The Letters in ADHD - by Kristina Ronstadt

To The Little Girl Who Chased Butterflies,

I know how you struggle. I know how you try. You’re told to do something, asked to help in some small way, but no matter what you do it never gets done. Or, if it does, it’s after many attempts to do it. Small steps of the task intertwined with moments of what you are told are weakness. Moments where you forget what you are doing right in the middle of doing it, where something else grabs you and pulls you on an unexpected adventure that leads away from your task.

You’re sent outside to unload groceries from the car. On the way out, you spot a yellow butterfly fluttering around the orange tree. There is no moment of “Wait, I have something I am supposed to be doing,” no moment of “I can watch it after I unload the groceries.” No, the instant you see that beautiful butterfly your whole being focuses in on it. It has captured your attention like unloading the groceries never would. Without a backward glance, you walk toward it, following it on its path through the yard. Where will it go next? It flutters to the towering lime tree, to the bougainvillea, the tea roses, and the Mexican bird of paradise. What must it be like to be that butterfly, following the currents of the air, nothing but the sweet smell of nectar and the breeze? Its life must be blissful. You imagine your life as that carefree butterfly, living freely in the sunshine.

Suddenly your father calls your name, asking where you went. You turn to see him standing next to the silver SUV, gesturing to the still-open trunk. Right. You had a task to do, one that did not involve following a golden butterfly on its journey through your front yard. A practical task, to unload the groceries. A parting glance at the butterfly, and you walk to the car and grab the bags to bring inside. Your father will tell this story for years. The story of the girl who forgot what she was doing to follow a butterfly. The story of the moment he suspected you had inherited his neurodivergent traits. He found it endearing, he said. All you could feel was shame. How were you so stupid that you couldn’t complete a simple task without getting distracted? It was only a butterfly in the spring, common enough to be seen any day of the week. And yet you couldn’t stop yourself from following it, leaving the car full of groceries open.

You will have other, less beautiful moments. You will stand in the living room, sucked into the TV show you don’t even care about. If the TV is on, something about it will grab your focus, regardless of what is playing on it. Your best friend and her mother make a running joke about it when you are in middle school. “You can’t talk to her when the TV is on” they laugh, “or she won’t hear a word you say.” They’re right. They could say the sky was falling, and if the TV was on, you would continue to stare at it. Completely zoned into the glowing screen, unable to notice whatever else is happening.

It will get harder. The moments that used to be endearing become problematic. You’re older now, no longer an eight-year-old or eleven-year-old girl. Now your distractions keep you from doing homework. Your heart and your mind at war. You will come home from school and spot a book you desperately want to read. You’ll glance toward your backpack and think of your homework. “I’ll just read one chapter to unwind a bit, then I’ll start my homework.” But you never start that homework. Instead, you will be pulled into the world of your book. Your whole being becomes the characters, the story enthralling you as it unwinds. Nothing else matters. You are sucked in so completely that you barely hear your mother calling for dinner. “Just a minute, let me finish this chapter,” you call to her. But as soon as you turn back to the page, you are gone again. Hours pass. You look at the clock and realize you missed dinner. Now its midnight, and you have school in the morning. You glance at your backpack, remembering at that moment that you never started your homework. But now exhaustion weighs upon you, and you decide that you’ll do your homework at lunch. But you don’t. You talk to your friends and play, and enjoy the sunshine, forgetting about the homework completely until it’s time for class. Your teacher asks everyone to take their homework to the basket in the front, and your face grows red as everyone else gets up and takes their homework to the front of the room, while you stay in your seat with nothing to turn in. Your friends roll their eyes and chuckle, because they already know what happened. Embarrassment burns deep, and you chide yourself the rest of the day.

Senior year rolls around and you’ve somehow managed to barely scrape by. An abysmal GPA for a girl at a school for the gifted, but a passing one. You and your friends will talk about college and plans for next year. “I’m going to take a gap year” you say, “to figure out what I want to do.” Your friends already know, though. They know what you don’t. It won’t just be one year. It will be many. As those friends go off to college and get degrees, you work entry level jobs and wonder about what you could possibly even do with your life.

It will get easier. You will marry your high school sweetheart, and your son will be born the following January. Two years later, your daughter will come. As a stay-at-home-mom, you do well. Not perfect by any means, but you are happy with your little family in your little apartment. You still dream of bigger things, but now you want them to give your kids a better life, not just yourself. Your father offers to sell you your childhood home, the one where you chased butterflies. Now your children chase them in the same yard, with the same flowers attracting the same type of yellow butterflies. You decide to go to school. Finally. And in the first class you take, you discover your path. But focusing on school work is as hard as it used to be, harder now that you have two young children. You realize that these are the same struggles you’ve always had, the same ones explained by a diagnosis you received as a child but were never treated for. So, you make a phone call and finally ask for help. Because, while there is no harm in chasing butterflies, you want to build a better life for your kids. You know that in order to succeed this time‒ in order to accomplish your goals‒ you need to accept the assistance that was available all along. And the assistance you receive helps.

With Love,

The Woman Who Asked For Help