a poem about adult ADHD
Anger destroys her day.
It makes her agitated and frustrated.
Anxiety doesn’t have deadlines…
It comes and goes. It can stay for days.
Absolutely deny having difficulties!
They will look at you differently.
All days have darkness…
-Life is hard, just deal!
Always dealing…hours, days!
Temper flares, tears roll.
Acquire meds, Hide meds.
Because they will think you are faking.
–It’s not real.
–You didn’t have it as a kid.
–It’s over diagnosed.
–Too much t.v., huh?
Anxiety, dear…HURRY DEPART!
–It will go away, just meditate.
Anger, darling, happy dance.
It’s not working.
Absolute despair happens daily.
–Oh, come on, really? It can’t be that bad.
Argue, Defend. Help debunk…
But I am tired of keeping it a secret…
and taking meds in secret, so no one can see me.
–Why do you need so many?
–How can you have anxiety ALL day?
–Why can’t you remember your coffee?
–Why are you taking things so personally?
–Too much T.V. as a kid, huh?
–Isn’t that the soccer mom drug?
Act. Deceive. Heartbroken. Defeated.
Actively detaching…hourly, daily.
Aimless, directionless, helpless, delirious.
Thoughts darting here and there.
The mind multi-tasking without pause.
We can doubt and over-share.
Feeling anxious without cause.
Attention. Deficit. Hyper-activity. Disorder.
Educate yourself. Give us a safe place to land.
The only things we make up…
are excuses as to why you don’t understand.
~ Valerie Bennington Widmar
Valerie Bennington Widmar lives in Rochester, New York with her husband and two young daughters. She has B.A.s in Creative Writing and Film Theory from The University of Kansas. She writes observations of human relationships and personal challenges. She loves talking about movies as a co-host on podcast Cultural Stew (culturalstew.net). She believes discovering a sentence that resonates helps us feel seen and reminds us that we are not alone. Vidmar struggles with ADHD and, like numerous others, was initially misdiagnosed with manic depression. She highly recommends second opinions.
November editor, Ronda Miller, is State President of the Kansas Authors Club (2018 – 2019). Her three books of poetry include Going Home: Poems from My Life, MoonStain (Meadowlark-Books, 2015) and WaterSigns (Meadowlark-Books, 2017). Miller lives in Lawrence but returns to wander The Arikaree Breaks of Cheyenne county every chance she gets. Kansas Authors Club.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 