a list of symptoms — it’s a way of experiencing the world. Each person has a unique combination of anatomy, personality, and life history. And for that reason, reducing ADHD to “lack of focus” or “disorganization” is like judging a song only by its beat, without ever listening to the melody.
Understanding my brain is fascinating. Living with it — not so much. Especially when the subject is starting — or restarting — anything. I know… procrastination is human; anyone who’s never procrastinated is the abnormal one. The problem isn’t whether we procrastinate or not — the problem is: where’s the limit of procrastination?
I waited five days and sixteen hours to start this text — and another four days to finish it. Writing brings me joy, but starting is always an act of war, because despite the joy and satisfaction, it’s hard and takes a lot of energy.
Even worse is starting over — because it only takes a bird singing, the mailman knocking, an obsession with the ends of my hair, or my dog looking at me asking to go out, and that’s it: life pulls me away, and the cycle of procrastination begins all over again. It’s a true system crash.
Then you might say: but you do things! You write, you finish, you pass exams, you went to college, you’re always doing a thousand things. And it’s true. People with ADHD do a lot — sometimes too much. But ADHD isn’t about what shows on the outside — it’s about what happens in inside.
And all this comes at a price.
Sailing is never calm. It's always a storm to get my thoughts in order. The inner sea knows no calm.
And while I was procrastinating to write, the thought of not writing kept buzzing in my head like a persistent mosquito. So why don’t I just sit down and write? Because when life starts to fill up, my attention scatters — and even what’s important gets lost. For me, prioritizing is also a battlefield.
It gets tiring. A lot.
And that's just one example.
My disorganization isn’t physical — it’s mental and digital. The space around me, curiously, is always in order. Tidying up is my most elegant form of procrastination. The real chaos lives inside: a miniature apocalypse. I have 359 tabs open on Safari on my phone, and in my mind, at least that many more.
Productivity, the way the world understands it, is an illusion for someone with a brain like mine. Here, tasks aren’t managed — dopamine is. Time isn’t measured — energy is. And that’s still something I’m learning to manage.
Learning this is like learning an entirely new language: you have to forget the old structures of speech to discover new rules, new grammars, and even a new way of thinking.
It's not simple.
Sailing through these turbulent waters creates an exhausting experience. There’s a kind of tiredness that comes from within — a fatigue that isn’t just physical, but existential. It makes me think that the fact life has an end brings a certain relief — and I don’t say that in a sad tone.
The experience of having a constantly hyperconnected mind, always digging for bits of motivation amid the chaos, is like being a power strip with multiple plugs and adapters all connected at once.
The overload is inevitable.
Still, every now and then, I manage to unplug myself for a few moments.
Like a power strip that shuts itself off, my brain also blacks out — an involuntary reset. When the energy comes back, everything seems normal again…
Until the circuit heats up again.
There are also very small things that irritate me. One detail out of place becomes an emotional catastrophe. Disproportionate reactions. In the morning, everything feels wrong; by the afternoon, everything seems fine again.
I remember a day when a friend was at my place while I was working. In the morning, I was complaining about something that wasn’t going the way I wanted — something so trivial that I don’t even remember what it was. Hours later, at the supermarket checkout, the cashier asked how my day was going.
“Fantastic!” I replied, smiling.
My friend looked at me in surprise and smiled: “But wasn't your day going wrong?”
I smiled too. “Not anymore.”
Another curious thing: my speech is pure emotion — in any language. Sometimes the words stumble; I forget what I was going to say, lose my train of thought, and rebuild everything in the middle of the conversation.
I interrupt — not out of rudeness, but out of fear of letting the logic I just built slip away.
My brain also shuts off my hearing selectively when the environment demands too much of me. Sometimes it’s embarrassing, so I put on my polite, automatic smile — and let the world talk to itself for a moment. Those who know me already understand: later, they’ll fill me in on what was said in my ear.
Not only with my hearing, but also in my communication, there are certain triggers that make my brain simply shut down in the middle of a conversation — or worse, make me start speaking nonsense.
That happens when I’m in front of someone who carries emotional weight for me. Or when I’m nervous, stressed, tired, impatient — or under pressure. When the environment is noisy, or when everything seems to happen at once and I can’t focus on anything specific, the words dissolve before they even become sound. Sometimes it’s funny; sometimes not so much.
It's also true that cell phones distract everyone.
But for someone who gets lost in the reflection on the window, the shape of the clouds, or a random thought that appears out of nowhere, the phone is just one more item on the endless list of distractions.
When I get distracted (which happens most of the time), I instantly forget what I was supposed to do, say, or send. That task falls straight into the black hole of my brain — from where, if I’m lucky, it reappears a few days later.
That’s why, when everything becomes an object of distraction, even boredom turns into stimulation.
There’s also the opposite side — when focus turns into obsession, that urgency to finish everything within the next few hours. And hyperfocus doesn’t apply only to tasks; people, ideas, and curiosities also capture me completely.
That’s how, sometimes, I overwhelm myself even with the things that excite me. It’s the unrealistic expectation of wanting to do everything at once and ending up paralyzed.
I also have frequent social hangovers. Not because of people themselves, but because of the energy it takes to be with them (though sometimes, let me be honest, it is the person). When I talk too much, get too involved, socialize too much — silence becomes a necessity.
Another thing that persists — and perhaps will never settle — is the rhythm of my time. It moves slowly, as if my internal clock were set to another time zone. From the small trivialities — can someone explain the joke, please? — to the prescribed stages of life, everything in me happens in slow motion.
I still carry the delusional hope that my body will keep ovulating for the next fifty years — perhaps because, deep down, I always believe that time can wait for me.
Speaking of life — the search for its meaning is endless. Maybe because living itself is the very attempt to give meaning to things. Feeling a sense of purpose is what ignites existence. Without purpose, life fades even as it moves. I can change it, recreate it — it doesn’t matter. What’s essential is that it exists and walks beside me.
However, everything has its bright side. My empathy helps me connect with people and see the bigger picture — to notice different perspectives of the same situation.
People around me say I’m spontaneous (that so-called disguised impulsiveness). I still don’t know if that’s a good thing — sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t — but apparently, people like that about me.
My curiosity takes me to places I never imagined finding. I’m deeply passionate about my interests — and little by little, I’m learning the power of uniting desire with consistency.
My emotions are vast, intense, sometimes contradictory. The only thing I don’t feel is fear of feeling; what terrifies me is the idea of feeling nothing — the emptiness that comes when nothing moves through me.
As long as I feel something — good or bad — it’s all right. Intensity may blur reason and bring exhaustion, but it’s also what gives life its color and pulse.
The pursuit of self-knowledge isn’t a choice for those who are sensitive — it’s a necessity. Without pause, there’s no integration of experience; without integration, there’s no learning, no identity, no consciousness. The opposite path leads, sooner or later, to self-collapse.
The meeting of imagination and boldness is also a gift. I’ve never gotten along very well with rules — at the very least, I need to understand the meaning behind them.
But none of that really matters, because deep down, almost nothing has changed — I’ve just learned to adjust the right sail to follow the wind. In the end, calm seas never made a good sailor anyway.
From my world to yours,
