right now i am reading a book, it is called, “the curious incident of the hound in the night-time”.
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (Mark Haddon)
it was recommended to me by my prof in design schoo, don nissen, who has Very Good Taste in almost everything.
it is written from the perspective on an autistic 15 year old, and, while it is not written by an autistic savant person, it supposedly does a fairly good job of capturing how the world looks and feels to such a human being.
(some disagree, that’s not the point of this post)
in any case, i was struck, again, by how much ADHD feels like autism, as i understand it, only to a lesser degree.
i don’t have the gifts an autistic person can have, but neither do i have some of the very debilitating drawbacks they experience.
but i do feel the way the narrator of this book feels.
i can’t, or at least won’t, go into great detail about what it is that is striking this chord, but i will say that i am saddened all over again to know that there are many who simply don’t think of ADHD as a real”thing”, so-to-speak, but whom are totally willing to accept autism as such.
those of us with ADHD are different than those of you without it.
we are better at some things and worse at others and the things we’re not great at are things that adults are expected to be good at.
in fact, lots of the things that ADHD makes me NOT good at are the things that define “being an adult”.
so it is heartbreaking and hard to have my gifts overlooked because i’m “a child” in so many other areas.
but i am not a child, i am a 33 year old man with a brain that is wired in such a way that i am spontaneous, creative, sensitive to people’s feelings, and who cares about people more deeply than i think others can imagine.
and, even though most of the time i believe society’s opinion that i’m a child who can’t do much on my own, in my more lucid moments, i know that i am, in fact, pretty great.
but i wish i could see math in my head.
(other than 6th dimensional geometry with is, trust me, useless to understand, sigh)
Sometimes being an adult seems to mean that you are not spontaneous, not always worried about others feelings, and do not care for others as deeply as we should… Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone took the time to find a little bit of the child within? I truely think so.
i love this book. it’s funny because i relate to the character in some strange way as well.
if you’re so inclined, you might pick up “extremely loud and incredibly close” by jonathan safran foer. i don’t think as a whole it succeeds quite as well as “curious incident” (mostly because i felt maybe like he exploited the 9/11 incident to make a book) but it is still incredibly enjoyable and the main character reminds me so much of the one in “incident.” i related to the character in foer’s novel even more.
i don’t know what this means, but i love ya brother.