I think it's about time for me to explain my blog name. Because it actually goes hand in hand with not only ADHD, but why I've been lax in my posts on here lately.

So. After considering (and checking availability) of a bunch of usernames that involved the terms "ADHD" and "adult" mashed together in a dozen or more different ways, I realized that I had to go a different route. Which is when I decided to use the two ADHD characteristics that simply...fit me best. You see, ADHD really does manifest itself differently in everyone. I absolutely have a good 80% (possibly as much as 90%) of the characteristics, which is why Dr. I was so shocked to find that no one had diagnosed me before now. But the ones that hit home the most for me were impulsivity and hyperfocusing.

So first: Impulsive.

From the ADHD information library: People with ADHD have "impaired motor inhibition" which means that part of ADHD is having great difficulty in keeping yourself from reacting to the things going on around you, difficulty controlling yourself from getting up and seeing what is happening outside, or down the hall. This is one of the distinguishing features of ADHD even into adulthood. This is why people with ADHD are described as "making impulsive decisions" or "failing to think before they act" or "acting without thinking about the consequences."

While *most* of the major decisions I have made in my life have been well thought out and planned (you know, minus that getting married to someone when I was practically still a teenager and hadn't even known him for two years)...I am a very impulsive person. I held on to my virginity until I was just two months shy of 18, then called up my ex boyfriend who I was still in love with one day and said "Let's do this". I have also been known to pick up my life and move 600, 900, 1200 miles away from wherever I was living at the time...and I've lost count of how many times this happened. I wasn't leaving great jobs or anything so it wasn't like I was seriously disrupting my life or the lives of those close to me, hence me not believing these moves were major problem-causing decisions, but they were still all very impulsive. I have dozens of stories like this that I will eventually tell on this blog, but there are a couple of good examples of my impulsive ADHD behaviour.

As for the hyperfocusing - everyone knows that people with ADHD have trouble focusing on things that they find uninteresting and have high levels of distractibility. I'd definitely say that I am IN the ADHD spectrum for these traits, but I'm actually far more prone to the other side of this coin - the hyperfocusing. That being, I am one of those people who focuses "very intently on things that do interest them. At times, the focus is so strong that they become oblivious to the world around them." (from ADDitude)

This is a huge problem in relationships because when you are hyperfocusing on a person, you absolutely lose yourself in that person and your relationship...but eventually the shiny newness wears off and you realize that you have just obsessed over a person who may or may not be right for you...you have focused on that person SO MUCH that you have lost all sense of yourself, of time, of other relationships...it's kind of hard to explain, because most people have lost themselves in a relationship at one point or another - but imagine that feeling and multiply it by a thousand and you have the ADHD version of truly hyperfocusing on someone. And when you hyperfocus on the wrong person, there is no gradually falling out of love/like with him or her...it just happens. You wake up one day and you're done with it, and that's not very nice to the other person because likely you just spent months and months doting on him or her and getting him or her to fall for you big time because you're *just so focused* on that relationship.

And hyperfocusing has really been my issue lately. Not that it never was before - it was, hence me being where I am today. But let's just say that lately I picked up a series of books. There are five of them published and they are all over 700 pages. It took me a month to read them. I have a full-time job and holiday season was upon us, yet I dropped everything to read these books. And then I started devouring fan theory sites, message boards, fan fiction...it was/is never ending. I honestly totally forgot about this blog and actually had to force myself to write the entry that I posted on Christmas Eve.

So there you go - two major ADHD traits and probably two of the most overlooked ADHD traits...yet they were the veritable straws that broke the camels back for me, for me deciding to get help and go on medication.