Send Me More Stories About Mental Health
I’m not the homemaker I wanted to be.
I listen, empathetically, to my friends complain about their partners, and the lack of help they receive around the household.
“All I’m asking is that he just takes the trash out. That’s it! Is that too much to ask?”
“I’m so frustrated. We both worked all day, so why am I the person cooking dinner, cleaning up, and doing the laundry, while he gets to sit on the couch and watch TV?”
“I have to ask for his help. I know he’ll help me if I ask him, but why can’t he do these things on his own? No one asks me to do everything around the house.”
I hear them. These hard-working, overtired, selfless ladies. I hear them, and I recognize myself in their words. I hear them, and I wonder what my husband thinks when he looks at me. I hear them, and I vow to be different, to be better.
Every morning, I wake up and think: Today is going to be the day. Today will be the day that the laundry and the dishes are done before my husband gets home. Today, I will sort through the box of loose papers on our desk. Today is the day I will fill the dog’s prescriptions, sign my son’s agenda book before he asks me to, put away my daughter’s too-small clothing instead of just tossing it on top of an overflowing pile in a storage room that’s already bursting at the seams. Today will be the day I leave a love note in my husband’s lunch bag. Today will be the day I clean my son’s room and organize my daughter’s toys. Today will be the day things change—because I want them to, so badly.
But I have ADHD. So today is never that day.
Today will be the day things change—because I want them to, so badly. But I have ADHD. So today is never that day.
It starts innocently enough. I make my children breakfast, bring my son to school, open my computer to start work, and vacillate between that and playing with my toddler all morning long. In reality, I simply move from room to room. Dining room table: computer, numerous open internet browser tabs that I hover between. Living room floor: crayons, plastic kitchen toys, stuffed animals. I float between these rooms, accomplishing almost nothing in either. I make lunch for us. The baby, who is really not a baby anymore even though I can’t stop calling her that, takes a nap.
Ah, the blissful quiet. The moment I can devote to work. I scan my to do list. Before I begin, I realize I need to pay an almost-due bill. Then, I open Facebook—for work, I promise—but fall deep into the rabbit hole of important, semi-important, and utterly unimportant information. I check myself, jump back into my work, and get distracted by a text message.
I realize I never started the laundry, so I go to grab it in the bathroom, but instead I notice I’m wearing a tiger-ears headband and I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet. I brush, saunter back to my computer, work, look at the clock, and realize it’s almost time to pick my son up from school. Though, first, I scoop the crayons off the floor. I put away the toys that are scattered around the kitchen, and cram stuffed animals back into their bins. I change, because I’m likely still in my pajamas, and rush out the door to make it on time for school pick up.
It isn’t until I’m on the way that I realize I didn’t do the laundry. Of course, while driving, I come up with a great idea for work—one that I will almost immediately lose, like all the others.
Erin Ollila has struggled with ADHD for most her life.
If you’re a neurotypical human, you might inherently understand all these situations. Life is distracting, and a house full of children, a job, and activities complicate things. It can be difficult to remember which day of the week is your son’s baseball game, the school concert, or your parent–teacher conferences. But what happens when you ADHD adult attention deficit disorder (ADHD) into the mix? Suddenly, your grocery shopping lists are missing key elements that go unnoticed until dinnertime—which, of course, is already too late. The laundry piles up. So do the dishes. So does the guilt.
I know these scenarios too well. My son wakes up in the morning and goes to his closet, only to realize his school uniform pants are still in the laundry. Now, he will be forced to use the sacred dress-down pass he wanted to save until the end of the school year. My husband returns home from work to a sink piled high with dishes and a dirty high-chair tray. Yesterday, he washed the dishes when he came home, made dinner, and washed the dishes yet again after our meal. Today, the cycle will repeat. I am desperate for the day he returns home to an empty sink and a clean kitchen.
I’ve always owned my ADHD. My faults were my own. The text messages I failed to respond to, the laundry that didn’t get washed for weeks, the school assignments that only got completed last minute were my shortcomings. While I did try to set up organizational systems to keep me focused and on track, I accepted these regular failures as an integral part of my chemical makeup. I was a good friend who wasn’t the best at following through. I was a clean person who lived surrounded by piles of randomness. I was a hard-worker who thrived under the self-enforced stress of deadlines, but failed with the freedom of time.
The problem wasn’t that the ADHD medication didn’t work. The problem was that I didn’t allow it to work to its full potential. So why bother? After a few medicated years, I said goodbye to the moments of clarity, determined to find them on my own.
When you’re living alone with ADHD, you’re only responsible for yourself. There’s no one else to let down.
When you’re living alone with ADHD, you’re only responsible for yourself. There’s no one else to let down. No one else to notice the chaos. When guests come over, it’s easy enough to stuff the laundry in the closet and toss the piles of paper into a storage bin. When you live with others, especially a spouse and children, this changes.
I’m suddenly under a microscope, whether it’s self-imposed or not, and my capabilities and concentration (or lack thereof) can no longer be just a part of my personality. People rely on me. Children have a cacophony of needs. My husband cannot be responsible for the entire household as I wade through the fog of my misgivings.
The thing is, I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I always wanted to work, too. Now that I work for myself from home, I have the best of both worlds. Everything I ever wanted. So, why is it so difficult?
On occasion, I miss the medication. When I’m staring at a blank screen and my head feels too full and empty at the same time, I long for the sweet feeling of focus. My brain is fog—the dense, deep cloud you cannot see through on the highway—and I cannot concentrate because there is already too much information taking space in there. I can either choose to dig deep, pulling the weeds of dead thoughts so my best ideas can thrive, or I can float through it.
Have you ever driven through a snow squall or endless, seeping fog? You rationally know there is a road to follow, but you also cannot see the path. If you cannot see it, you can’t be sure it’s there. You’ve lost direction. You’re navigating blindly.
This is ADHD.
Have you ever driven through a snow squall or endless, seeping fog? This is ADHD.
The truth is: I can barely remember to take my vitamins every day. I forget to brush my teeth, wear deodorant, all normal every-single-day-I-do-this necessities. Remembering to take the meds—or worse, fill the prescriptions—will take more effort than I have to give right now. Plus, on the good days, those rays of clarity are as sweet and strong as I remember they felt on the medication. My chemical makeup, as sordid and random as it is, will stay untainted for now.
It’s the systems that save me: the routines, the lists, the reminders. My family—their needs—are my medication. My children dictate my a timeline for the day. What gets done, gets done, as long as their needs get met. My toddler is the current anchor in my life that keeps me from drifting off. When everything is centered around her immediate daily needs, I meet them. My son, with his endless extracurricular activities, pushes me from one moment to the next. My husband, without complaint, assumes responsibility to make sure everything gets done.
“You’re a great mom,” he says. “You’re doing the best you can right now.”
The days roll on, and my friends’ words play through my mind. I wonder if my husband thinks those thoughts, too. I wonder what stage of frustration he feels. Does my forgetfulness weigh heavily on him, like the spouses my girlfriends so often complain about? What does he think as he shifts the piles I tell him not to touch so that I can take responsibility for something that never seems to get done? I ask him, for this essay, if he thinks I’m failing.
“You’re a great mom,” he says. “You’re doing the best you can right now.”
I’d like to think he’s right, that I’m doing the best I can, but I’m not sure that’s true. I can do more. I want to do more. I can see the better version of myself peek through the clouds just a short distance away.
I just don’t know how to reach her.
Creative Commons photo by Craig Cloutier.
