High Functioning, Low Compliance

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

has to be the single most reductive,

misleading label ever slapped

on something far too complex

for the permutations and combinations

of a brain you so fondly call normal.

You call it attention deficit —

but it’s quite the opposite.

Imagine this:

a tanker with seventeen holes,

leaking at equal intensity.

Tell me — which leak should it fix first?

Better yet — does it even make sense

to fix just one?

That tanker is my brain.

I don’t lack attention.

I have too much demand

and too little supply.

Multiverses bloom inside my skull

every fucking second.

I don’t have an attention deficit, bitches —

I have an attention economy in collapse.

And unlike made-up currencies

or secondhand intellect,

you can’t buy focus at a store,

can’t lease it from the monk by the sea.

And you are telling me it's a me-problem?

The only thing hyperactive

at least on most days

is the overworked union of my brain cells,

clocking overtime

like they’re gunning for promotions

in the fascist regime my head’s become.

You know how absurd it is

to crave a lazy, nothing day

and have your neurons reply,

“Sorry brother, we’ve got a deadline!”

Now I’m the one

pleading with my brain for a break —

like an addict justifying sobriety,

or a broke parent

explaining why the toy isn’t coming home.

So I bait it with caffeine,

bribe it with cringe —

thinking it’ll surrender.

But then?

Caffeine becomes a drill sergeant.

Cringe becomes a cult.

And suddenly I’m the intern —

doing ten jobs, no breaks,

no sleep till my skull throbs

or I collapse into a coma

masquerading as sleep.

You mourn creative blocks —

I romanticize them.

I’m leaking more ideas

than I’ve ever had the time to save.

But this isn’t just mindstorm poetry.

This is life.

Time is elastic.

Alarms ring like friendly threats.

Everything’s either urgent,

or forgotten like a dream you almost wrote down.

I live in the now

and the never.

Keys vanish into wormholes.

Conversations evaporate mid-sentence.

My tabs have tabs,

and my to-do list is a graveyard of best intentions.

If it’s out of sight,

it never existed.

Don’t talk to me about consistency.

You think I’m flaky?

Try living in a brain

that starts ten things

and finishes none

because it wants all of them

to matter equally.

Try texting someone you love —

and forgetting mid-message

what you were about to say

because a crow flew past

and your brain built it a tragic backstory.

I ghost because I glitch,

not because I don’t love.

And when I do forget —

an appointment, a birthday, a name —

your tone shifts

and my stomach caves.

A sigh across the room

becomes a referendum on my worth.

You say “It’s nothing.”

I start re-imagining our entire relationship.

Then I mask.

And I mimic.

And I merge.

I become the person

you won’t diagnose,

won’t doubt,

won’t dismiss.

I’m an accumulation of borrowed personas —

the right smile,

the casual nod,

the pause long enough to sound interested.

At work, I’m the aptly enthusiastic peer.

At weddings, I’m the charming misfit.

At dinners, I parrot small talk

like a student bluffing through oral exams.

I read people like scripts —

and play myself like a method actor

who forgot where the stage ends.

But inside,

I’m buffering

while on the outside

I'm bluffing.

Behind every “yeah totally,”

I’m looking for context clues.

Behind every joke that lands,

I’m checking:

Was that too much? Too fast? Too weird?

I laugh in their rhythm.

Speak in their volume.

Mirror their moods

until my own reflection

feels like an anomaly.

And when I unmask —

it’s never relief.

It’s recoil.

Like waking up mid-surgery

and realizing you’re the one holding the scalpel.

I don’t know who I am,

I just know who’s safe to be around you.

And yet, 

you have the guts and the bile 

and the head and the heart

you call this a disorder.

You invented gods,

governments,

and GDPs —

and I’m the one that’s disordered?

Darling —

if fuck-ups were currency,

you’d own Wall Street.

And I’d still be

a high-functioning misanthrope

with perfect recall,

dysfunctional peace,

and more open loops

than a goddamn amusement park.

How’s that for order?