“Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner, sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in…”
That lyric has always echoed parts of my life moments of feeling misunderstood, isolated, and invisible. When I try to talk about my thoughts, I often lose people’s attention. I can literally see their eyes glaze over, and that makes me pull back even more.
Living With ADHD and Finding My Words
I was only recently diagnosed with ADHD and started on atomoxetine (Strattera’s generic). Before that, I was never medicated for it. For years, I’ve been on fluoxetine (Prozac) and prazosin (Minipress) to manage depression and nightmares from complex PTSD.
Prazosin was prescribed back in 2018 after one of the darkest times of my life the loss of Dexter and Luna. Before that, doctors tried trazodone for sleep, but it didn’t help. The nightmares didn’t stop right away, but eventually the prazosin dulled their sharpest edges.
Starting ADHD medication feels different. It isn’t a stimulant, and I’m still figuring out if it’s really helping me. My doctor extended my trial period, and we’ll decide together if it makes sense to continue. Sometimes I wonder who I would be without medications at all, but then I remember what life was like before. These aren’t magic fixes, but they’ve been lifelines.
Trauma: The Body Remembers
Most of my deepest traumas are tied to my hometown. Living there felt like walking through the ruins of my own past. When I finally read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, it was like someone handed me a map to what I already knew: trauma doesn’t just live in the mind it embeds itself in the body.
That book put words to what I’ve lived: the overwhelming emotions, the way grief and fear don’t just fade with time, and how exhausting it is to keep trying to “put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
This past year, grief struck again with the loss of my Aunt Suzy and my grandmother within just three weeks of each other. It felt like another round of life’s punches, on top of everything else.
The Need to Be Understood
I’ve often asked myself: does anyone really know me? Therapists have come and gone, and I’ve been in different groups over the years, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about family, friends, the people closest to me.
There are times when I feel like I’m “too much” for people too intense, too messy, too emotional. And yet what I want most is to not have to filter myself. To be able to talk in circles, stumble on my words, and still be understood.
Paula is one of the few people who gives me that space. With her, I don’t feel judged. Even when I can’t find the right words, she somehow understands. Maybe it’s because we both share trauma, or because we both live with ADHD. Whatever the reason, it matters.
Music as a Lifeline
If there’s one constant in my life, it’s music. Songs have always been my friends mirrors that help me understand myself. I listen not just for the lyrics but for how they resonate in my own life.
While writing this, I’ve had songs playing in the background: “Messy” by Lola Young, “Zombie” by Yungblud, “Black” by Pearl Jam, and “Interstate Love Song” by Stone Temple Pilots. Each one connects to different parts of me, different emotions I can’t always explain in plain words.
That’s the thing about music: it makes me feel less alone. It helps me process the parts of myself that are difficult to speak out loud.
Closing
I don’t write this for pity. I write because I want to be understood. I want to be seen in the fullness of my story ADHD ramblings, grief, intensity, music, and all.
Healing is messy. Life is messy. But I’m still here, and I’m still finding ways to make sense of it one song, one memory, and one word at a time.