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March 19, 2008
Clarity
I remember the first time I saw see the street signs around me. "It says stop! It says yield! It says Bennington Woods Road!" I yelled from the back of the car as we drove home from the optomotrist. I was nine years old, and after that day I never stopped reading and shouting and looking at the world around me. There was so much to see. Until I put those glass lenses in front of my eyes, I hadn't known that the world could be so crisp, so in focus.
I don't know if I believe in attention deficit disorder. There's something suspicious to me about slapping a negative label on a condition that seems to arise out of modern life. I live in front of the television, the Nintendo, the Internet. Of course I'm distracted. But when I take these pills in the morning, I feel like I did that day when I was nine years old and I saw the world for the first time.
I take a pill, and suddenly I'm not surrounded by swirling chaos. I see the mounds of paper I've created, and I can understand how to sort and tackle them. I sit down to work, and all my responsibilities line up for a mental examination. The world comes in to focus for about five hours, and then my body breaks down the pills and they wash away and the familiar haze returns. I'm startled to realize just how blurry my life has been for all these years
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at March 19, 2008 08:53 PM
Comments
Amazing. What a wonderful thing. What a powerful analogy. For the first time I feel I can understand how ADD feels. Congratulations!
Posted by: Sue at March 20, 2008 10:34 AM
That is pretty cool.
Posted by: erin rovito at March 20, 2008 01:42 PM
This is beautiful. You've got me worried.
I share a lot of the same work problems. I've hardly been able to read a book for a decade; I'm constantly thinking of something I'd rather do, or read about, instead. I can hardly complete a household chore without being distracted by something else around the house that I want to do. I live and work amid clutter created by my constant picking up and discarding of microscopic tasks ... even though nothing makes me calmer than orderliness. I can accomplish nothing without the panic of a pressing deadline. I'm writing this very comment because my mind wandered as I tried to write an article that needs to be complete in 20 minutes.
Here's the worst part: I'm suddenly second-guessing my love of the Civ games, which are obviously nothing more than boring clusters of microtasks and yet hold my fascination for hours and hours at a time, like almost nothing else in the world. There's only one other person I know who loves those games as much as I do. And he's got an ADD diagnosis, too.
Posted by: Michael at March 21, 2008 05:09 PM
I love the Civ games too, although only in fits and starts. I'll play for hours on end for months and then lose total interest.
I don't know. I like the "situation" not "disorder" idea. I feel weird about the pills. But they do help with functioning.
Posted by: Courtney at March 22, 2008 12:14 AM