Over last weekend I cleaned my house. It desperately needed it. I honestly can't remember the last time I did a full dusting. Vacuuming happens more often--though not often enough, as I could vacuum my house daily and it would probably still need it. On Saturday I vacuumed the top two floors and dusted the entire main floor, the bathroom, and my bedroom. The kids' rooms desperately need it too, but their rooms are both disasters because ADHD stinks and battles must be chosen, and right now it's more of a priority to have them keep their contributions to the main living area mess under control. I just don't have the patience at the moment to sift through the piles of stuff to dust their rooms myself. The basement will get cleaned at some point too, but this was not that moment. But the rest was desperately in need of cleaning after months of doing the bare minimum. It's just one of those things that has felt overwhelming to me lately, and I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, I feel like my life is a constant stream of wiping down, picking up, organizing, and nagging to address the never-ending mess, so it's not like I'm ignoring it completely, but clearly it's still not enough to keep the mess truly at bay. But doing more than basic maintenance has felt like an extra level of effort I just don't have in me a lot of the time. But the more I think about it, the more I think the pandemic triggered a touch of ADHD in me. I have been having more focus issues with work too, but one of the characteristics of ADHD I never really knew about was a paralysis with starting tasks that can feel overwhelming. That is something that has gotten significantly worse for me in the last few years, and I can't help but wonder if the pandemic contributed.
It's entirely possible I've had ADHD since I was a kid and just covered it up well because I was smart. I was always talkative, my brain liked to wander, I was forever doodling in the margins of notebooks, and I tended to be a procrastinator. Once I got going, sure, I could generally get the work done pretty easily, which may have been a touch of hyperfocus at play. But I wasn't necessarily hyperactive or anything too concerning behavior-wise, and as long as my grades were fine, there was likely no reason to suspect anything. I do think I probably could have qualified for an anxiety diagnosis pretty easily as I can recount a number of times where social anxiety or general life worries were quite all-encompassing. I dropped out of Brownies because I had some sort of solo role in a ceremony and I didn't want to do it in front of people, and going to my dance studio's Christmas party and not knowing who would be there was overwhelming. I also backed out of a rather benign school play part because the concept (running back and forth across the stage with a phone number, like we were on TV) was embarrassing to me. I also had (and still have) intense fears about bad things happening to my family or home. There are a lot more examples I could share but considering those few above are about 35-40 years old and I still remember the fears they created, I think that gives you an idea. But because I got good grades and only really got reprimanded for being talkative, no one thought twice. And no one really considered kids for an anxiety diagnosis back then anyway.
Fast-forward a few decades and I'm sure there were other signs here and there--not the least of which was giving birth to two kids with official ADHD diagnoses. Haha. I remember times back in my early 20s where I would get sucked into Rollercoaster Tycoon for entire afternoons until the outside darkness prompted me to look at the clock and realize it was time to eat. The internet has almost always been a time suck for me, and TV was before that. Despite my good grades, I was a queen of procrastination in college. Most of it I probably would have chalked up to a general personality quirk and moved on. I'm indecisive, I worry, I'm a bit of a perfectionist in many ways, I don't like calling attention to myself or disappointing people. It all sort of made sense as being a nervous, overly self-aware human who didn't want people to know I wasn't perfect. Still, I've had a relatively functional life and career, pushing through the challenges when they came.
And then came the pandemic. As we all know, it was unprecedented times for almost all living generations, and it was hard. We were stuck at home. We were teaching our kids while trying to do our own work. We had way too much togetherness and rarely left the house or got together with other people. It was stressful and scary in an entirely different way than most things were previously. All of these things turned into a perfect storm:
- The house was messy because we were all always there. More dishes, more toys, more garbage, more paperwork.
- I wasn't that motivated to clean because it was just going to get messy again right away and no one was coming to the house anyway.
- The piles and messes that were left to fester were giving me anxiety because while I'm not a neat freak, the constant chaos and ever-present reminders of things that need to be done or cleaned up make me crazy because it feels like my work is never done. My family is not good at taking care of that, however, so there was a choice between leaving it and making myself nuts, or doing it myself which only reinforces the laziness and makes me resentful.
- Having the house look like a pigsty all the time made me care even less about the rest of the messes or things needing to be spruced up or fixed because why should I bother putting in the effort if the house is still going to be a mess anyway?
- At the same time, with stress at an all-time high, there were the constant reminders to give yourself a little grace and practice self-care. Sometimes that was escaping for a run or an outdoor adventure with Carter, and sometimes that was curling up in a chair with my phone. I got my first iPhone the fall after the pandemic began, and I definitely got in bad habits with certain apps and games occupying my mind and providing a little escape and relaxation. The social media doom scrolling got worse, as well. My phone essentially replaced most of my TV viewing, for reasons I still can't entirely understand. Sometimes background noise can be helpful, but around the pandemic there was so much noise around all the time that I think I had a backlash against it and stopped defaulting to turning on the TV when the house was quiet. My phone did the job instead. But then I'd get totally sucked into my phone, overall productivity went down, and the pile of projects needing to be done got bigger and more overwhelming. I could only mentally work through a few things at a time, and I wasn't getting through things as fast as they were piling up.
Carter's ADHD emerged strongest during the pandemic, and I deduced that his overwhelming amount of screen time--which was a near-necessity when Craig and I had to get work done--had gotten him so overstimulated that his brain short-circuited and it left everything else that didn't bring on that rush of dopamine painfully boring to him. He couldn't stand to run errands and playing with regular toys lasted mere minutes. When he couldn't focus at all on his school work, that's when we decided it was time to get him evaluated. His diagnosis was pretty clear, and even clearer when meds helped him almost immediately. Now he's this amazingly dedicated student, but he still gets bored a little too easily--he rarely wants to play with toys or read a book, but he does his work well and takes pride in it, and has come to enjoy our little adventures, even if errands are still merely tolerated.
For the last few months I've been following an ADHD meme account in Instagram. I started following it because I figured it would give me insight into my kids to understand things that ADHD people find challenging. It has been pretty insightful. I may still not know how to counteract some of the issues, but it helps me know they're typical for neurodivergent people. However, as I've been following along, I've seen far too many things that I completely relate to for myself. I know I should only take these things with a grain of salt--it's not medical advice or anything, just certain slices of life that different people experience--but I have felt some of them deeply. Knowing a lot of my frustrations and bad habits got worse during the pandemic has made me stop and think about what triggered them and whether I had much the same situation as Carter--a little too much screen time, a bit more stress, and poof--my brain went haywire. The ADHD might have always been there hiding in the shadows, but one too many triggers and all of a sudden it popped up and made itself known. In theory, anyway.
I don't think I'm going to try to get a formal diagnosis since I'm not really at the point of needing medication or anything like that. I guess I'm not ruling it out because maybe one day I will need medication, or maybe it would help my kids to know it's something we share and that I really can empathize with a lot of what they're going through. But as of now it's not going to change my daily life so I don't see the point of putting myself through countless evaluations just for a piece of paper and/or a little validation. Maybe down the road if I decide to go the therapy route for any reason, it would make sense to make that part of the process, but for now I'm just trying to be aware of when I'm having those issues and do what I can do to logically think them through and make a plan to counteract what my brain is trying to do.
I'm glad the house is clean-ish. It gives me a little bit of satisfaction and peace that certain areas are finally clean--not the least of which is the shelf next to my work-from-home desk that had been completely covered with Jacob's food overflow for months. Now it's neat, dust-free, and seasonally decorated. I swear it lowers my blood pressure a couple points on its own. You'd think the satisfaction alone would be enough to keep up with it, but it's not. It'll be dusty again soon enough and it will get overwhelming all over again. Sigh. But I'll probably have to dust before Christmas decor happens since everything changes and there will be dusty outlines on every surface, so at least that's only a couple months from now. That's a whole other set of stress, though. But for now, I will enjoy the fall decor, wait for the real thing outside, and clean up what I can when I can. One day at a time.
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