"Is there something wrong with me?
Sit around, wait for this feeling to pass
Having lost all direction
Under false application"

Decades of dancing around the worst parts of myself have culminated in a reckoning of sorts.
Call it what you will.
Peering through a glass, darkly.
Wandering through the dense fog trying to find your way.
Trying to focus in on one transmission in a room full of radios on different stations.
Thinking everything and nothing at the same time.

High school and University were Hell on Earth with undiagnosed ADD.
I pushed through because I was always the weak one. I had to prove to myself I wasn't.
Truth be told, I wasn't doing it for me. I just wanted to have someone recognize the effort and validate that part of me, rather than the ever-present voice that would rise to the surface assuring me no one really cares. They might pity me, but that's all i'd get from them.

The spiral. The desperation. The loneliness. The anger. The hyper fixation on a new thing. Realizing it doesn't bring me any joy. Back to searching for validation. The cycle repeating.

So what is the next fixation?
A Master's degree.
Which is where I have come to this reckoning. Am I willing to put myself through Hell again for another degree?
No.
If I am going to do this, I need all the help I can get.

And so we begin with an official--not surprising to anyone--diagnosis of ADHD.
The more I learn about this condition, the more things begin making sense. The outbursts. The frustration. The cacophony of noise constantly in my mind. The absence of thought when recalling short-term memory. The fixations and creativity. The sudden fog in my mind.

20 years of dealing with it. There's medication. I can focus.

But what if it alters who I am?
What if my creative drive disappears with the symptoms?
What if it alters my personality?
Do I become a different person?

What do I gain at the expense of other parts of me? The darkest corners of my mind activate as if in self-preservation mode. Warnings appear saying don't trust the meds. While the other parts of my mind say, this is the only way to complete this degree. It must happen.

And here I sit in contemplation, considering condemning myself to another grueling two years of university studies.