What the ADHDers Aren't Doing for the Holidays

We deserve to draw lines in the sand and this year is the year we do it.

Photo by Lore Schodts on Unsplash

Let me tell you the exact day that I have the most hope for the holidays. The one day that I am excited, if not exuberant, for the upcoming five to six-week run of nonstop decorating, baking, cooking, and movie watching. It’s the day before Thanksgiving.

This hazy happiness will wear off in the following 72 hours. It’s like a weird holiday fertility period. If I don’t capitalize on it during it’s short span, it’s just…gone. I did not capitalize on it this year. For good reason.

This is my first holiday season aware of my ADHD. It is also my first holiday in my downsized apartment. In the spring, I sold my house I had for 15 years and rented a 775 sq ft. apartment in the arts district downtown.

Let’s add to that my kidding is now a college freshman out of state, and she’s coming home from college sometime during this period but also going to Cabo with her girlfriend’s family for a few days.

I have no idea how to do the holidays at this point. I simultaneously want to do everything and nothing. It is overwhelming me, and I had a little bit of a breakdown about a week and a half ago trying to figure out what to do with myself.

I came out of the mini breakdown with a clearer sense of what the hell was doing with myself for the holidays and came to this resolution: I’m doing whatever the hell I want. That’s it. That’s the list.

As part of my decision to back away from the bullshit this year, I have created us a definitive list of all the things we’re not doing this year. This is a collective. The machine against which we are raging, clearly, has been made by Hallmark.

I have had a love/hate relationship with the holidays for decades because of my ADHD and had no idea that was the reason. The holidays are the pinnacle of masking for undiagnosed ADHDers. It is our time to shine!

We get a chance to the ALL the adult things that everyone else does and make us looks like there is no way we could possibly have a brain disorder. Nope. I mean, just look at our Christmas trees! LOOK!

Photo by Denise Johnson on Unsplash

While the overarching idea of this list is that the biggest thing we’re not doing this holiday season is masking, I have details. Of course, I have details. Hi.

We’re not putting too much on ourselves.

Listen, we have space for about three things this year. Yes, totally arbitrary number, but it feels right. We’re doing no more than three things. Whatever those things are, we get to decide.

I have decided one of the things that is not making my shortlist is putting up a tree. I’m not doing the all-out decorating. We just don’t have to. The main driver for not wanting to do the tree has to deal with the storage unit.

My storage unit is well organized, but I’d have to go in there and brave it, and we all know that I could go in and come out three days later, resurrection style, like Jesus from the cave.

We’re not doing all the things without the help

Let me be clear on one thing real fast. If you are living in a house with a neurotypical person and you are bearing the brunt of the holiday cleaning, cooking, shopping, wrapping, decorating, and family tolerating, it is time to have what I call a serious CTJ with that person.

CTJ = Come to Jesus. ‘Tis the season. We are asking for help this year. Especially if we are a female type person and the neurotypical in our house is a male type person because gender roles can kiss my ass at the holidays. I ain’t havin’ it.

Three things. We’re doing three things, remember. Either other people do the other things, or they don’t get done. No one is to complain if presents are shoved under the tree, unwrapped. They do not have that right if they don’t help.

We’re not going to feel bad about not getting our Christmas cards.

We’re going to acknowledge that we’re just not card people. I once spent the entire day after Thanksgiving with a spreadsheet and cards and filled them all out and addressed them. they were super pretty.

I got great joy out of doing this. That was dopamine. I liked doing the card thing while watching an old movie. I brought them out to the car, so I could “stop by the post office real quick” to get stamps and mail them. Those cards lived in my car, unstamped, until March when I threw them out.

We’re not doing Christmas cards. No. If you bought some yesterday, go return them. We’re sure as shit not making them. You don’t need to be that person. I don’t care if you WANT to be that person. Just no.

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

We’re not engaging with the damn Elf on a Shelf

I want to hear from one parent that looks back on that and remembers it as a shining moment of their parenting. Also, I want to hear from one kid that is now a teenager or in college that is like. “Man, that really made the holidays.” It’s too much. 

We can’t remember to move the elf. We will lose the elf. We are not elf people. Elf on the Shelf was created by a bunch of neurotypical people with nothing better to do and all the time in the world to do it because they didn’t just spend two hours cleaning their fridge in a hyperfocused state.

This is the year we reclaim our holiday but hitting the pressure release valve. We have enough on our plates. We deserve to end the year not an exhausted mess with a crap ton of stuff to clean up.

Tell me what you’d add to the list of things we’re not doing.

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