Life's Puzzle
/Nearly two months ago I was diagnosed with ADHD.
I'm 48.
You might wonder why someone even bothers being evaluated at this stage in life…
Self portrait piece from college.
I see life as a puzzle, made up of experiences, personality traits, passing emotions, relationships, interests, jobs, etc. “Pieces of the whole" was a theme of my senior art show in college. To go through life is to gather pieces and complete your puzzle. If you’re fortunate, you'll feel a sense of completion, or near completion at least, before you die.
Yet for many years, it felt like I wasn't making progress on this puzzle. I had all these pieces, but I couldn't make sense of how they fit together, or if they were even pieces to MY puzzle. The edges felt incomplete, and everyone knows that framework gives the puzzle its shape and allows you to fill in the rest. It felt like I was forcing pieces from other puzzles to fill in the gaps, and while I could wedge some of them in, the picture was definitely not looking like the one on the puzzle box.
Getting evaluated and diagnosed with ADHD, especially as a woman, is to realize how many puzzle pieces weren't MY pieces. Or maybe they are but I've spent years working on the puzzle I thought I SHOULD be putting together, either because of expectations from society, folks throughout my life, or my own beliefs about myself.
It’s a disconcerting feeling, trying to figure out which puzzle pieces actually belong. There's been unexpected grieving, wondering how much time I've wasted, trying to make the wrong pieces fit or discounting pieces of myself.
But I still believe in the puzzle, and sometimes you have to make adjustments in order to keep making progress. So that's what I'm doing. I'm letting go of pieces that don't fit, while finding grace and appreciation for the ones that I thought didn't fit or that I didn't want to fit.
And although I can't see the whole picture of this puzzle just yet, as I remove many of the “shoulds" I tried to make fit, I grow more certain that the slightly chaotic yet colorful imagery of my puzzle will find a sense of order.
I wonder if my puzzle will make sense to anyone but me.
Then again, maybe it shouldn't.
