ADHD and agency
I am losing patience with people who don't utilize the agency they have.
I am figuring out how to write again, and I wrote a long, annoyed screed about someone using ADHD (and other intersectional identities) as a reason to not be respectful of other people's time and boundaries in an egregious way I won't go into here. Here's a slightly more patient second draft.
I have ADHD. I've had it for 25 years. Medications have not worked for me and at this point I have kind of learned to accept my brain, build supports for my executive functioning skills, and I am really proud of how I manage my diagnosis. It makes a lot of things hard, but it's my responsibility to manage while I do what I can to build a better world for my fellow neurodivergent folks. I could choose not to, and my life would be way more stressful and I would be less of service to the people I need to serve.
And I think that's the piece that gets agency a bad rap - agency sounds like personal responsibility (and maybe it is), and that sounds like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That's not it, either. We still have some form of agency inside broken systems. Life doesn't boil down neatly into everything-is-personal-responsibility or everything-is-oppressive-systemic-issues.
I teach in an urban middle school in Baltimore. Some of my kids' parents are functionally illiterate. Some of my sixth graders can barely write a sentence. Some are homeless. Some irritable from lead poisoning. Many are hungry every day or sleep all through class because nobody cares if they stay on Roblox all night. Some have adults who care very much, but are working three jobs. Many of them have ADHD.
I think of the privileged suburban leftist infighting of my last town, where half of these acquaintance's GoFundMe's of 2022 mentioned ADHD - as the reason their roommates kicked them out (they never paid rent on time and left the house a mess), they got fired for their job for not showing up on time which was ableist (they were an alcoholic like me and hungover regularly), or whatever. These were people who had parents who owned houses to fall back on, communities to crowdsource in, and money to still go to shows and bars constantly. It was so tone deaf to people who are actually in and around systemic poverty.
When I work with these kids up here in Baltimore, agency is literally life or death. I know what the homicide and heroin overdose rates are in this city. I know personally that addiction and ADHD go hand in hand. If they can't show up on time to work or pay rent on time, nobody can bail them out. We can't fix the overarching systemic issues overnight, but we can work on them, acknowledge them, teach the kids about them, and give our kids the tools to meet the expectations they agree to in school, work, and life. I am so glad our school has a robust social emotional learning team and great case management. I do my best to create systems and a physical environment for me and these kids to thrive. If they don't utilize the agency they do have as soon as possible, the future gets dark very quickly for them.
And for the privileged people I know who are just perpetually disrespectful of other people's time/energy/boundaries because they want to hide behind a diagnosis for years without choosing to do the work they need to do, it's hard to feel the sympathy I used to try to muster.
It just seems wild to hold thirteen year olds to higher standards than grown young adults with wealthy parents manage to hold themselves to, but that's the reality.
If you think this is a dig at other people with this diagnosis generally, it's not. I just know some truly immature people. If you have thoughts, you can email me at fern underscore enjoyer at tutamail dot com.