Am I good enough at being useless?

I’m nervous as hell about sharing this, but I’ll put it out there in the hope it brings comfort to somebody else. I promise you it has a happy ending.

My thought process always went this way.   

Was it all that bad, really?

To get diagnosed you work through a list with a psych, ticking boxes. Some boxes I knew I’d leave empty. I’ve seldom been impulsive in a reckless way, and never messed up my life so badly I couldn’t fix it. I wasn’t the kid who chucked their chair or tried to set fire to things. Why would I have done that? There was always more interesting stuff going on in my head.

If it wasn’t that bad, didn’t tick enough boxes, was I simply lazy?

Losing things or turning up late to meetings. Meandering between tasks or simply abandoning them. Giving tasks my best shot but still failing – because I’d put them in my calendar, set a phone alarm for double protection, but still gotten absorbed in something else. Couldn’t I just will myself to stop?

If I did have a problem, could I ever admit it?

There are some things you can’t say out loud, not if you want to be trusted at work. You downplay it instead, making excuses, including to yourself. And how could you explain it anyway, that you can run a project just fine but don’t know where to start wiping down the kitchen bench?   

And if I grudgingly admitted to a problem, how could I justify sucking up resources?

How could I live with myself – me with my lost car keys and misread bus timetables – if I pushed someone with greater need, someone recklessly impulsive and truly messy-lifed, further down the diagnostic queue?

Even if I got the diagnosis, how was I meant to feel after?

Isn’t a diagnosis like being told the thing you called your personality, even the bits you liked, is really a set of symptoms, or even a design flaw? And what if I took pills? Would I give up my good times – when my brain is a powerhouse and a delight, smashing out writing like it’s nothing at all – as well as my bad?

My thoughts always brought me back to the same place, trying to calculate the bang-on level of useless: the level that gets you help but doesn’t rob you of your self-esteem. I weighed up the arguments over and over, never resolving them one way or other, unable to turn thinking into action. I got stuck.

Getting stuck is a hallmark of my brain. In fact, it’s the hallmark. I could’ve told you all my other quirks, but I never realised this one – or not until a short while ago. There’s a story behind it. I did something out of character for me, and that I don’t recommend.

My friend offered me her pill. I’d been confiding in her, things I’d never shared with others and had barely admitted to myself. She listened. I’d been faffing for years, in a circular conversation with myself, and we could both see it. She was confident I was a member of the special club. She even said she’d bet her house on it.

I honestly didn’t know how else to break out of the faff. I looked down at the pill, thanked my friend for it and swallowed.

Yes, I’m a faffer – but I’ve also tried so hard. I do the right things. I make colour-coded to-do lists. I stick carefully to routines, from the same breakfast to the same bedtime, because if I stay on a familiar track my brain is less likely to wander. I exercise for the mental boost, so much that I run out of hours in the week. I drink unholy amounts of coffee, and maybe that’s not a virtue, but I reckon caffeine’s better than other substances I could be taking. Sometimes all this works. When it doesn’t, I feel ashamed.

Shame, borne quietly, has been my refrain, ever since I was a muddly little girl, daydreaming about life’s wonders while moving slowly through its boring-as-shit necessities. I stayed out of attention, being too scared of adult wrath to play up. I didn’t fail, mostly, but nor did I really succeed. I never let anyone down on purpose, and I could never explain myself after I did. I’d just look down at my feet until the shame passed, regretting my mistake but always knowing there would be another.

The pill did nothing for me. I hadn’t expected it to, so I wasn’t disappointed. If there was a coda to my chain of thoughts, it was this: meds aren’t miracles. Life goes on, and mine’s been liveable enough. It was an easy Sunday morning, and the weather was better than you’d expect for the time of year. I looked through the window and sipped at my second or third coffee.

Almost an hour went by. I faffed a little, this time while loading the dishwasher, because it’s always hard to know what to stack first, plates or cups or bowls. I had another coffee, and possibly one more. I went to take a shower, bracing for the effort to calculate all the steps of the task.

This is when the extraordinary happened. Somehow, and for the first time in my fifty years, the shower demanded nothing of me except to get in and dry myself after. That was it: I simply did it. No faffing. I didn’t know brains could do this. The pill had worked.

It’s hard to capture exactly what it’s like – seeing for the first time your thoughts were stuck, and in the very same moment, unsticking them. I’ll illustrate it the best way I can, with stories and laughter and as little self-seriousness as I can manage.

This is me and my brain in the time before meds.

Anna: The washing needs to go out.

Brain: Not so fast, buster. We haven’t thought this through.

Anna: What’s to think through? We do it the same way every time.

Brain: Well, have you figured out the order you’re going to peg the items?

Anna: Why does there need to be an order?

Brain: THERE NEEDS TO BE AN ORDER.

Anna: [Sighs]

Brain: Also, there aren’t enough clothes pegs.

Anna: I know that. We could get more at the supermarket, but whenever we go to the supermarket, you complain.

Brain: I don’t like the supermarket. There’s just too much going on. Too much noise. Too many people. Worst of all, too many choices. And every time we go to the supermarket, we forget something.

Anna: We wouldn’t forget if we made a list.

Brain: You know I don’t do supermarket lists. It’s faff. I HATE faff.

Anna: Well, do you also hate clothes pegs, you dick? Because we don’t have enough of them. We were trying to talk about the damn washing, remember?

Brain: Oh, yeah. We were. Right you are. But what about post-war social policy? Wouldn’t it be nicer to spend the afternoon researching post-war social policy?

Anna: You’re on thin ice, buddy.

This is me and my brain in the time after meds.

Anna: Could we put the washing out?

Brain: Yes.

Anna: Thank you for your cooperation. Maybe we can be friends.

After the pill, it took me a while to find my bearings. When I did, I laughed. I cried a little, and I may yet cry more – but above all, like it was the lightest thing in the world, I just laughed.

When I’m not cocking up clothes pegs, I’m a professional person. I’ve quietly worked my way to a modest level of success. This means I’m schooled in the art of the CV, and in the interview that should follow it. I know the standard tricks.

If you’re asked about your shortcomings, phrase your answer carefully. Admit enough to prove you’re self-aware: nobody’s perfect. Then show how proactive you are, taking responsibility and learning from your mistakes. It’s about how you pitch it. A shortcoming isn’t really a shortcoming, but a stepping stone to an even better you.

Diagnosis is a different kind of CV, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll overprepare it, spending anxious hours that threaten to dissolve into faff. You’ll construct yourself again, pulling from your sometimes-ragged memory. You’ll start at the beginning, with school reports if you have them, moving to your teenage then adult years. You’ll have boxes you’ll need to tick, and it’ll be hard, but you’ll need to find evidence for each. You might see your shortcomings weren’t always a stepping stone to a better you.

There’s this thing called rejection sensitivity, but the phrase doesn’t capture the experience. For the folks who feel it worst, it’s almost physical. As you work at your CV of shortcomings, it’ll needle you. Push it away if you can. Remember there’s a counterbalance to everything – and for every frustration you caused, someone who loved you through it. Maybe that part of your story doesn’t fit in a tick box, but it’s true.

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t stop to comment on the politics of diagnosis. Neurodiversity often goes hand in hand with something called ‘justice sensitivity’. Simply put, this means being bothered by unfairness more than the average person – maybe to the extent of being gnawed by it, or even kept awake. And if justice sensitivity is a design flaw of mine, I couldn’t care less.  

My own personal brand of faff involves getting stuck on small things, like the order in which to hang out washing, but doing big things with immediacy to sidestep the stress of the decision. Without much in the way of research, I settled on the same private company used by my friend who’d given me her pill. The company offered two pathways: an expensive one, with a weeks-long waiting list, and a more expensive but quicker one.

Of course, there was another option: the public health system. Estimates of wait times vary, but they always run to months – and months are a long time in the lives of people who may be feeling downright desperate.

How did things end up this way? As best as I can figure out, there’s a chain of problems.

Diagnosis is often followed by meds that are based on stimulants, including amphetamines. Stimulants can be used recreationally (and not just for the purposeful hanging out of washing, which I consider recreation). Sometimes recreational use can be harmful.    

Way back in 1999, the government got worried about recreational use and changed the law, so only psychiatrists and paediatricians could prescribe the meds. That left GPs out in the cold. And with only so many psychiatrists and paediatricians to go around, queues started to build. Whenever there’s a queue – unmet demand, especially of desperate people – there’s a market opportunity. Enter private companies.

The current government has recognised the problem and changed the rules in February. Now GPs are allowed to prescribe – but GPs are conscientious people. They need to feel confident they know what they’re doing, and that takes training and time. Anyone who thought the queue might disappear overnight has been disappointed.[1]

I have a deep allegiance to our public health system. Going private sat uneasily with me. But if I’d worried about pushing someone more needy down the diagnostic queue, I shouldn’t have. The dynamics of this market are far worse.

To talk about money makes me uncomfortable, but this conversation needs to happen, and it needs to happen urgently.

I paid a grand for diagnosis: the most expensive option. I took the money from the account I use to save for a replacement car – something tidier than my shitty old Prius, scraped so many times by my inattentive parking, each mark a record of my failings, that I’m mortified to drive it. I paid the grand because I had it, because I hold down a job, because I could. I paid to join a queue nobody’s ever nudged down, because it’s only for people with means. Others need not apply.  

I paid a grand, and that’s obscene, but it’s still a bargain. Others say they’ve paid up to three.

I paid without hesitation, but not without guilt. In this game, impulsivity that isn’t reckless, a life not fully messed up, is privilege – and when push came to shove, I clung to mine.   

When the psych’s report came back I didn’t really read it, or not properly. I lacked the concentration, but more than that, I lacked the reserves. I skipped to the punchline then skimmed backwards, through the description of some fifty-year-old woman – not the most useless, not the least – and looked past the clinical words for something that might make her warm to me, recognisable or loveable.

And I found it. Anna is “kempt”, apparently, and “appears younger than her stated age”.

I laughed. This part of the diagnosis felt a little ropey, but I decided I’d take the win.

Maybe I’m imagining it, but music seems slightly different.

My fidgeting has always been subtle: clicking my pen, waggling my foot, swivelling my chair soothingly from side to side. The oddest of my fidgets, usually concealed under my folded arms, is the musical one. Music burrs in my head a lot, thanks to years of lessons as a kid. It needs an outlet, and it finds its way to my fingers. In small flickers, they play an invisible instrument.

The lessons taught me to analyse music, but my brain always took things too far, until analysis felt like autopsy. Listen with a different brain and the workings are still there – but they stop jostling against each other and demanding attention, weaving together instead. It’s kind of beautiful.

I was wrong about music. I was wrong about a bunch of stuff.

Time will tell if my writing stays sharp. This piece wasn’t easy in places, sticking and unsticking, but I made it to the end, and I’m satisfied enough with the work. And writing aside, life goes on. The washing gets hung and the dishwasher gets stacked. It’s easier, that’s all – and with energy spare, there’s more to direct towards the mahi and people that I love.    

I can’t lie: I wish I’d sometimes been a better worker, better friend, and most of all, a better mum. Even so, like I told you before, I’ve never messed up my life so badly I couldn’t fix it. It’s a winning streak I plan to continue.

In any case, things have changed. These days, batshit is better than boring. Caring too much for justice is better than caring too little. My world has wrapped around me, sometimes unsure quite what the hell I’m doing, but cheering me on anyway. If I’ve let people down they’ve never left me, but only enriched me. I have colour, aroha and joy. It’s gotten easier, all of it, and it’ll get easier again.

There is no design flaw. Part two of my life is calling, and shame’s not invited.

[1] Few doctors offering ADHD diagnosis despite rule changes | RNZ