The Roommate in My Brain (Having ADHD as a Housewife)

The Brain.

Pretty cool organ, can’t do much without it. I heard something along the lines of, “your entire personality is in there”, or something.

Well, if you ask me, the Brain is a bitch.

I hate this thing, it literally makes me feel like I’m going to explode every second of the day. Even as I’m writing this, it’s telling me to kill myself.

That’s a bit extreme, and it is, but let me ask you this, Batman: what’s it like to be normal?

If you borrowed, bought, or stole this book, then you don’t even know yourself. You might be in the same predicament as me. You want to just straight up die.

Or DO you? You don’t really want to die, your brain is just telling you that it wants you to die so it can satisfy some type of untapped dopamine cache it thinks it will get if you jump. PLEASE don’t jump, you will get NO dopamine. Trust me.

See, the thing about the brain is this, and it’s quite simple. It’s a roommate. Does it regulate your heartbeat and breathing? Sure, and it’s doing its job. Does it keep your balance and refine your motor skills? Yup! You can write and stand, run, walk, all that jazz. And if you’re reading this book, that’s ALL it’s doing.

Sure, you have something called a “personality”, but you have ADHD, so do you really? Let me ask you a question and don’t get mad.

What’s your favorite thing in the whole wide world? What can you talk about for 30 minutes straight without ANY preparation beforehand? Something you would base your entire personality around?

Okay, oaky, pretty good! Now, what was your favorite thing last month?

Gotcha, bitch.

What you have is called “Hyperfixation”.

It’s normal for the most part. Even people who don’t have ADHD or ADD experience some form of hyperfixation at some point in their lives. The difference being, those people can stop really whenever they want to, and you’re batshit insane.

Again, not your fault. Like I said before, your Brian is a roommate, not an organ if you have ADHD, and you need to treat it as such. It doesn’t have your best interest in mind, so you need to do come conditioning.

I hear you groaning, because you’ve tried conditioning your brain to work and it refuses to every time. Well, we’re going to do something I like to call “stealth conditioning”.

Your brain won’t even realize it’s being whipped into shape once you implement the exercises I tell you to try. Even better, you won’t even realize you’re doing it after a while.

Let’s bring up a common occurrence: it’s a Wednesday, Hump Day, and your kids are in school. If you’re one of those housewives that has a working man and 2.5 kids in school, the house to yourself, and fuck-all to do, I already know you back in bed. I already know you’re asleep.

But, let’s pretend, if you will, that your husband has been bitching for days now about the dirty house, your kid tripped over trash the other day and while you felt bad about it, all you really did was push it out of the main foot path of the house with your foot into a corner. You want to get up off your ass and start cleaning, maybe surprise your husband with a clean house when he comes home so he can get off your back about it.

You’re sitting on your couch when this thought comes through your brain. “I’m going to clean!”

Uh-oh, though. Did you see what I just wrote? It went through your brain! The problem is, EVERYTHING goes through your brain! The second an idea that would benefit you and your family hits the idea pile within your noggin, it’s already over.

The roommate you call a vital organ in your cranium? Yeah, it wants you dead, so it’s going to start dumping massive amounts of load into your bloodstream the second you even think the words “I’m going—“.

It was rigged from the start.

“I’m going to clean!” Turns into you looking around and sizing up the work ahead of you. This wasn’t you looking, it was your brain looking. Your brain took over right after that thought and laser focused onto every spec of trash on the floor, the piled up dishes, laundry, dusting, anything else. All of it was logged and all of it was taxed.

For every article of trash needed to be rectified, a wash of anxiety and fatigue flows through you. You slump into the couch, kick your shoes off, and even worse, you might prop up the recliner. The brain wins.

When you’re tired, even neurotypical people don’t want to do anything. However, when you have ADHD, you can’t just sleep it away. You’re literally paralyzed, as if you have sleep paralysis. You can’t shut your eyes, you can’t move your body, you can only look forward as your brain replays what you NEED to do over and over and over again.

Your roommate (your brain) is standing in front of you with a fancy power point slideshow showing you your burdens over and over and over again to keep you tired. As long as you’re tired, you don’t have to do anything, the brain doesn’t have to do anything.

It will work all night to make sure nothing gets done.

Sound like you? Even worse, you don’t have an excuse outside of “I’m tired” or “I don’t feel like it right now”? I know it’s the worst feeling in the world.

So what do you even do? What CAN you do?

If you’re already on the couch, chances are, the TV is on. Normally, this is a good way to keep you on the couch and to not move, especially if those “TOP AMAZON FINDS OF 2024” Tik Tok compilations are playing.

Also, if you’re just lounging, there’s also a REALLY good chance your phone is in your pocket or your hand. You may be doom scrolling Tik Tok or Instagram, or window shopping on Amazon for the millionth time today.

You will never buy that touch screen toaster but, goddamnit, it’s IN the wish list.

Try this. Just one of the many methods I’m going to share in this book.

Text your husband or wife. Go on, text them.

Say something along the lines of “Are you missing anything?” Or “what was that one thing you were looking for the other day?”

Nine times out of ten, they’re going to respond with “are you on crack?”, but if you read this section, read this part out loud to your spouse. Do it right now, but don’t make it seem obvious:

“Hey, if I ask if you’re missing something out of the blue, just come up with a bullshit answer and make it a priority.”

Boom, done. Now, when you text them “What are you missing?”, they should make good on their end of the deal and say anything like “My key card is missing!”, “My favorite shirt has been missing for weeks!”, “I can’t find this ONE button for my shirt and I NEED it or the CIA will literally kill me.”

Maybe not to those extremes, but if everything goes according to plan, you now have something I like to call “The No-Excuse Plan”.

This method works pretty well for me, but not all the time. You can’t use it every day or your roommate (your brain) is going to catch on that it’s being bamboozled. Ask for this type of help one a week or even just once a month if you feel it won’t stick. The type of motivation you get from knowing you saved your spouse from certain peril will motivate you to at least pick up one section of the house.

For the dishes, use, “I need that Tupperware for a business picnic this weekend!”

For the living room, use, “I dropped my spare office key somewhere in the pile.”

For the bedrooms, use, “My wedding ring!! You won’t believe it!”

So on and so forth.

This is going to take a grain of teamwork, and it should. If you’re like me, (again, I hope not), then you’re a huge introvert, but you somehow fond a way to get married. Look at your spouse, you bagged that somehow, someway, and if you too Vows or not (Cody and I didn’t), it doesn’t matter.

That bitch owes you.

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They’re called a “Better Half” for a reason. How can one half work without the other?

Now, I can hear the collective groan of the other housewives reading this and, maybe not having the BEST spouse to fall back on. Maybe they married someone that is a little more… conservative? Even though you’re struggling, they’re not willing to put their husbandly pride aside and help you move.

Fuck these men, by the way, I hate them.

If you can’t rely on the literal man that married you, then use your teenage children. And if you don’t have teenage children, use your small children as an excuse.

“I haven’t seen her pacifier in days, I need it.”

“If I don’t clean this sippy cup and have it ready, she can’t go to preschool.”

“The textbook required for school is in this pile.”

This one is harder, but it put the incentive to clean and find what you’re looking for into perspective.

And if you REALLY don’t have any kids or a reliable spouse, essentially raw dogging housewifeism, then just keep reading. I have a solution that can fit in every cranny and make your roommate look like a bitch.

I bring up this method first because it’s what motivates me to get up and move. Not all the time, but most of the time, if my husband needs something, I can’t let him go off without it. Maybe that’s just me.

I really love my husband, even though he’s convinced I fucking hate him.