ADHD and the mid-life crisis I’m most certainly having

How I’m *not quite* adjusting to my kids needing less of me

ADHD drives us to keep digging… like a dog compulsively clawing at the earth for a bone that isn’t there. Image generated with the use of AI.

“Nothing is permanent, Mommy. Except love.” - My 7-year-old son

When I gave birth to my first child, my son, the days blended together, and time was a dense ooze in which I was permanently suspended. Minutes were hours and hours were days. My arms went numb from constantly holding him, watching episode-after-episode of Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting as early mornings bled into foggy afternoons and sleepless nights.

In the dense ooze of time during my first maternity leave with my son in early 2017.

I was in - what felt like - a perpetual state of hyperfocus on being someone’s everything. An endless condition of being vital to his existence. My hair was greasy, my body was drenched in milk and boogers and poop, and my eyes were puffy and bloodshot. I was pushed to my absolute limits of sanity, but I found so much fulfillment there.

“I was pushed to my absolute limits of sanity, but I found so much fulfillment there.” A photo of my son and me in early 2017.

As my kids grow, I’m slowly stepping out of both the figurative and literal ooze of early motherhood. It’s the reason I’m able to write again.

Writing is my passion, but being my kids’ mom - the one spooning them on the bathroom floor at 3 a.m. while they’re sick with a tummy bug - is my purpose.

Forgive the triteness of this statement, but for me, motherhood has been the most important and magical experience. (I realize this may sound like a beauty pageant answer).

But what happens when one day they start puking with that tummy bug - perhaps now called a stomach virus - and want me to leave them alone and to close the door behind me?

What happens when they no longer need me like they did?

……………

I was recently in the process of applying to grad school and made a comment to my husband that I have the urge to do something crazy like go back to become an archaeologist or an astronomer (if I could stand or - actually do - math and physics). I have an itch to throw myself wholeheartedly into something new…something demanding…something resembling a purpose.

He responded in a very serious and gentle way, “Do you think maybe you’re having a mid-life crisis?”

I laughed initially at his question. Then I thought about it more… and I sobbed.

My babies are seven and five now… not babies at all anymore. Not even close. The all-consuming days of hovering over toddlers intent on self-harm or running away with strangers are long over (for the most part, though my daughter is a still flight risk from time to time). The hours spent researching and worrying about which daycare to send them to or pumping enough breastmilk for a trip or planning a daily themed craft for them during the pandemic have all come and gone.

We dyed Easter eggs with a little less magic this year. They invited a friend to join us and while they had fun, it wasn’t first-time-ever fun. The footy-pajamas-on-Christmas-morning sparkly kind of fun. They speedily decorated their eggs then I was left to sop up colorful puddles on the kitchen floor while they rushed to get back outside.

Weekend days when they play outside for hours make the sensible and reasonably nostalgic parts of me so happy. That’s how I remember my childhood: barefoot running through the streets until it got dark and my dad whistled for us to come home. It’s exactly how it should be.

If I’m being honest, though, when they’re gone all day, I don’t know what to do with myself. The less rational, more emotional and - let’s just say it - ADHD parts of me feel a little lost, a little depressed, a little lonely.

I’m loving the opportunity to grasp back at pieces of me I thought were gone forever. Like I said, I’m writing again. I’m painting again. I’m socializing again. I’m dreaming again. But I’ll admit, I’m still reaching down for little hands that aren’t so little anymore - and that aren’t always there waiting for my reach.

While I’m enjoying every new memory we make and every new game we play - like truth-or-dare when we are out at restaurants or guess-the-temperature each morning on our walks to school - the reality is: I miss them.

And I’m sitting with that.

And I’m dealing with it by researching autism and trying to determine if I have it or by failing miserably at the mental math portions of self-administered MENSA IQ tests at 1 a.m. continuing a desperate search for myself that (very likely) may have already ended with my ADHD diagnosis. By the way, my phone died halfway through the IQ test, so I was unable to finish. I’m pretty sure that tells me everything I need to know.

So what am I still digging for?

The restlessness I feel might not be a sign I need to keep digging. It might just be a sign that digging is a part of my nature and always will be. Like a dog in the dirt, clawing at the earth for a bone that isn’t there. ADHD, after all, is a condition of insatiability.

I may always be lamenting something gone. I may always be barreling toward something new. I may always feel this burning and a frantic compulsion to keep seeking fuel for my flame. Maybe the real challenge is learning to embrace what’s here now… my daughter’s proud smile as I hoist her up and usher her across the monkey bars, my son still sighing his deepest sighs of comfort when I hold him before bed at night. Going on family bike rides through the neighborhood with no training wheels. Watching them become beautiful, independent little people.

The magic isn’t gone, really. Maybe it’s just tucked into new hiding places for me to find.

Like a real-life game of hide-and-seek for me to play. And enjoy. Now. Today.

So yes, I’m having a mid-life crisis. But it could also be that an ADHD life is one of tiny (and sometimes not-so-tiny) constant, often-self-imposed crises, and all we can do is try our best to make sure we are digging at something worthy of our time and attention, and that we enjoy the dig even if there’s no bone to be found at the bottom.

I’ll always miss my babies, but there’s plenty of dirt left here in our own backyard. I still have the absolute privilege of being their mother, and that - unlike everything else in life - IS permanent.

I’m off to seek the magic… wherever my children have decided to hide it today.

Ready or not, here I come.