What I’ve learned from a life of Art & AHDH
Growing up, I was acutely aware that I was extremely bad at almost all things that most people found ridiculously easy, automatic even.
My spelling was a nightmare, I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) sit still to save my life and homework was an overwhelming hot mess of missed assignments and bad planning. I was a tiny, fiery, sarcastic 9-year-old with interests and humour completely inappropriate for my age and an all-consuming drive to make my mark on the world, that was generally met with disapproving eyes and remarks made with the express intent of putting my tiny enthusiastic person in her place.
So, that is how I found myself with daily life stretching out before me, with the promise of year upon year of drivel (school), that would present me each day with new ways for me to fail miserably. Because whatever it was that they wanted me to do or be, I simply didn’t have it in me (to everyone’s great dismay)
There is a unique type of anguish and shame reserved for those who struggle desperately with the mundane, while others breeze through it. And although I look back on the years before I was able to create a world of my own with a mixture of compassion and faint pain, I wouldn’t change a thing.
You see, that was one side of the coin.
The other side is this; I was possessed with creativity. When I picked up a pencil to draw or write the world around me disappeared leaving me in a state of complete focus and flow. When presented with chaos, I could create clarity and connect the dots effortlessly where others stumbled. Everything was a story to me, the wilder the better, I wanted to consume it all, to know all stories and all ways in which to tell them.
Why would anyone want to sit down and organize their socks, if you could be learning about what motivated a killer, or be drenched in wonder at tales and images of love, beauty and glory? Why do anything else, if you could be creating something out of nothing with your own bare hands? I simply didn’t get it. You see, I was in love with life and I still am today, just not the one I saw around me, or the one I was being taught to live. When you are in love with what it means to be alive to the point of barely being able to contain yourself, cleaning the kitchen is simply not a top priority.
Yes, my life with art and ADHD has come with its fair share of complications.
Or more accurately, living in a world that is not designed for the way my brain works (yet thoroughly convinced that that is a shortcoming on my behalf) has infested me with years of negative messaging. There has been deep sadness, many an unfinished everything, a tendency to drink a lot, work too much, swear more, feel driven to the point of complete ineffectiveness, feeling ever lost in translation, disappointment and exasperation from loved ones and lovers, crushing perfectionism and a feeling of ‘it’ never ever being enough resulting in complete and utter exhaustion. Eventually, with hard work and time, it has led me to create a world that fits me perfectly, a life that brings me peace and love. You see, every extreme knows its counterpart, every ineptitude, its superpower. You simply cannot expect to create a new world of one's own, with the same speed and ease as others can jump into one laid out before them.
If anything, a life lived with art and ADHD has made me acutely human, it has driven me to be independent with a deep love of creation.
It is this form of humanity, that I endeavour to express through the work I make, it is what I take with me to the classes I teach. My classes are a creative space, where students can find inspiration, their artistic voice, and each other. I do this because I firmly believe that there is nothing more powerful than to tell your story in a voice and style of your own. And I believe fully that creative space is what we need for ourselves, and our stories are what we need from each other. A life of art and ADHD has taught me that the wash-up can wait, your story can not.