Something that people with ADHD don’t get to say enough is how toxic the hurtful words of other people are to our well-being.
I’m never going to be “normal.” No, not if I try harder. No, not if I write things down. No, not if I set every alarm on every device I own. Not with every planner, calendar, and app ever made. There is no amount of effort I can make that will turn me into someone else, the version of me that everyone wants to pretend could exist if I could just be more like them.
When you see enough people in your life wish for you to be someone you’re not—family, friends, teachers and professors, colleagues and coworkers, bosses and supervisors, church leaders and members—there is a very real part of yourself that can’t help internalizing some of it. And given enough time, it can break your self-esteem completely. All the wishes and frustrations of others with you become a very long list of reasons not to like or trust yourself anymore.
I am no exception. My mind has become a poisoned well from all the wishes people have made for me to be someone I’m not. And some of the labor that I get to do now, that so often goes unseen by everyone else, is to purify my thoughts so that criticism doesn’t have access to me anymore. I have to relearn how to like and trust myself again, as I am. I have to do that despite all the evidence to the contrary that so many have found, even though it feels impossible.
My trip to the temple today was about reclaiming my ability to love myself a little bit more than I did yesterday, to believe there is something worthwhile in me even if other people have failed to see it in the past. And God, who is the only one who has never done this to me, came through again with some suggestions to make it easier: to use music to drown out some of the negativity and noise, and a reminder that I am part of that body with Jesus Christ that he claimed as his own.
I am wanted. I am loved. I am cherished. ADHD and all.
