No, not plagued. I am not the Plague Doctor. I am, however, just learning I have ADHD. As a girl, and later, a woman, I did things differently than my cousin. I will mention him often, as he was as close to a brother as I could ever hope to have. Only five months apart and we lived next door. Back then ADHD was considered something boys had. If they were something teachers couldn’t control in school, something that couldn’t be disciplined out of them, it kinda went under the umbrella category of Attention Defecit Disorders. Usually hyperactivity. My mom told a story of one of her classmates being left locked in a closet by the Sister because he just kept making a ruckus and she stuck him in there so the kids could focus. Only she forgot about him and was halfway home before she remembered he was still there. That was the 1950’s-’60’s. Kid probably got bored and had a nap.

When I was growing up, I had the additional influence of a strict family when it came to etiquitte, social roles (to a degree), and affection. Children were to be seen and not heard, especially girls, because no one wants a loud-mouthed broad. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have been shushed in a restaurant because I got overexcited and my voice got a tad too high, or loud, or shrill, or whatever. I learned to talk incredibly quietly. And to listen to everything. Every breath between the words. How does that person bite off their ‘t’ on good days? And when they are angry? What about when they are pissed off? When I was busy being ‘not heard’ I learned to memorize every nuance. Footfalls. Voice patterns. How to mimic.

But then I lost myself. Somewhere, somehow, while I was mimicking to avoid danger, I absorbed everyone elses idiosyncrasies, and now I am a construct of them. Isn’t that just humanity, though? Maybe somewhere, one of my friends picked up one of my defining features before I lost it.

In any event… Just like ADHD, this is my brain. It really was going a whole different way when I started this. I was going to explain how difficult school was. How now I know WHY everything was so batshit crazy right around 5th grade on, and how I wasn’t *hyperactive* but I did have trouble focusing on stuff. I figured it was the epilepsy. And the eleventy billion milligrams of various drugs they were pumping through my system daily.

Now I get to have ADHD meds… Ah, more meds…