Without ADHD: most days are practice days, you fly around on your broom and shoot some hoop, if you're more skilled and experiened you score more with your quaffle (complete more tasks). occasionally a bludger may be released at you which may derail (distract) you for a bit but you recover relatively easily. now and then there will be match days which are more intense, maybe couple of times a month, maybe once a week, but your regular practice prepare you for them. sometimes you get a strong opponent and other times you have the upper hand. you win some games, you lose a few... even for the matches you lose, you probably still scored some quaffle points. some people manage it better than others, but most manage fine.
With ADHD: most days are match days so you have to be constantly in top form in order to survive. your opponent is just focused on batting multiple bludgers towards you, which keeps you busy avoiding them that you don't have a chance to score points with the quaffle, if you even have the quaffle in the first place. occasionally you get lucky and find a snitch and with a bit of effort you're able to grab it (hyperfocus) and score a bunch of points with it. once in a while though an extra shiny snitch turns out to be a decoy and against regulations so the points wouldn't count. it's tough to be in competition mode all week, but at least you get the weekends off, maybe. even with the possible rest, the daily matches get to you and you easily burn out.
Perimenopause with ADHD: every day is a match day, and you have no idea where the quaffle is. there are bludgers flying everywhere, hitting you left and right until you're almost numb to them. maybe you'll get off the broom and just go hide in a corner for a while, hoping to spot a snitch so you can score some points quickly and end the game (for the day), but somehow it's way harder to find snitches now, much less catch it. the coping skills you gained earlier (before perimenopause) in the constant game-mode all fail to work now. the match doesn't seem to end, just put on pause at the end of the day, when you can get some sleep. oh wait, haha, good luck with the sleep. the bruises from the bludgers you could somewhat ignore during the day keep you awake all night.
#ADHD #perimenopause #quidditch #analogy
Images generated with #PixelStudio. Text my own, inspired by a certain fictional game from the HP series. Everyone's experiences are different, this is just me trying to make sense of my struggles.
