I was always told that I was a drama queen. “There is no way that you were so offended by that…”, “Why are you acting like a pick me?”, “Why are you so loud with your emotions?”.
The question that I always asked myself was: Why isn’t everyone? Do they not feel love and anxiety?
And so, I started to hide myself, blending into my surroundings. I would pretend to care about stuff that I wasn’t really interested in and hid all my imaginative worlds away.
The problem with what I did was, the more you do it, the more it eats at you. The more I hid away my authenticity, the more silent I became. The fog grew intense. And at one point, I remember feeling completely paralysed.
People see how hyper focused I get when I am passionate about something and say that I have a superpower. I have thought about it multiple times.
Yes, I would think. But have you seen the state of my room and my fridge? I wouldn’t have showered for a few days together and I might not have eaten. I also wouldn’t be able to sleep with a hundred thousand thoughts zooming through my mind.
But yeah, a superpower.
A parallel that I’ve noticed was in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Everybody celebrates Spider-Man. They are outside his hospital window when he got shot and Jean Grey was sustaining his life. But nobody knows Peter Parker, who is lonely and has lost everybody that he had ever loved. I found that very similar to how people felt around me when I am my energetic self, lighting up the whole room. But nobody sees the other me, the one who cannot get up from bed.
There is another scene where Spider-Man feels overwhelmed, to the point that he senses the dripping tap water.
“Alert! Senses are overloaded.” He feels it all.
I’ve never felt more seen in my entire life.
Nothing could be a better representation of overstimulation. After an intense day, which includes talking to people among other things, I come back to my room and sit in the dark. Otherwise, I feel like my brain will never function anymore.
Another thing that I’m not proud of is the fact that I zone out when people start talking about stuff that is uninteresting to me. And the moment you start talking about the rules for a card game or a board game, I’m gone. Never to be found again, till you pull me back in with something that I care about.
It isn’t intentional. I blame myself for it all the time. I convince myself that I’m a bad friend. But I also know that I would do things for my friends that not everybody would do. I can’t stay in the conversation, but the details I do grasp, I carry to my grave. My brain is either absent or all-consumed.
That’s why I struggle with the idea of ADHD being a superpower. Superheroes can control their abilities. Peter Parker chooses when to swing through New York. Jean Grey can decide when to reach someone’s mind. I cannot.
Some days I am excited that I have this thoughtful and creative brain. Some days I’m sad that I can’t keep in details or logic that aren’t exciting but are essential. Some days I am fascinated by the depth of my love, and on other days I feel so alone.
And on some other days, I just stand there watching all the different versions of myself running around frantically but reaching nowhere in particular.
So, is ADHD my superpower?
No, it’s just me, for better and for worse.
Image credit: Rose Griffin
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