#believe you me i wouldnt be Myself without my ADHD!! but of course it comes w/ its cons esp as im unmedicated

[hyp3rfixation-h3ll]

fun fact i was SO scared i'd lose interest in botbots quickly bc of my ADHD making it hard to stick to ONE thing for long periods of time (dopamine and whatnot), but flash forward to now and im making fanfiction about it and posting it and making redesigns of the characters and writing literary analyses for it (WHICH I HAVENT DONE SINCE I WAS LIKE 11-13 ON DEVIANTART/AMINO) and i 4got how good it feels to latch onto something and have it be Your Brand until the heat death of the universe

[raevenlywrites]

Okay, so. The point I wanted to make earlier was something like this:

TL;DR: Not knowing that hyperfixations were a thing hurt me, and cost me not only enjoyment of a thing, but more serious social and emotional growth potential. More kids need access to a broader range of what Normal is, and Normal needs to be opened up and expanded to include things that are perfectly harmless because the harm of excluding those things is immeasurable.

(Did I just put a tldr at the START of my post? why yes I did. why? because i’m about to drop this entire damned ESSAY under a read more because it’s dash destroying (think of it as an abstract on a scientific paper) ... (no, it is nothing like an abstract on a scientific paper. wtf did I say that) ... (anyways))

(Can you tell its an ADHD night? are there enough parenthetical asides in this yet?)

...

(no)

.

ANYWAYS

When I was a teen, I read a book called In The Forests Of The Night. I’m sure you’ve heard me mention it before, but believe it or not, it was only TONIGHT that it occurred to me that this book and its fellows is my hyperfixation. Because, for the first TWO THIRDS OF MY LIFE, I didn’t know to think of myself as someone with hyperfixations. Hell, I didn’t even know what a hyperfixation was. I am one of the countless adults who has self diagnosed as ADHD or autistic or SOMETHING, and this is the story of how not having a diagnosis growing up hurt me.

So. I read this book. My now-wife-then-unbeknownst-crush gave it to me as part of our ignorant teen courtship. You’ll like this, she said, trying to share an interest with me in order to bond. Thank you, I said, not knowing I wanted to smooch her face. Unimportant, but I like reminding myself when I look at back my teen years how queer I already was without knowing. And this story is mostly for my benefit of getting it off my chest, so smoochy thoughts included.

So I read this book. It’s short, 200 pages or so, and if I’m honest with myself as an informed adult, nothing spectacular. It’s not bad, but its not ground breaking. None of the books are. But they broke new ground in Me, and what grew out of them has literally shaped the course of my entire personality.

Raev, I hear you say, it’s not great to base your entire personality on a bit of pop culture.

Shut up, I said, I’m telling this story and anyways insert-edgy-media-here dudebros have been doing it forever. Anyways.

So I read this book. I read it again, and again. I read all the books that went with it, but I stayed especially hung up on Forests. Why? Partially because it was the first one I read. Partially because the MC and I share a name, and therefore in my little teen head a connection. It was the first time “Rachel” felt like an identity, instead of just an identifier, and one that way too many of my classmates shared. Rachel was a badass, stifled by her Christian upbringing and the expectations of the day on women. I was a badass, stifled by my Christian upbringing and the expectations of the day on women. Rachel became a vampire, spiteful and spitfire the entire way. She did it on her own terms (so my teen reading of the text went), spurning every attempt of her kind to show her the ways of the vampire. She had a nemesis, a clear, concrete reason for her pain, and took charge of that pain and overcame it to be a complete and utter badass by the end of the book (again, so my teen reading went. Part of the problem here was my teenness. Part of it was my neurodivergence, which I will get to (you didn’t think this would be a SHORT story, did you? I warned you I have ADHD and that this was my hyperfixation; how did you think this was gonna go?))

So I identified heavily with the protag, and with its shocking author. This lifechanging book was written by a teen, like me! Holy cats, I said to myself, why, if she can do it, so can I! I had just started writing my own first novel (a shameless retelling of Star Wars, hyperfixation of my grade school years), and immediately trashed it to write my own vampire thing. Because vampires were clearly IT and I was gonna be a cool badass author hero, just like the MC of the second book.

Then the shapeshifter books came out, and so did I.

It’s really unrelated, but that was a fun transition, and as previously stated, author-type. Anyways.

So I came out to my girlcrush, angsted about that a lot, and continued to gobble up the books. Did you know there’s a website, she said. There’s like a whole fan community and everything.

Now, part of the problem here was being part of the first generation on the internet. It was relatively new, and so stranger danger and not being entirely comfortable on the internet and all that had its part to play. But this is also where the hyperfixation finally comes into play.

I liked Nyeusigrube A LOT. A lot a lot. So much so that I made my own conlang, my own mythos, my own entire story universe patterned after this one but not exactly this one. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me to self-insert, just to shamelessly copy. That one I can’t explain, but this one I can now understand through the lens of an adult.

Nyeusigrube was my especially special interest, and I had no idea that was a normal, healthy thing.

So tangled up in all this was my raised-too-conservative freak out about being Not Straight. I had finally figured out I liked girlfriend, if not that I was incredibly bisexual yet, and that was a Big Deal. Super cool author I hero-worshiped was one of those “Do I want to BE her or just want her?” kind of idolations, but again, didn’t know that at the time either. So these two very normal things that I knew NOTHING about were getting tangled together in a rat king of Issues with a generous slathering of Shame glue to hold them all together. Add to it the paranoia/RSD/general not-great-at-social sides of my neurodivergence, and basically I had decided I was Too Weird and liked this book Too Much and if I so much as LOOKED at the websites/forums/etc, everyone would know and that would be Bad.

Did I have a clear idea of how that would look? Not really? I didn’t need to. Just the thought of checking out the fansites was enough to send me into a panicking guilt/shame spiral about how much I enjoyed the books. Everyone will KNOW, I thought, and it will be BAD. The End. It was Not Normal how much I liked the books and I will freak everyone out.

So.

If I had just KNOWN that hyperfixations were a thing, I might have still felt weird, but I don’t think I would have AGONIZED (and I do mean fucking AGONIZED) over how shockingly Not Normal my level of interest went. I might have still felt bad, because I didn’t have a diagnosis, and therefore probably wouldn’t have given myself permission of admit I had a hyperfixation, but at least I wouldn’t have wallowed in ignorance. Now, if I’d had the knowledge and the diagnosis, I probably would have still been too shy to interact, but I wouldnt’ have wasted hours of my life in panicked/guilt/shame spirals. If I’d have a diagnosis and a support group? If I’d had a diagnosis and been raised with the normalization of being queer? If I’d had medication, role models, a safe place to open up and communicate, so on and so on? Like, you get the idea, right?

I consider myself immeasurably lucky that my love of writing and vampires and high school girlfriend survived all this. (My equally intense boy crush of the time did not (not because I don’t like boys but because I fell down another hyperfixation spiral and no PERSON should ever be subjected to that but I digress)). As I said, this is my especially special hyperfixation. I can’t imagine how many hours of enjoyment I might have gotten out of the forums, the fan arts, the roleplaying groups, the FRIENDSHIPS, my gods, can you imagine the friendships? Anyways, what I’m really saying is that it caused me real emotional Pain and Trauma, thinking something was Wrong with me for my level of interest. A lot of people have regrets about like not trying out for the team or not asking so and so out or whatever, but mine is a stupid fansite. I have deep and palpable regrets about letting my fear and shame keep me from something so harmless and silly, and as I said before I don’t think I have a concise or tidy ending, but this was what I wanted to say on the matter so there it is.

TL;DR: (hey, didn’t you already post this part? Yes, yes I did. I’m doing it again, but this time its the In Conclusion bit instead of the summary bit) ...(abstract. they’re called abstracts)...(this is still FAR from a scientific paper) (ANYWAYS) Not knowing that hyperfixations were a thing hurt me, and cost me not only enjoyment of a thing, but more serious social and emotional growth potential. I was stunted and harmed by this lack of education, and I guess my point is I hope no one else has to go through that. If my stupid little story can fix a thing, I want it to be that. More kids needs access to a broader range of what Normal is, and Normal needs to be opened up and expanded to include things that are perfectly harmless because the harm of excluding those things is immeasurable. Thank you for coming to my TED talk