I’ve been going on at some length now about my struggles with this condition, and I know that it might seem like I’ve had a rough time. But I don’t want to come across as bitter or whiny. I’ve had a great life. If I keeled over dead right now, I’d have had a far better life in my relatively few years than most people could ever dream of.
I did struggle in school, it’s true. My mother saddled me with a name I wouldn’t hand down as punishment for Josef Stalin. I had trouble early on fitting in. I’ve had trouble earning a living. But overall, I look at what I have and things I got to do, and the things I’ll get to do, and I know that I’m the luckiest person who ever lived. I really do believe that. I wouldn’t trade my life for anybody’s.
So if I go on about how hard this or that was, or how badly I did at thus and so, it’s less because I want to lay out my tale of woe for all of you to sympathize with; it’s more because a lot of children who deal with this condition haven’t been as lucky as I have. I could deal with all the shit I had to deal with, and come through it all right because I hit the lottery when they were handing out families, and countries and backgrounds. Most people have far fewer of the advantages I’ve had.
And because of those advantages, I’ve had the chance to turn this condition around and use it to help me, too. When I fell on my ass or my face, when I failed, when I got booted from college (twice), I had somebody nearby to help me get back up again. When I went off to live in a foreign country and earn $100 a month for two years, I had somebody to lean on when I came back. And when I was in Tela, I did get to use my ADD to my advantage, though I didn’t know it at the time.
I went down there in 1994, August 18, 1994, but I can see it like it happened this morning. I went there knowing nobody, never having been there before, never having been anywhere outside the U.S. other than Canada; I didn’t even speak Spanish. But I walked off the plane, down the stairs and across the runway, not even knowing how I’d get through immigration and customs without undertanding what anybody was saying to me, but I remember thinking, “I don’t know what’s going to come at over the next two years, but whatever it is, I’ll deal with it, and it’ll be fun.” And I did, and it was.
And, though some psychologists see ADD as something that only hurts, and has no advantages whatever, I lived through it, and I know that one reason I throve so there was that I did have it. Most people couldn’t walk off a plane in a country they’d never been to, where they didn’t know anybody and get by for a year or two. I could. I could because I’m used to not knowing what’s coming at me most of the time. I’m used to dealing with things that pop up out of nowhere that throw most people off their strides. That’s my life.
So, anyway... I only wanted to put it down here that I’m not bitter about this. There are things in my life I wish had gone otherwise, but I’ll say that if somebody came to me and gave me the chance to go back and do it all again without changing anything, I’d do it without another thought. It’s been fun.
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