I have ADHD and the Coronavirus is going to kill me. I don’t mean my body. I mean my mind. I almost lost my mind before the Coronavirus.
Now I’m back at square one — fighting not to lose the precious ground I gained these past few years.
ADHD causes hyperactivity, attention deficiency, and impulsiveness. If you look at society pre-coronavirus, you’ll see the whole world had ADHD.
Before the pandemic, everyone was constantly rushing from task to task, rarely focused. People acted impulsively, not seeing how their actions affected other people.
When I was younger, I was always jumping from one place to another. I played rough and would accidentally hurt my friends. Compared to me, the world had the worst case of ADHD imaginable. But with Covid-19, something has changed forever, and it scares me.
Before? Life was an amusement park. Now? Everything seems to stand still. Now, there are no sports, no parties, and no life. Quarantine was a vacation — at first. Then suddenly neighbors were getting sick. People started to notice things that had always been right in front of them. It scared them.
I knew the feeling. When I first got help for my ADHD I started to notice more of the world, and it rattled me.
When I started therapy for my ADHD, life became clearer. I wasn’t as hyperactive. I learned how to focus, to stop, notice and appreciate things. In quarantine, we are starting to see, really see, what is happening in the world.
One of my friends told me, “I’m ready for things to get back to normal.”
I hated to tell him things were never going to be “normal” again. We can’t go back. But we can embrace the new normal.
For instance, as life comes to a standstill, we become more aware and see how precious life really is. We see people dying, the economy crashing. We see the way our actions can inspire, or catastrophically affect others.
Parts of our lives that we teens thought would always be there, are gone. No driving lessons, no parties, no hanging with friends outside, and not knowing how colleges will handle this are all thoughts in the high school junior’s mind. That’s why I wonder if, or how, the Coronavirus will kill me? Will it destroy the thing I crave the most — social interaction with my friends?
How long before the next virus? How long before we lose more normalcy?
However, this virus has a silver lining. It changed us. I’ve seen people putting their lives in danger to help others. I know that recovery can be a slow process, because my ADHD therapy took me years.
I had to learn a different way of looking at the world around me. I hope everyone will remember what they have learned. I hope they will be willing to slow down and take notice of other people. Because we need to understand that no matter what, we’re in this together.