My Keys, Wherefore Art Thou, My Keys???

I'm SO not Shakespeare.

Any time I leave this house, I have my keys.  The reason I have my keys is that I obsess about my keys.  I need to know at all times where my keys are and have them in a dependable location.  If I can't find my keys, I will simply refuse to leave this house forever.

I have a carabiner clip on my purse that I hook my keys to any time they are not in the ignition of the truck.  This way I can leave the house and know I can return to it.  Ish.  I also have a combination lock on my front door that only requires me to recall four digits.  Except that the door is behind a hefty outer door that I insist on keeping locked.  No key.

*sigh*

Like many ADHDers, I fight to remember things like my keys.  Other things that I become obsessive of are my wallet, my checkbook, my shoes (!), my sweater, and my grocery bags.

I'm fighting anxiety right now because I have all my grocery bags in the house and they need to be in the truck- lest I forget them when I need to grocery shop again.  Before I finish this blog I will need to take the bags to the truck or sleep will NOT happen.

That's the other side of the equation- anxiety.

ADHDers find that they live in the anxiety zone a lot.  Things that NTs (Neuro-Typical) don't think much of are huge issues for us.  We often become obsessive and compulsive, distrustful and irritable over things like the location of our keys, cars, files, and any of a number of things.

I know this to be truth- if I don't hook my keys to the clip that I have for this purpose, they will be utterly lost to me- even if they are in my purse.  I have trained myself to find my keys in an expected location and I will never find them if they are somewhere else.

Sometimes this bites.

I can already hear the non ADHDers.  "We forget our keys too!!!"  Yeah, you do.  But you don't go through the crap we do.  NT's forget their keys and they are capable of figuring out where they last used said keys.  They back-track and locate.  They move on.

ADHDers?  The first thing that happens is an incessant stream of self-talk that makes prison hazing look like a children's squabble.  No one can beat the crap out of an ADHDer like an ADHDer.

Now that I have reduced myself to a pile of quivering poo- figuratively and possibly literally- I've lost something of myself.  Over time, I lose a whole lot of me.

Because I live in a world that thinks that ADHD is somehow funny, I don't get many opportunities to regain any part of me.

Easier to find my keys.

Well snit!