Protecting Your Fun Side
We were laughing in a way that only two people who really get each other can.
Those high on life moments that never leave the memory tank, even if you can't remember what you were laughing about at the time.
We'd been out for a girlie dinner, and yes we'd had a couple of glasses of wine too. Happy, carefree and giggly. So we arrived at the small gathering after everyone else had properly arrived and settled with their preferred tipple on hand.
'She' was someone I'd never met before but because it was such a small gathering I thought everyone there would be lovely, hand picked by the host whom I knew very well, and was a master at getting the right people together in a room to have a fun time. She watched my friend and me laughing and joking together. Her face was still, her eyes hard and unsmiling. As we were taking our coats off to join the group she said “Whatever it is it can't be that funny.”
I felt cut dead. I can count on one hand the number of cold backhanded comments - especially from people I don't know - that I've ever received like that (and that doesn't include the thumb). I'm glad to say that she only took the wind out of me for a moment, then my usual lightheartedness returned, But I've never forgotten it.
ADHD can bring an enormous amount of childlike lightheartedness and fun. It's a part of me that people love (most people anyway, and certainly the friends I surround myself with).
I recently saw someone post this statement and I immediately attached it to that memory.
If someone gets excited about something and someone makes them feel stupid for being excited about it, they’re not a nice person.
A few words from a complete stranger that became a memory that survived for years.
Because another thing about ADHD, we can suffer from something called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria - an intense sensitivity to perceived criticism or rejection - which can be crippling for some. I'm lucky it's not so extreme for me. But boy did I feel the cut of that comment for a moment. It was the shock that someone could be so deliberately unkind and seemingly want to shit on other people having fun.
So many neurodivergent women have spent years learning how to be more acceptable, more restrained, less enthusiastic, less loud, less themselves.
And yet some of the most wonderful qualities associated with ADHD can be that spontaneity, curiosity, enthusiasm, playfulness and capacity to find enormous joy in the smallest things.
Some people will think I'm too much. They are welcome to go and find less elsewhere.