Undiagnosed ADHD in your twenties, Part One- An ADD Woman Podcast

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[00:00:00] Hi, welcome to An ADD Woman podcast. This is episode 12, and I’m finally going to dive into ADHD in your twenties and tell you my own experience and the rest of my story. As much as I can muster of having ADHD, being undiagnosed and being a young, single. In your twenties.

So let’s do it.

[00:00:35]- [00:01:25]- Intro-Welcome to An ADD Woman podcast. I’m your host, Lacy Estelle, writer of all things about ADHD parenting and being an ADHD mother on mothering the storm with Lacey a stout at Lacey. Here on An ADD Woman podcast we’re going to switch it up and talk about all things to do with ADHD as an adult woman and how we deal with it…..

[00:01:44] So I became a mother at 19, which is not exactly a good age to become a mom. I do not regret it, of course, because my oldest son who will now turn 13 this year is such a blessing and a wonderful, wonderful boy. But becoming a mother at 19, freshly out of high school, um, especially after high school, that if you listened to a podcast I had in the past of ADHD in middle school and high school, I barely passed high school.

[00:02:18] I had to work really, really hard my senior year to be able to make up credits that I was missing from failed classes. And I had to let go of all the extracurricular activities that I enjoyed. All in an effort just to be able to pass senior year.

Now in high school, I was also in and out of a too serious for my age relationship.

[00:02:41] That was basically set up from the start to be very unhealthy and very toxic. So all of this to say clearly, I was like the poster child for ADHD in a girl that wasn’t recognized. And, you know, I had– everything was told to me by teachers, by parents, you know, “you just seem like you don’t care.” “I wish you would apply yourself more.”

[00:03:09] “You’re smarter than this.” You know, “why don’t you try harder?” It just must not be important to you. All those things were being told already by adults and teachers and people that I looked up to in my life. About me. So when you have this dynamic of, you know, your parents and the people that the grownups in your life that you trust constantly affirming to you, that you just don’t try very hard, or maybe you just have an innate laziness about you;

[00:03:40] It really sets you up to imagine yourself as this, not so much victim, but like just a very unworthy person.

Basically when you have ADHD and it affects your behavior and that behavior comes out looking like you’re careless and you’re inconsiderate and you’re lazy. And you know, all of these things, maybe it even makes you look kind of stupid sometimes.

[00:04:02] I know it does for me especially with the auditory processing portion. I don’t hear people correctly. I say, “what?” too often, I can’t focus on too many things at once or I’ll get really, really confused. And it makes me look like I’m an airhead. And when you have all of that already going on and [being reminded by] the grownups in your life that you trust.

[It] really sets you up to end up in relationships that affirm all of those things about you.

[00:04:29] And then when that’s your experience and you get into relationship and you first start to have all those feelings of joy and acceptance from somebody who claims to love you. It can make you very blind. Because you’ve been craving this sort of affirmation that you are enough and you are good enough from the people that you trust in your life in here.

[00:04:50] Lo and behold, you finally get it from somebody who really doesn’t have your best interests at heart, but you can’t see that because you’ve been craving this so much. And the amount of dopamine that it releases in your body and your brain is, is an amount that you’ve never experienced before, because you already have ADHD.

[00:05:07] And so you’re, you’re lacking in a lot of those chemicals.

[These relationships] almost has a very toxic and addictive effect.

And I will tell you that texting relationships and how they come about and how they interplay and all that kind of stuff. And not to mention that the relationship that I experienced myself is going to have to be a whole different episode, because if I were to divulge fully into all of the small details of it in this episode, I would not get through my twenties.

[00:05:32] So I’m going to focus just on, more or less, telling my story and also giving you kind of commentary here and there as now that I am, you know, looking back on my twenties, I can clearly see things that I couldn’t see while I was in them. And so my hope for you, if you’re listening to this and maybe you’re going through your twenties and you’re just floundering all over the place and you’re struggling massively and you can’t figure out why.

[00:05:58] And you’re starting to think maybe you have ADHD, maybe you will hear this and resonate with it. And, and I hope that the perspective that I’ve now gained will help you to give you a better perspective on the circumstances that you’re dealing with currently.

So I was in and out of this relationship all through high school.

[00:06:18] And then after high school, we got pregnant. I had my first son at 19 and it didn’t take very long for of course for the relationship to implode because that’s how toxic relationships go. Um, they have, you know, ebbs and flows and ups and downs. And when my son was four weeks old, I attempted to affirm my independence and I left my then abusive and toxic boyfriend.

[00:06:40] And I left the home that he had purchased for us in an attempt to assert my independence. It was definitely a moment of, “you know what, I don’t deserve this. This kind of treatment because I’m sure that if I was on my own, I would be fine. And I would be able to figure everything out.” And instead what happened is when I did move out on my own and I got my own place, I floundered and failed and found myself [proving] correct all of my exes, worst insults of me.

That I was lazy and stupid and dramatic.

[00:07:12] And I can’t keep my house clean. And I don’t care about keeping up with chores and maybe I spend too much money. But also to put all of that into perspective, like I said, looking back, this was 2009. I was 19. I was working a part-time job. I was making $8 an hour. I worked 35 hours a week. I paid a babysitter at the time so that I could work during the day.

[00:07:34] And I paid her $20 per day, which is very cheap. If you’ve ever paid for daycare, you know, that that’s cheap, to watch my son. But it would actually take my paycheck that I would receive every two weeks that was roughly $450. Maybe it was about $480, and it would almost cut it in half, which was leaving we with a total of about $460 per month to attempt to pay all of my bills. And at the time my rent alone was $500.

[00:07:56] So looking back, I can clearly see that my sense of self [blame] was very warped.

I had spent so many of my formative years being told over and over again, like I said, by people who cared deeply about. that would emphasize my shortcomings. I think all those people have good intentions.

[00:08:16] They’re always trying to just point out to you where they see you have more potential than what you’re living up to. But when you have ADHD, you have executive function dysfunction, basically it affects primarily your behavior. So while you, you look careless because you have poor working memory issues, or you struggle with processing and sequencing the order of events that you need to do to accomplish certain tasks.

[00:08:45] Yeah. You look lazy, but you’re not. Because your brain is doing so much more work than it needs to just to try to correct those shortcomings.

It gives you a really bad cognitive dissonance because you try really, really hard, but no matter what, when you even look at your own actions, they don’t line up with you not being all those things.

[00:09:10] So it further compounds your struggles with your self esteem.

The other thing is, is I had no real perspective on what was realistic in my situation.

I didn’t know about poverty guidelines. I didn’t understand how poverty happens. I didn’t know, you know, what it meant to be living below the poverty level. I didn’t know what it meant to, you know, only be making $12,000 a year and having a child to take care of.

[00:09:35] I didn’t understand any of those things. I hadn’t yet taken any sort of budgeting class. I didn’t know how to budget money. I didn’t know how to stretch a dollar. All I knew is at the end of the day, I didn’t have enough money to pay my bills. And so to me, having ADHD and always being to blame for all of the shortcomings that I had experienced in the past, well, I just told myself that this just had to be.

[00:09:55] Somehow my fault, I must be overspending or I must be doing stuff because other people can make it work. Right. They work jobs and they, you know, might make only minimum wage or something and they find ways to pay their bills. And you know, when I really think about it, I don’t know exactly how all those people really live.

[00:10:11] I know that I lived a lot on my mom.

She helped me pay my rent several times because ultimately at the end of the day, I didn’t have- I wasn’t making enough money to pay anything. And while State assistance and, you know, Government assistance gets a really bad rap. For somebody like me in this situation who just has no real understanding of how to dig myself out of the circumstances.

[00:10:38] And what’s even more frustrating is when you have ADHD, people tell you, even when you don’t have ADHD, people tell you all the time; “Well, you’re just a product of your circumstances and you have to overcome your circumstances. And it’s not really about what you’re dealing with right now. And, you know, you just have to work harder, try harder, do things…”

Yes, that’s true and it is important, but when you’re on limited resources and you’re also battling a mental illness that you don’t realize is robbing you of so much of your ability to just adapt.

It’s not, it’s not the same thing. And as much as I don’t usually agree with the idea that everybody has, you know, especially in America, that everybody has a fairly level playing field. That you can rise above your circumstances. You can rise above your upbringing.

I will still say that there is a major issue with sometimes you can’t rise above your resources.

[00:11:35] Unless you’re willing to find those resources at all costs. I remember when I finally was given food stamps and I immediately called my mother and I said, my, my snap card came, I need you to come watch your grandson so that I can go grocery shopping. It felt like answered prayer, hands down, like, oh my gosh, I can finally put food in my cupboards.

[00:11:58] My cupboards had been bare for months. And I was getting by just on the few groceries that I would buy every couple of weeks, peanut butter and jellies. Ramen noodles, grilled cheeses, all the cheap things that I could get away with. Um, I was, I think on WIC (Women Infants, Children) before I was on state assistance directly. Um, so I was able to get like certain cereals and things, and my mom always made sure that my son had baby.

[00:12:26] But there was definitely times where I was choosing between diapers and milk. And I remember at the time, um, you know, contacting my ex and asking him, you know, if he would bring me diapers or if he could give me anything to help support our son. And, um, as much as he definitely should have been more accountable in that aspect, he was also 21 and working a $12 an hour job.

[00:12:54] I don’t think really either one of us had a good idea of how to handle our money, especially not then.

So. Again, looking back. I, I know that I had, I internalized all these struggles.

They all had to somehow be my fault and maybe my ex was right. Maybe I couldn’t do it on my own. Maybe I really am just lazy and dramatic.

[00:13:18] And I expect too much of people and I don’t follow through on anything. I start things that I don’t finish.

And I know I’ve said this before in other episodes, so I’m going to say it again and this and spoiler alert, none of that stuff was true. Do I struggle with certain things? Yeah. Yeah, I do. As part of having ADHD, I definitely have behaviors that I have made into habits.

[00:13:44] Over Years and years that come out in ways that I wish they didn’t. But ultimately, am I not smart? No, that’s not true. I am smart and I, I can be resilient and I can have the things that I need if I have enough resources surrounding me and I know how to utilize them. And whether that one of those resources is medication or whether one of those resources is, is a leg up from state assistance.

[00:14:13] So All in all, what? None of that was true, but internally I know I was battling a disorder that was making me think that I was just a loser. That somehow everyone else got a brain that worked good. And I just got, somehow, no motivation and no ambition, but I, I did have lots of ideas. I had lots of ideas and, and keep in mind too;

[00:14:31] This was a time before Facebook groups were a thing. If they were, I couldn’t exactly afford the internet. I didn’t have it all the time. I know that at one point, my, my step-dad, he worked for a cable company. And so I know he did come to my house and help me set up like the free cable that I could get for, you know, just the regular local channels.

[00:14:54] And then I think at one point. I feel like at one point he was able to help me afford just internet. And this was before streaming services were like a thing where if you had just internet, you could get Netflix. That was a whole new concept. And so I think I had internet sometimes, but I know I was working off an old refurbished laptop that only worked every once in a while.

[00:15:16] So there was no community to go to, to answer questions.

Questions like: “My child has a fever in the middle of the night. What do I do?” Or “This diaper rash isn’t going away. I don’t know what to do” or, you know, “my child won’t stop crying” or “I’m having breastfeeding issues.” There wasn’t — I didn’t have that to fall back on.

[00:15:35] I had to utilize the few friends that I had, that most of them didn’t have any experience in being a mother. I did have one very, very good friend who was there for me throughout most of, not only, my pregnancy but after my pregnancy and such. Even still, a lot of those women, they were a lot older than me, 20 years older than me, 15 years older than me.

[00:15:55] They had their own families and their own children and their own things going on. So they didn’t have time necessarily to be another mother to me. I had my own mother there, but I was in my twenties and I was asserting myself.

And I was thinking that I knew everything. And of course I, I knew nothing.

[00:16:11] So I would argue with my mother when she would make suggestions, try this, try that. And I was like, I got it. Nevermind. I don’t have it. So all that to say, I, I felt very alone. I had family and I had some friends that hadn’t abandoned me during my pregnancy at 19, when a lot of them were going off to college, you know, drinking, partying, having fun.

[00:16:35] And I was at home renting an apartment that I couldn’t afford. With, uh, an adorable little boy and also somehow I couldn’t figure out how to get all my laundry done. I know that I definitely had Several times of feeling like, “well, maybe I just can’t do it by myself,” but I was too prideful to willingly, go back to my parents and try to adjust it with them.

[00:16:59] Me and my mom were still fighting too much at the time. We just had differing beliefs and I was young and stupid. And so instead I returned to my ex who had bought us a house. And I think part of me always just wanted that safety net of you know, a home. And I think I also had in my head a very warped perception of how hard, or how not hard I was actually trying to accomplish something.

[00:17:25] When you have ADHD, you’re working really, really hard, but you’re still putting out, not nearly as much as much as somebody else [who doesn’t have ADHD].

Like I think of- I think of the movie Elf where he’s a human and he’s stuck at the north pole. And, you know, they ask him how many etch-a-sketches did [he] get done today?

[00:17:48] And he begrudgingly says [only] 65 or something like that. And they’re all like, “oh my gosh!” Because all the [real] Elves can get like 450 done in a day, something like that. I haven’t watched the movie in a while.

When you have ADHD you’re working, in perspective, as hard as [Will Ferrell’s character] is in that movie with those elves. But because you’re constantly on this level of comparing yourself to people whose internal output matches their actual physical output, your idea is skewed as to how hard you have to try.

[00:18:26] So when you’re in toxic relationships, you’ll constantly tell yourself, well, maybe I just need to try harder and maybe I just wasn’t patient enough. Maybe I just wasn’t doing enough. And if I just try again, you know, maybe this time it will work, because you’re constantly telling yourself, you just have to try harder.

[00:18:46] You put it on yourself, you don’t see it for what’s really, really going on.

Um, so we got back together. I had my second son by the time I was 21 and I actually moved out again when I was about seven months pregnant.

And if you’re, if you’re listening to this and you’ve never really understood domestic violence, you should know that on average, it takes a domestic violence victim, seven times of leaving, going back, leaving, going back before they actually are able to break free.

[00:19:15] And I would say that that that number is probably skewed. Um, I think last time I checked, I left my ex 11 times before I finally was able to walk away for good. And part of it is just finding ways to take off the mask of what’s really happening to you.

So I was seven months pregnant. I Needed money desperately to move out.

[00:19:38] And I had to keep it hidden from him. Cause I knew that if I, if I told him what I was trying to do, he would get really, really violent. So I found a way to sell the van that I had and I was only able to get out of it- I think like $1,700- and I’m a Christian. So I, I feel bad that he did this, but I remember that I lied to him.

[00:20:02] I told him that I was going to sell the van to pay off a credit card that I owed money on. Cause he was always talking about how, you know, I needed to get out of debt and, um, and that I was bringing us down. He actually was, he actually would always tell me that he wouldn’t marry me because of my credit score at the time.

[00:20:19] Um, even though I was pregnant with our second child and we were living together that it was all due to my credit score. So I told him that I was selling the van to pay off my back owed credit card and that we would just figure something else out. And so he didn’t question that motive. And I did, I managed to sell that vehicle, I think right around $1750.

[00:20:39] I used a portion of it, portion of the sale of it to buy another car, a really old beat up grand-am.

That was purple. It did not have AC, but the engine was strong and the girl had just told me that she just replaced the head gaskets in it. So that for me was like the sell-point, because I was like, “Great I will drive this car.”

[00:21:06] And I’m not going to have to replace too much on it anytime soon, because head gaskets are like a huge thing and she just replaced that. Then, you know, anything else that goes wrong with it, probably be minimal cost. And, uh, there’s purple. My, my oldest son still thinks about that car and he’s like, I love that car.

[00:21:24] I’m like, [It was] awful. But it got us from point A to point B and that’s all that mattered to me at that time. I was able to buy it for only about a thousand dollars so [that] left me with enough money to put a deposit down on an apartment that was really close to my parents. And then I believe that they actually, if I remember correctly, they fronted me the rest of the money to be able to put my deposit down and first months rent.

[00:21:45] And then I, quickly in a hurry, moved out in one day.

Me, my stepbrother and my step dad all went to my ex’s home with the police, um, because he was known to get very, uh, violent and the theatrical any time that I, you know, tried to assert my independence, whether that was just wanting to drive to a friend’s house or, whether it was this extreme of wanting to leave. And he was known to do things like take my keys from me, take my cell phone.

So I felt safest going there with the police, but of course the police were on short time, so we had to move quickly.

I actually think to that my best friend at the time came with me as well, because I remember her just kind of yanking bathroom drawers out and dumping them into bags for me and was like, well, just figure it out.

[00:22:37] You know, how to, how to go through it later. I grabbed as much stuff as I could. I remember distinctly that he would not allow me to take much of the kids’ stuff. Um, he insisted that was something we would have to fight over in court because they were both our kids. I remember being able to at least get away with some clothes.

[00:22:55] I told him that the crib was something my parents bought, so I could at least take the crib. And I think having the police officer there intimidated him enough to say, okay, fine, you can take the crib. Um, so I was able to only take the crib. And I moved out of there, I think in about 45 minutes. And when I left the police officer made me swear that I would never return to the property, um, under any other circumstances.

[00:23:20] And I moved into my new apartment with a broken futon and a TV that sat on the floor, a queen-size bed, a crib, and You know my stuff. I bought a $50 old coil stove. Cause I had to- this was a brand new apartment. Nobody else had lived in it before and there was no stove in it. I think there was a non-for-profit company that I reached out to that supplied me a fridge.

[00:23:47] And then I had to find a way to buy a stove. And I bought this like $50 old mustard, yellow coil stove. But that thing was like amazing. I learned to cook on it. And That was some of my favorite stove to this day, but that’s probably a trauma bond.

So, you know, that was mainly the start of me really figuring out in my twenties, who I was, what did I care about?

[00:24:13] Who did I want to be? Whose was I, was I going to be a Christian? Was I going to follow God? Was I going to follow Jesus? Was I going to follow my friends and my peers?

And, you know, again, here I was now 21 had my own place still couldn’t really get by. I was using a lot of state programs to be able to pay my bills.

[00:24:34] I did finally get a job working in car sales. That was my first job where I actually felt like I could make enough money to sustain. Um, it wasn’t great pay, but it was enough for me to pay most of my bills. And over the course of the next two years, I learned to budget. Um, I took a Dave Ramsey class with my parents and I learned how to save first.

[00:25:02] When you have ADHD, you learn all these new habits. Now this is also all before I realized I had ADHD.

So every time now, when I look back and I see me trying hard to change habits and just not really being able to turn that wheel in an effort to where it finally, you know, starts to actually make a difference.

[00:25:25] I learned how to budget. I could understand the logistics of it, but I still had a very hard time making that change, and turning, readjusting my compass and pointing it back north. In an effort to help me, you know, gain more traction. I did get to a point at some point where I was, I remember noticing- so my, my ex would come over.

[00:25:48] He would come, he’d visit the kids. He would either come to the apartment when my youngest son was still really little visit for just a few hours. And then after a while he started taking them back to his house.

Of course, this was all at my dismay.

I was very concerned. Because I think even though at the time he was not outwardly- you couldn’t tell how unhealthy and unstable his emotional state was-not to a lot of people.

[00:26:18] I mean, they may have been able to tell on some level, but not in the way that I knew it was. Because I was one of the ones in his household. So that’s the other thing is that even though I’m not going to dive too much into toxic relationships, when you are in an abusive relationship, the person who is abusing you reserves all of their abuse and controlling behavior to just the people in their household.

[00:26:41] Every once in a while they might show it to like the cashier or they might, you know, lose their temper at a bar or, you know, lose their temper on another family member.

But majority of the time [abusers] reserve it only for you.

And they also know how to shut it off. So when other people are around, you know, something that you do that may have made them mad, if you guys were behind closed doors, they’ll just pretend it didn’t really bother them.

[00:27:05] But then like you get in the car to leave and you’re away from people and they start yelling at you because You know, they’re angry with the way that you embarrassed them. And you never really know, like you walk on eggshells the whole time. She never really know what it is, that’s going to upset them. So I was always scared to send the kids over there and having to share this parenting time with them and feeling very helpless of having to give him my young children.

And just live on a prayer that, you know, whatever damage that his emotional instability would cause in their lives…

[00:27:38] -was something that I would be able to help them work through as they grew. And I just had to kind of pray and leave it up to God because what ended up happening was anytime that I did try to assert, you know, my desire for them to have more stability, even in his household and asking him to do certain things, to gain that stability, you know, he he’s took me to court.

[00:28:06] And at the time I was 22. I was only just starting to pay all my bills. And I had a court summons that he was filing for a change in parenting time/custody. He was filing for a change in visitation. He had threatened me several times told me he was going to take the kids from me. He would come over and when he would visit, he would tell me things like, you know, the kids are gonna grow up.

[00:28:31] They’re never gonna want to live with you because you never going to have anything more than an apartment. And I’ll have a backyard and they’ll want that. So I had this idea in my head that I needed to compete with the things that he was offering to. When really ultimately what every child craves and if you’re a young mother and you’re listening to this and you feel like you’re just failing a million times over, first of all, I was there.

[00:28:51] Second of all, ultimately what your child craves more than anything is emotional stability from at least one parent that they know without a doubt level. No matter what. And when you have one parent who constantly seems to only display love based on their obedience or their willingness to do the things that that person wants, their way, your child needs [unconditional love] even more from you.

[00:29:19] And they crave it, they crave adequacy.

They crave affirmation. That they’re enough. That they’re good. That you love them, regardless of, regardless of where you live, regardless, how big your house is, regardless of your backyard, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, in my mind, I was worried that the kids were going to grow up and think, you know, mom only has an apartment and that sucks.

[00:29:42] And, um, we want a backyard and they were going to see their father’s offering as better. But what I have come to find is that as my children have grown up and emotionally matured slowly but surely, um, they have found themselves actually craving the emotional stability. Even though my household has not always had the most or the most abundant things, they crave the emotional stability that my parenting can offer them that, you know, the other parent is still trying to figure out a way to give themselves that sort of stability.

[00:30:15] Let alone anybody else.

You know, here, I was just starting to kind of tread water and I got a court summons. I spent the next year and a half to two years fighting in court. I didn’t do a good job of investing in a good lawyer. And I threw a lot of money away on a lawyer who was inexperienced and didn’t realize what she was up against and what we were dealing with was not only a very manipulative person.

[00:30:40] Who’s very, very good at putting on a great mask and convincing everybody that he was Doing really, really good. Even though under the surface, he was drowning. Not only his manipulativeness, but also his lawyers, manipulative tendencies as well. And, um, you know, they found ways to make me look like I was just this controlling parent who just wanted to alienate, you know, my children’s father from them.

[00:31:05] It was so hard. Um, it was a time in my life where I, I have very few memories. At the things that I do remember are pretty traumatic. And I remember that I was working two jobs, I was selling cars. and the way that state assistance works is you have to be making a specific amount, and at this time. You also had to get your children on state assistance.

[00:31:35] As far as medical medical help, you have to not have any sort of offering From a company you work for that can offer medical insurance. If a company you worked for can offer medical insurance to you, you have to take it and cover your child so that the state does not have to cover your child for you, but covering my children for medical insurance, even though I had a job finally, that would allow me to do that was also taking about, Gosh, $800 out of my paycheck a month.

[00:32:08] Um, And while it was, I’d say it was better insurance, it was a lot more out of pocket. So we’re, you know, I finally felt like I was treading water. I I was, but I was having other expenses start to accrue because of my circumstances, starting to change and shift. You know, I would make a little bit more money. So the state would say, okay, well then, you know, we can’t help you as much, which is okay.

[00:32:30] You know, if that was the only thing I was battling against, but I was also battling against a court order and I was also battling against my own brain. That again, like I said, internalized, almost every struggle I had as somehow my fault. So, you know, being in court, I remember that became very evident that majority of the, this whole, “I want more parenting time.

[00:32:52] I want 50, 50 custody of my kids” Charade, um, was more to do with the money coming out of his paycheck Um, for child support, child support had kicked in cause I was on state assistance. Than it did actually being with my children because once he was granted more parenting time, he immediately started to offer me to come pick them up early.

Parenting requires Selflessness, and An Abundance of Patience…

[00:33:11] He was too tired. He didn’t want to deal with it. He didn’t want to, he wanted to say it in court, you know, the actual doing of being a full-time parent. Um, more often is, is tiring. It’s exhausting. And when you’re the type of person that is, is barely able to handle your own stress, you can’t handle that kind of stress.

[00:33:29] So he’d asked me to come pick him up early, but then of course, what happened was after all of this transpired, they then said, okay, well, the next next order of business will be to re-examine the child support and see if it, if it needs to change. It did need to change. They actually bumped it at this point. I had not only I’d actually moved out of my apartment,

[00:33:51] I was worried again with my warped perception. My kids were going to feel like I didn’t do enough for them. And the way that the courts has set it up for to get him more parenting time was he was taking them almost every evening. I was working a job- when he won that I was working a job that was an hour away.

[00:34:10] So if I got out of work at six or seven, I have to drive about an hour to go pick up my children from his home and then drive them back another 30 minutes to my home. I was only getting them home in time to basically put them in bed and then wake back up the next morning, start at seven o’clock and do it all over again.

[00:34:27] So I decided that the better course of action would be to stay in car sales because I knew I could do it. And I understood how it worked, but change locations and also find a place to rent closer to my access home so that I wasn’t driving so far away. And I found a Uh, house to rent that was $200 more per month than what I was paying in my apartment.

[00:34:51] And I assumed that that was the only bill that would go up. But of course my water bill increased, my power bill increased, and my grocery bill increased because I went from living in a pretty big city that had a lot of Walmarts. To living in a very, very small town where every store closes at nine o’clock.

[00:35:08] And if you want to go to the grocery store, you got to drive about 20 miles. So a lot of things changed for me. And, um, I remember that he did finally threatened me that if I didn’t drop the child support drastically, which of course I was relying on to make ends meet that he would continue pursuing custody until, you know, I lost them completely.

[00:35:29] Just too scary for me. And what I had seen so far was that, you know, the courts, they saw me the same way that every teacher in high school saw me. And the way that I was kind of seeing myself was that maybe I just was this lazy and incompetent, maybe I was controlling parent, Again I don’t think any of that’s true.

[00:35:51] So I guess I’ll stop this episode here puts me right about my, yeah. About my 24th year. And it was actually, that was the year that I first dated my husband. My wonderful, wonderful, amazing husband that I’m married to now, but that is going to actually have to be another episode because this one is just getting too long.

[00:36:13] I told you my story. It was a lot. So just, just let me tell ya. It’s a really interesting here in just the next couple events in my life. So I am going to stop this for now and I will talk to you again in two weeks on, uh, part two of ADHD in your twenties. I’ll be talking to you soon.

That is going to wrap up this episode of An ADD Woman podcast. – Outro.