My ADHD Almost Cost Me $111.67. Literally.
It was just hiding in far corners of my apartment.
I have learned that there is an everyday cycle for people that have ADHD. Think of something you need. Go try and find the thing that you need. Find something that you don’t need. Let it distract you for 36 minutes. Sit down and forget what it was that you were looking for in the first place. Remember 49 minutes later.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
A couple of weeks ago, the adorable man I’m dating came out to visit me for 12 days. Yes, there will be an entire article on the ridiculousness of what people with ADHD do in preparing for anyone to enter their home. I’m getting there.
About halfway through the visit, he started not to feel well. Look, I’m a mom. I do mom things from time to time. That includes owning a thermometer. I am prepared to jump to this man’s care as quickly as I can get to my junk drawer.
I have started a rule in my house. Everything that does not have a home goes in the junk drawer. Everything. Why? Because there is only one place for things to be in my home. In its assigned and well-established place or the junk drawer.
I firmly hold that it is absolutely permissible for people with ADHD to have controlled chaos. If we are expected to have controlled control, you can find us in the closet in the fetal position.
The issue I am still having with my apartment is that I moved into it in April after selling my house that was 1000 sq. ft larger than my apartment. It was a disaster of a move and I threw shit all over the place. I am still trying to find things.
One thing I learned I cannot find? The thermometer. I know I have one. One does not simply throw out a thermometer when she moves. “Oh, these are useless tools to keep in places like a bathroom cabinet or junk drawer,” said no one ever.
I was so committed (read: obsessed) with finding the thermometer that I started dragging out miscellaneous boxes and bins, certain it was there. It wasn’t, but I started noticing something.
I opened the junk drawer. Three Starbucks cards. Bin in the master closet? Four more. Box in the front closet? A few more. My purse? More still. Old purses in the back of my closet? Yep. Loads of them.
I spent a good 45 minutes diving into sections of my apartment and coming out and placing gift card after gift card on the coffee table by this befuddled man.
When I was pretty certain I had found every last spot where Starbucks cards go when they die, I had a total of 12 cards. When I entered all of them into my phone app, they totaled $111.67.
What in the name of all things holy had I been doing with these? One of the cards had a sticker on it that said that if I used it before 12/31/11 they would donate $.05 to the Global Fund. I had a completely unused $20 gift card in my midst for 11 years. 11 years.
I don’t go to Starbucks often, but I am sure I have gone enough times in the last 11 years to have spent $111.67 that I didn’t have to.
This is just one of the many things that makes me feel like a hazard to myself and that I should not be trusted to do anything. Of course, having been diagnosed, I know none of that is true. I’m just neurodivergent. That’s all.
The beauty of understanding how my brain works is that now I can plan for it. I KNOW that if I get a gift card and I do not immediately add it to ApplePay or something like that, I will lose it to a lack of object permanence and be forced to live without lattes.
And, honestly, having all that money on my Starbucks app means that I can reward myself for doing the actual thing I needed to, because I did the thing I needed to.
Making changes is a slow, frustrating progress. It is every damn day at a time. It is one breath at a time. One heartbeat. There are days I feel like a complete failure. Only now, I have a plan for those days. I’m going to Starbucks.
TL;DR? Go look in your old purses. You got some gift card money in those babies.
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