The Last Word On Nothing

My dear friend “P” is a bit of a nut. She’s always doing a million things at once. The piles on her dining-room table are epic. At least two laptops are open with projects in progress at any one time. It’s fair to say she over-commits to the point of madness: She is the leader of this or that task force, the head of this or that committee, the presenter at the meeting, the person who can’t say no. Her fridge and freezer say it all, overstuffed with ideas (maybe she’ll start using tahini!) and options (mocha creamer, skim milk, 2% milk, oat milk, heavy cream…take your pick).

Oh, did I mention she has multiple degrees (including a veterinary one…yeah, she’s a smart cookie), a full-time high-security-clearance job, two fostered teens whom she wrangled from an unsafe household (!), aging parents with lots of questions, and seven “special needs” (and often just plain noisy) rescue dogs? When I’m at her house, I am immersed in my favorite kind of chaos—the kind that’s not my own.

On any given summer morning, including this one, P has five hummingbird feeders lined up on the counter, sugar-water prep in progress. There are also at least four bowls of dog food piled high with individual favorites with different medications sprinkled on top. A couple of cabinet doors are still open from a search for something (who knew there were so many flavors of vinegar!), and I notice the plants on the sill, of which there are many, need watering. A course catalog is open on the counter with class titles circled, plus the remnants of various crafts tried and set aside are strewn about. P has a special love for cicadas, and she has saved a few molts and wings from the last brood, next to the dish-soap dispenser, with plans to do something creative with them. Not sure what.

We all have that friend we lean on especially hard, the one who just gets us and is there for us. The kind of friend who expects you to make yourself at home in her home, help yourself to food—hell, cook a meal if you like! You can kick back in their presence and do whatever. With P, I sometimes go to her house for the weekend and do my thing while she does hers. The sheets on the guest bed are from my last visit, and I have a toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom. It’s nice to have someone in your life like that.

But I feel for her. At one time I thought attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was just an excuse for people who can’t get their shit together. It’s not. P, like millions of others, struggles to wrangle her life into something manageable, knowing she is her own worst enemy, that her own decisions feed the chaos. But she can’t help it. Her brain, neurologists say, struggles to access and make proper use of the neurotransmitter dopamine (related to the reward center), and to a lesser extent norepinephrine (related to the fight or flight response). A recent study of young people with ADHD shows evidence of extra connectivity of deep-brain structures associated with learning, reward, and emotion with structures in the frontal brain involved in attention and control of unwanted behaviors.

The results of these brain quirks (and surely others) are inattention, impulsivity, and/or hyperactivity (more like fidgetiness, in my experience). In P, the perpetual battle in her head is evident in everything she does. Sitting down together on a workday, my friend is soon up and buzzing around me doing other things while I type away at a single task. I can practically see the ideas and lists and plans flowing in and out of her brain, plus the guilt at being behind on every single task.

ADHD is a beast. But it’s also awe-inspiring. Here’s the thing: My friend truly wants to do it all and never ceases giving to and doing for everyone else. Her very needy family. Someone else’s teenagers. The dogs no one else wants. Her community. The birds. Me. One might think ADHD is a sign of self-centeredness, but there’s nothing selfish in P’s madness. She circles her own needs, ‘round and ‘round, as she puts all that energy into making sure others are taken care of. Always.

And that’s what I see on this summer morning at P’s house. Before the chaos begins, sitting on the balcony overlooking the river, I hear the unmistakable buzz of hummingbirds. There they are, two of them, zipping around one of the five freshly filled sugar-water feeders hanging along the deck and across the yard. The tiny birds finally land and dip their beaks once, twice, finding nourishment, as they do every day, because my generous unstoppable friend (despite it all) makes it so.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash