Part of what separates ADHD-havers from the merely forgetful is that for us, to use DSM parlance, the symptoms “have a significant impact on daily life and functioning.” When I was a kid “significant impact” meant being in perpetual trouble: always being late, never hearing the assignment, enduring depressingly frequent teen-magazine “It Happened to Me”–type moments (I was often surprised by my period’s arrival). Teacher’s pet I wasn’t: “Clearly Rae has not been,” snapped my sixth-grade math teacher, flinging an eraser at my desk, “PAYING ATTENTION, so the whole class will have to wait while I go over this again.”
By high school, I had fully internalized the fact that I was a screwup and began acting the part with teenage gusto. “Fuck you, fail me,” I spat at a particularly hateful teacher, middle fingers aloft. “It’s not my first time.”
Then I’d go home and cry. Repeated failure is destructive. It chips away at your self-confidence and eats at your resolve. It makes you hate yourself.
The thing is, ADHD doesn’t care about your gender. A huge part of the different treatments of people with ADHD is rooted in gender role expectations. Your behaviors as a child are interpreted a certain way depending on the gender you’re assigned.
When I talk to my ADHD friends, we have the same problems, the same difficulties, unrelated to gender.
Girls are less often diagnosed because they are not seen, because girls learn early on to be quiet and hide their faults. While boys get the excuse of ‘being just a wild boy’.
And while the experience of a person who identifies and is read as female with ADHD is valid and exhausting, it is not just because of ADHD, it is because we fail to fill in the role of the perfect women. It is because society is somewhat okay with the forgetful, chaotic man (to a point) but much less forgiving when it comes to what they think a woman should be.
