Having ADHD is a lot like being only able to travel with a hot air balloon. When the wind is right and the weather conditions are ideal, you can effortlessly go wherever you could possibly want, with almost no energy seemingly spent. And when the weather just Will Not Do That, there’s nothing you can really do about it. Advice from people telling you to just fucking Grow Up And Learn To Steer don’t believe you when you say you’ve got no steering wheel. Your explanations of navigating different wind directions at different altitudes make no sense to them.
So you just gotta accept that some days the wind goes your way, some days it won’t. You can either exhaust yourself fighting the wind, accept that you’re going nowhere at all today, or that the direction you are currently going is not the way you planned to go. Why am I in Uruguay.
I think this is a really good metaphor, especially because it can be extended to explain how ADHD meds don’t actually make you not have ADHD, they just make it easier to manage. ADHD meds give you a little steering wheel and propeller with limited battery life, so you CAN steer a little bit! But even while you can steer, you’re still fundamentally in a hot air balloon.