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Writer's pictureChristopher German

I Know Something You Don't, I Have ADHD

Updated: Apr 26, 2023



I hate my sister. But wait, I know this is Feel Good Friday and I should be talking about happy stuff, but that is where it all starts if I gonna be honest.


And to start, I am not feeling all that good this morning. My nose started bleeding like crazy on my morning run and I got a charley horse that crippled me so bad I had to walk home early thinking about the fact that I hate my sister.


I fixate on thoughts when I don't take my meds. I was having a tough time even sitting down to write about my thoughts that I was fixated on until I took my pill this morning. And that's what ADHD is sometimes. A paralyzation of converting thought into action.


But hey there Twitchy Mister-get back on point, you're talking about your sister.


Yes I am, and in truth I don't want to hate her. However, I have a pile of reasons why I had to cut her out of my life and why I can profess to you the reader, that the one person in this world who shares my childhood, my DNA and my heritage is persona non grata in

I Know Something You Don't, I Have ADHD

my life.


But here's the good part- I am smarter than her.


When I was a kid, my Mom explained to me that my sister resented me. Things came to me much easier. My sister would spend a month reading a book and writing a book report, and I would read the dust cover the night before and write a report 10 minutes before school. She would get an A minus and I would get a B Plus. And that pretty much sums up our entire academic career together. She worked much harder than I did, but I had a much easier time at getting comparable success.


That resentment bore out in both overt violence and passive aggression as well. She hated me back.


When we played Atari, she kicked my ass. I was lousy at video games and still am to this day. My Doctor asked me if I had difficulty with video games growing up because when they were doing the neuro-testing on me, my executive functioning was so bad that he worried that I had suffered a stroke. A Cat Scan proved that I am not a stoke patient, I am just incredibly bad at hand eye coordination. And playing video games is one of those things that I suck at badly. But it wasn't just that she was better than me at Atari, she taunted me and tortured me when she won, which was every day. She would laugh at my awkward failure and when I got pissed, would condescend to me and goad me into playing again so we could rinse and repeat for hours at a time, for months on end.


When we got to high school, her resentment turned into outright disgust. I had friends and a social life, she was called "Quaker Woman" and taunted by her classmates because she was dressed like Laura Ingles from Little House on the Prairie instead of Madonna circa 1987. I played sports, got a Letterman's jacket and a class ring, she latched on to the Captain of the Football team and withered in his shadow for protection from the coven of girls who tortured her. The net effect created a very angry and bitter young woman who launched from high school to a less than glowing performance in college and then into the arms of her High School Football Captain Husband, whom she divorced when the warranty on her starter marriage ran out.


The adult years only solidified the contempt we have for each other and when we did have to speak, at funerals and will readings, she spoke in a condescending teacher tone speaking to a kid that she really thinks is useless but is not allowed to tell him to his face. When my wife was introduced to her at my Uncle's Funeral, she congratulated us on our marriage and thanked my wife for marrying me because "he was always so lonely in the past".


As I said, I have a pile of misgivings about my sister and if she died tomorrow I think the flying monkeys that guard her castle would rejoice. But this is Feel Good Friday and here's the happy ending.


I have ADHD.




I also have a master's degree which I was the first to achieve in our family, A captain's license, a happy first marriage and I graduated in a higher spot than she did in High school. Not only that, but I also attended the United States Coast Guard Academy and founded a Non Profit that helped thousands of people, and I also have hard proof that Mom and Dad loved me best. My sister is a bitter shell of a woman, who hates God even more than she hates me. But I think in life, I have been pretty successful. I have been successful despite my ADHD which I think has hampered my progress just a bit. But I kind of look at my relationship with my sister like the scene in a Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts are sword fighting. The Spaniard says to the Pirate Wesley, "You are amazing, it's a shame I am going to have to kill you". Wesley laughs and replies, "I know something you don't, I am not left-handed." Megan, I know something you don't, I have ADHD.

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