Be Different.

As I start to finish out my first semester in a graduate school program, I wanted to reflect on how someone whose brain rolls 50 miles a minute, copes such a high stress environment. After my diagnosis, I found relief but I also continue a daily struggle between productivity and commitment. I am not like every other graduate student and wanted to share a piece of my daily thoughts - 

It is a bottomless pit of feeling you're failing, but three days later, you feel you can do anything, only to end the week where you began. It is moments of knowing your pain is self inflicted, followed by blaming the world. It is wanting to listen, but you just can’t anymore because your life has been to full of people that have judged you for your faults. It is fighting to be right; so for once in your life someone will respect and hear you for a change. It is a tiring life of endless mind games, in order to seek stimulus. It is a hyper focus, so intense about what bothers you, that you can’t pay attention to anything else, for very long. It is a never-ending routine of forgetting things. It is a boredom and and excitement. It wears you out. It wears everyone out.

It is speaking and acting without thinking. It is risk taking, thrill seeking and moodiness that
never ends. It is devotion to the gifts and talents you have been given. It is beauty when it has purpose. It is agony when it doesn't.  Living with ADD doesn't make me different, it makes the rest of my world exciting.