TARDIS - Time Allocation and Regulation for Daily Improvement in Symptoms
Time Travelling Adventures
Living with ADHD is like embarking on a wild adventure through space and time, where the concept of 'now' or 'later' genuinely is a big ball of wibbley-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff - and yes, it often gets away from me too, Doctor.
Picture the daily commute. Most people meticulously calculate their travel time to work, I'm trying to make time travel work instead.
Other people know exactly when to leave, arriving at work as the clock declares them perfectly punctual, and therefore a good person - While I play a failing game of "time vortex manipulation" - I'm convinced that I can materialise at work in half the time it actually takes...
Spoiler alert: my delusions of TARDIS-style time travel always end with me sprinting towards the office, a bit like The Doctor running through the corridors of some alien ship - only I'm not trying to out-run an evil killing machine, I just want to defeat the clocking-in machine. I don't need to save the planet, I just want to save the judgmental looks of my colleagues by making it to my desk somewhere in the ball-park of when I'm expected to arrive.
Anxiously Early
Obviously, it gets worse! Have you ever been so anxious about being late that you arrive at an appointment a solid hour and a half early?
Despite River Song's opinion, fixed points in time very much cannot be rewritten - and an NHS appointment is demonstrably a fixed point in time - no amount of arriving early will change the future, you will not be seen before your appointment time. Take a seat ADHDer. Time to wait. So I sit here, awkward stares from receptionists, a full 90 mins early. I channel my inner Weeping Angel, I'm statue-still, not moving, made of stone - until they look away. Maybe if I'm still enough they won't notice me...
The Bear that waited
And the fun of airport anxiety! Setting off with the 'give yourself extra time' dad-mantra ringing in my ears, I arrive at the gate with so much time to spare I could binge watch an series of time travelling shenanigans - if only the WiFi was fast enough to access iPlayer.
Instead, I sit on my suitcase staring at the gate; now I know what Amelia Pond felt like waiting in her garden for the Raggedy Doctor to return - she might be the girl that waited - but I've waited longer!
Time is for other people
See, the problem is time is a construct, and that construct just doesn't apply to me. I live outside of linear time. It's either right now, or some other time. Fifteen minutes in the future, or five hours - they mean exactly the same thing to me; 'not now, later'.
ADHD Time Travellers
I'm a time traveller without the tools to manipulate the time vortex. My TARDIS doesn't work. I am perpetually late (or ridiculously early).
But I am more than my punctuality, or lack of the same.
So here's to all my fellow ADHD time travellers, bumbling through the universe without a working 'little blue box' - may your travels be filled with adventure, spontaneity, and the most probably the occasional missed train.
But remember:
"Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It's not time that matters, it's the person." - The Tenth Doctor.
Go and live, even if you're late!