A week or two prior to her date with Curtis, she had agreed to house sit for a friend on the weekend following her date. Her friend had told her previously that she trusted her judgment, and that if she ever wanted to have someone over while she was staying at their place, she was welcome to invite them.
By Tuesday of that week (so 3 days after her date), she was still on a high from her mind blowing evening with Curtis. Though they had agreed to space out their rendezvous, she took a chance and texted Curtis asking if he’d be interested in coming over the following weekend.
“Just can’t get enough of me?” Curtis jokingly replied. “Guess not 😉” she responded, hopeful that he would want to hang out again. “I’d love to. We can figure out the details later, but yea I’m down” he agreed. Her stomach exploded in to a million butterflies. She could barely contain her excitement, but just replied, “Sweet, sounds good.”
They didn’t talk the rest of the day, nor on the Wednesday. Totally normal, obviously. There’s no need to constantly be connected. They had confirmed a second date for that coming Saturday, and she had planned to shoot him a text on the Friday. Thursday afternoon, however, she was delighted to see Curtis’ name light up her phone. She eagerly swiped it open and checked his message. Then her heart sank…
His text read something to the effect of, “Hey. I’m really sorry to do this, but I’m not going to be able to meet up on Saturday. I had a really great time with you. I think you’re awesome, and very sexy, but I just don’t think I’m ready to date again so soon after my last relationship. I hope you can understand…”
She wanted to throw her phone. She wanted to scream. She wanted to smash her desk in to a million little pieces but instead all she did was sit there, staring blankly at the screen. The bite mark bruises on her ass hadn’t even healed yet, and he was already breaking things off with her.
She waited a while to reply, but when she finally did she said something along the lines of, “Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. But okay, I understand.” He replied almost immediately saying, “Thanks. I’m really sorry, again. Maybe when I’m feeling more up to dating, we can reconnect?”
She hated him for saying that. That was a line straight out of the Douchebag Handbook. Dropping crumbs of hope to keep her hooked. Erik had done the same thing to her. A lot of guys had, actually. She responded, “Yea maybe” and then deleted the text thread. He didn’t reply.
She tossed her phone down and just sat there, staring out her cubicle window. She couldn’t help the small stream of tears falling from her eyes. She wasn’t heartbroken over Curtis. She knew, she had always known, that he was just another guy. Another guy who seemed amazing, who inevitably would let her down. She was, however, angry with herself.
Once again, she had let herself get her hopes up. Once again she had ignored her instincts and had let herself get overly excited about a fleeting feeling. She had also ignored Curtis’ exact words from the beginning telling her he wasn’t interested in anything serious.
The thing is, she wasn’t asking for anything serious. She wasn’t romanticizing a full-fledged relationship with him. She wasn’t imagining herself introducing him to her friends and family, going on romantic weekend getaways, or house hunting with him. All she wanted was some fucking follow through. For one guy, ONE GUY, to finally want to see her a second time.
She reminded herself that it wasn’t necessarily because she had had sex with Curtis on the first date. She hadn’t had sex with either Erik nor Luca, and they both bailed on their tentative plans for a second date, also. In fact, most guys never went through with a second date, regardless of if she hooked up with someone or not. So what was it about her that made guys only interested in her for one night?
She was distracted for the rest of her work day. She just kept thinking about how she was the only common denominator in all this, so clearly something was wrong with her that was making guys retreat from ever seeing her more than once. The only feedback she’d ever gotten from anyone was of how chill she was. How fun she seemed and how great a date they’d had.
She obviously wasn’t expecting a guy to come out and say, “Oh ya you’re the worst!”, but she wondered how she could ever figure out what she was or wasn’t doing that was driving all these guys away. Or if it was something about her physically that made guys seem to run for the hills. Obviously this wasn’t the most positive or feminist outlook to have, but she was hurt. She was sad. And it’s hard for one to stay positive when being continuously rejected time and time again.
As she had done several times before, she decided to hide her profiles again. Clearly dating just wasn’t for her. Not right now, anyways. She recognized that an unhealthy amount of her time was spent on her phone, swiping away on guy after guy, and that that behaviour just wasn’t serving her anymore. All the time she had wasted pining away over these strangers, who brought nothing to her life other than stress and anxiety, could have been better spent working towards her goals.
It had been three and a half years after ending the abusive relationship she was in, and she was still no further along financially than she had been when she moved back. She was still back living with her parents, she was still in debt, and she was still working a menial job she had absolutely zero passion for.
That’s not to say she hadn’t been chipping away at these issues, but she knew that had she made these matters more of a priority, she might be further along in her quest to get back on her feet. Instead she had just wasted her time on fucking dating apps, constantly being let down by both men in general, and by her unrealistic hopes and expectations. She finally recognized that something needed to change.
A week or two had gone by, and she was feeling a bit better about her dating woes. She had been supplementing her swiping time by spending more time on Instagram. Probably not the healthiest substitute, but baby steps, right? As she scrolled away, watching reels and stories of her favourite influencers, she was seeing a lot of things pertaining to ADHD. Now, to be clear, she was in no way taking medical advice from anyone on Instagram, but there was one story by Busy Philipps that really caught her attention.
She had been an admirer of Busy Philipps since the early days of IG Stories. She felt a connection to her in so many ways such as her eclectic style of clothing and music, the way she overshared and rambled on about nothing and everything at the same time. Her love of bright colours, and what she perceived as a very generous and caring heart.
She saw a lot of herself in this actress turned influencer, so it really struck her when she watched a Busy Philipps IG story where she went on a bit about her own ADHD. Also, a short time later, Busy (that’s right, we’re on a first name basis now) had talked in depth about it on her podcast. All of a sudden, alarm bells started ringing in her head.
Busy would say things about her ever looming anxiety and depression. Her low self-esteem, poor time management skills, and her scattered thinking. Busy also mentioned how, being recently divorced, she had joined the dating app Raya, but after a short lived situationship, decided to get off the app as she knew she would be too hyper-fixated on dating and it would end up consuming her. All of these things, Busy discovered, were symptoms of her ADHD.
She was stunned to hear that because all of those qualities that Busy had described were nearly exact descriptions of her own struggles. Her entire life, she had just chalked all of that up to regular societal influences. She figured everyone just felt shitty about themselves and got a bit obsessive about guys and dating. She thought it was just normal. Never had she ever considered she might have ADHD.
To her, ADHD was demonstrated by physical hyper activity. She pictured her younger male cousin growing up, who had been diagnosed with it at a young age, bouncin’ off the walls and never being able to sit still. That was definitely not her. It wasn’t until the last few years, though, that she had seen in the news or in random studies, that ADHD presents itself very differently between males and females.
The more she researched, the more she realized that this could actually be a real thing for her. Could she have gone her entire life living with undiagnosed ADHD? Is that why she always felt scattered and erratic? Is that why she had so much trouble sticking to a budget? Why she thrived on chaos? Is this why she had so much trouble with dating?? Obsessing over every guy, over the slightest glance or insinuation of affection? Why she fell so hard and so quickly over and over and over again? Maybe, maybe not? At the very least, she thought it warranted a visit to her doctor…
Continue to Chapter Eighty Six
or read my personal essay entitled Puzzle Pieces: an adult ADHD experience