obsessed with this image. they are clearly both suffering.

Hi Hun!

I'm Chaz. Seeing as you've fortuitously ended up here, I'll give you a super speedy rundown on the most important/basic parts of me as a human person.

I'm a 23 year old living in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia. The past year has given me a really volatile relationship with nearly everything.

I use she/they pronouns and identify as non-binary. This is because I don't really believe humans are binary beings (I'm definitely not), and want to expand my horizons without a label. I find them a little restrictive, and don't love the commitment of having to choose one.

I love acting, Lorde, drag, axolotls, plants that are really hard to kill, surrealism, Joe Lycett, Noel Fielding, Trixie and/or Katya, and language learning (currently Japanese and Korean, so apparently I also love making my life really easy lol).

I don't love capitalism, meat, Tories, James Corden, the South African accent, Ricky Gervais, people calling ADHD "ADD" (it was changed in 1987!!!), and people who don't put the toilet seat down (both lids, please, gross).

I have a chronic skin condition named rosacea. It sucks. I'll probably (definitely) mention it more. It interacts with my ADHD and it's an absolute pain in the bum.

And finally, I was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) at 22, and started on medication just before my 23rd birthday. I am predominantly inattentive, but can have some hyperactive symptoms. So far, I have been on Vyvanse (I call this my concentration meth) for around 4 months (I think, but the nature of the beast is that I can’t remember shit). It's been really, really weird. I went into lockdown thinking I was neurotypical, and emerged certified neurodivergent with an axolotl rescue. 

I started this blog to help me document my journey with ADHD. I haven't blogged since the golden age of Tumblr, but wanted to give myself a small commitment to do each week which will be enjoyable, easily achievable, and feed into my terminal need to overshare online. Prepare for a Kerouac-esque stream of consciousness without the success, literary impact, and funky accents. And really, completely different content. :)

I figured a blog was a low-commitment way to cut my teeth with my writing while I take an intermission from my university course. It also provides me with my favourite type of social interaction: me oversharing and talking as much as I want with no interruptions. Thanks, lack of social awareness!

When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I thought that it was the end of a lot of struggle, and it was! In some ways. It was absolute blessing to finally know that I'm not a lost cause, and that medication can help (to an extent). But trying to reconcile these weird fragments of the person I never was, the person I didn't like, the person I want to be, and the person I actually am, has been the most frustrating thing I have ever had to do. I can finally begin to deal with everything, but the more I catch glimpses into life as people without ADHD have been experiencing it, the more it stings that I was struggling like this for 23 years. But it's like, fine guys!! Really!!!! I only cry when I think about it. :)

ADHD in AFAB people (assigned female at birth) can manifest in ways that means it often goes unnoticed by schools, parents, friends, pretty much everyone, including the ADHDer. We're often dismissed as ditzy, clumsy, lazy, stupid, absent minded, uncommitted, you know, all the great adjectives you really want to be associated with. When people mention ADHD, it's associated with young boys bouncing off the walls and disrupting class, sometimes being violent, sometimes just annoying. That sucks. Medical sexism (complete lack of research into how medical conditions affect people who aren't cis-male) has lead to ADHD being criminally underdiagnosed in people who don't fit this tiny box of criteria. This leads to a grieving period when you receive your diagnosis/start meds, for the life you could have lived, the things you could have achieved, the friendships you could have made and maintained, all the possibilities if it hadn't been for ADHD.

I want to help people understand what this condition is, why we do the things we do, what it's like to live with, and hopefully explain how you can help make the ADHDers around you feel a little less like a burden.

I will explain what ADHD is like to live with in depth in the very near future, but for now, I will leave you with a quick moment of sincerity: thank you so much for reading this far. It's not easy for me to do things like this, and I appreciate people taking the time to read my words: they're all I have at the moment.

Lots of love from lockdown, and remember to wear SPF. X