The Tangle and the Truth: What ADHD Feels Like for Me.
Some people think ADHD is just being forgetful.
Or distracted.
Or bouncing off the walls.
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But for me?
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It’s more like Pink Floyd’s lyric:
“I’ve got thirteen channels of sh*t on the TV to choose from…”
Except in my brain, it’s more like fifty — and they’re all playing at once. Loud. Relentless. Static. No remote in sight.
It feels like having a hundred brilliant ideas a day, and the crushing weight of never finishing most of them.
It feels like walking into a room and forgetting why.
Like standing in front of a task, frozen, because your brain has decided to run every possible thought except the one you need.
Like reheating the same cup of coffee three times and still not drinking it.
It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that my brain cares about everything. All at once.
And it’s exhausting.
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Growing up, I wasn’t the “quirky creative” ADHD kid.
I was the “naughty but clever” one.
Hyperactive. Impulsive. Disruptive.
The kind of child teachers labelled as potential with a side of problem.
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In the 1970s, ADHD wasn’t even on the radar in the UK. My parents thought I was a genius. The school sent me to an educational psychologist. He said I was “above average” — not gifted, but anxious. Nobody saw the truth hiding underneath.
I sat grammar school entrance exams because my parents dreamed bigger for me than our council estate ever could.
I hyperfocused, got a scholarship, and found myself surrounded by rich kids and posh accents.
On day one, I felt like an alien.
I made my parents visit me at break time every day just so I could survive the anxiety. I didn’t belong — and I knew it.
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ADHD doesn’t just make you scattered.
It makes you sensitive.
To failure. To rejection. To not being enough.
(And trust me — I carried all three like a second skin.)
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By the time I was a teenager, life was a fog of grief, expectations, and chaos.
When my dad died at 17, I imploded. Panic attacks. Numbness. Rage. Drugs.
I didn’t have the words for what was happening in my brain — I just knew something was really wrong with me.
I even asked a friend once if he ever had more than one thought going on at the same time in his head.
He looked at me like I was mad.
And I thought, maybe I am.
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But here’s the truth I wish I’d known then:
I wasn’t broken.
I was wired differently.
And God wasn’t waiting for me to “get it together” before I came to Him.
Jesus didn’t say “Fix your focus, then follow me.”
He just said “Come.”
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And I did.
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I found grace at 49.
I found a diagnosis at 52.
And for the first time, my whole life started to make sense.
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Now I know:
The fog? The burnout? The brilliance and the breakdowns?
They weren’t flaws. They were clues.
And they were never beyond the reach of grace.
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If you feel scattered, inconsistent, or not enough — you are not alone.
There’s space for your story here.
There’s space for your beautiful, brilliant, tangled brain.
And there is a God who sees you completely — and loves you as you are.
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Welcome to Distracted by Grace.
Let’s walk this road together.