Page 88 of Caught A Vibe

“I keep hearing Dad in my head telling me to quit being lazy and fix it.”

“He hated to see you struggle. His way of helping was to tell you how he would have done it. I know that wasn’t the most supportive, but he loved you.” My mother wrings a napkin between her fingers as she speaks.

I take a sip of coffee before I reply. “I hope you’re not going to tell me that his verbal slaps were just him showing that he cared.”

Her eyes flash to mine, glassy but wide-open. “No. I’m not. He had a temper and a loud mouth and could often only focus on the faults of a situation. He wasn’t perfect and made many mistakes that he never apologized for. But I do believe that he loved you. I love you too, Dash, just as you are. In fact, I’ve been reading some books…”

She rises from the table to duck into the family room and comes back, arms laden. She drops the pile of books on the table between us. They have a rainbow of sticky note tabs and notebook paper hanging out the edges and the spines are cracked and bent.

ADHD and You. ADHD: Unlocking Your Superpower. ADHD For Adults.

“Mom, what’s all this?”

“I needed to understand you. And myself. These books weren’t around twenty years ago, and your father sure as hell wasn’t open to learning he was wrong.”

“What do you mean, yourself?”

“Oh, honey. I started reading them to learn about your challenges and how to better communicate with you. I didn’t expect to see so many parts of me reflected on the pages. I’ve never been diagnosed, but I connect with so many of these traits as they present in older women. A lot of things make sense now. Anyway, the books have been very helpful, and maybe we could talk about them later?”

“Sure, Mom. I’ll go through them.”

She smiles, and the five-year-old in me is stupidly happy about earning that smile. I crunch my last piece of cinnamon toast and grin as she continues talking.

“This one in particular talks about supercharging your powers. You’re attracted to things that give you a dopamine boost. I think that’s why you took so well to video games. And when your job gave you that hit, you did great because your brain was in a happy place. But it doesn’t seem like this current job is giving you that.”

“No, it’s really not.”

“And that’s why it’s harder. Is there a way to get dopamine from somewhere or someone else before you start working?”

It’s an interesting question, one I don’t know if I’ve considered in that light before. Can I hack my brain to make it do what I want? WhatdoI want?

Possibilities are swirling, because my brain always works best in a storm, but one realization pushes its way to the fore.

I have never truly understood my mother.

After that emotional coffee break, I retreat to my old hangout, the garage, one of mom’s books in tow. I thought for sure my dad would have reclaimed the space when I left for college, but shockingly, not much has changed. The weight system Dad bought me that I used for two months in high school, convinced I could bulk up and impress the girls, sits dusty in the corner.

The ratty old sectional couch is still crammed against the wall. The scuffed coffee table, that I jumped on frequently for victory dances, is still standing. My old gaming system is gone, but the stand is still there. The only thing that has been upgraded is the TV. A large flatscreen hangs on the wall. Dad must’ve bought it for fight nights.

I flop on the couch and flip through one of Mom’s books on ADHD. The things she’s highlighted are fascinating. It seems like we have a lot in common. The periods of distraction followed by the hyperfocus. The trouble finishing projects without external motivation or deadlines. The spacing out during conversations. But the parts that have red tabs stop me. They are on every page of the ADHD and relationships section. I know she probably marked them to process her relationship with Dad, but I read them now through the lens of my failure with Penny.

Too little communication on both sides, too much resentment and misunderstanding as a result. I had no idea there were ADHD relationship strategies. I’d only ever learned what I needed to survive school. Clearly, I have a lot to learn. It’s too much too soon, but I’m going to come back to this when I’m not so raw from losing Penny. Maybe if I can learn from this, I won’t mess up my next relationship too badly.

I toss the book on the floor and curl up into a ball on the couch.

Just being in the garage is comforting. This space was my cocoon, my incubator. This is where I nurtured my love of video games. Away from my parents’ arguments, in my little cave, I escaped into races and quests and alien worlds. Every click of the button fed my obsession, and when I discovered that I could learn how to make my favorite games, I knew I wanted a career in game design. I loved my computer science classes, because they taught me how to codify and build sense into my world.

This room more than any other feels like home. All of those early dreams and primal memories flood my brain. Where did that kid go? I kinda missed the scrawny little guy.

Running out to my car, I grab the box that has my gaming gear in it and hook everything up through the screen to my laptop. When I lift my laptop, my Penny’s Pleasures spreadsheet is still open. My eyes scan the columns and rows, remembering every minute of our time together, and I am hit with an intense longing.

Damn it.I can’t have her. It’s too soon, and I am too brittle to handle the emotions this spreadsheet unlocks. Tears well and fall, and I close the sheet quickly. All I want to do right now is hide away with a new game and get out of my head for a while.

I had a review request from an indie game designer at my alma mater, looking for eyes on her final project, come through my neglected blog space. Even though the rest of my world is falling apart, this is something I can do. I’ll help this young woman out with some feedback, and I can shut down my own worries for a few hours. I load the game, settle back into my familiar butt divot on the couch, and let the story take me away.

It’s a good game. I hope she gets some funding to spend on cleaning up the graphics a bit, but the premise is interesting. It’s a game for teen girls to explore interpersonal relationships within a friend group on an adventure. Largely geared toward the middle school market, it’s a clever way to build relationship awareness and communication practice into a fun quest.

Someone should make something like this for teen boys trying to figure out teen girls. God, I’d have been so much cooler in high school if I’d been able to figure out girls in a game before actually asking one out on a date and having totalkto her. Hell, I would still benefit from that kind of game, if my recent interactions with Penny are anything to go by.

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