Well, hello there

I've been making friends with adult ADHD. Been kinda busy.

Squirt and I were "officially" diagnosed in tandem last fall. His difficulties in a regular classroom setting were back of our decision to homeschool nine (yes, NINE!) years ago. He's done well, but puberty and increasingly lengthy math computation required a trip to the local behavioral psychologist for 20 trees' worth of questionnaires. A frill-free diagnosis of ADHD-inattentive type and 25 milligrams of daily Vyvanse later, he's doing pretty well.

Me, not so much.

Apparently, you can't just take a pill and expect your brain to function normally. Bummer. Next step: higher dosages, and maybe timed-release delivery. Then, co-existing conditions like "generalized anxiety disorder" and possibly "sensory integration disorder." Finally, more questionnaires and guess what? You just hit nine out of nine markers for adult presentation of hyperactivity!

I AM grateful to have a reason -- not an excuse -- for some of my life-long struggles. I've always had major personal space issues, but I never knew people with ADHD often have poor spatial recognition. At five feet tall, I now understand why I feel assaulted during middle school worship and not during elementary worship. Why? Everyone's taller than me by middle school and they invade my personal space with their elbows, right at my face level.

Hopefully, a day will come when I don't need medication any longer because I will understand more about how I'm wired. The panic and anxiety already are lessened when I know why I react like I do. Undoing 42 years of coping may take some undoing, on the other hand, but then I'm optimistic by nature.

Read: Women With Attention Deficit Disorder by Sari Solden; ADD Ways to Organize Your Life by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau; Delivered from Distraction by Edward M Hallowell and John J. Ratey. Watch: Escape Velocity ($1.99 at iTunes); ADD and Loving It?!

Best advice: Be prepared to re-negotiate your relationships (Solden, paraphrase) and allow yourself to watch TV because it does all the work for you (Hallowell, paraphrase).