The week I got an ADHD diagnosis, I closed the garage door on my car. I burned my forearm on the tip of a glue gun. And, I don’t want to get into it, but I spilled my lunch such that now there’s a salad dressing stain on my best bra.

None of this is exactly surprising.

I meant to get the diagnosis, this wasn’t an ambush. A professional mentioned the possibility of exploring it almost two years ago, and the data started adding up. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. So I got an evaluation. My flavor is the inattentive one, though some part of me wanted it to be the other one—hyperactive. Some part of me thought that being hyperactive would more palatable than being distractable (my word). To whom? “Society,” other people, my dead mother, the part of me that’s always wondering how things must look, the one who thinks there’s no planet on which I get the last word about how things must look.

More about that part of me another time.

This part of me, I’ve known a long time, but I haven’t really given her a fair shake. She’s the one who tries to bring the coffee along during chores and leaves the mug on a shelf inside the linen closet. She loses my phone in the car, or the laundry room, or inside the fridge. Speaking of, don’t ask where she put the shredded cheese. We don’t know. Strike that—we won’t know until it’s too late.

And let me say this once and be done with it for a while. The things that happen with my brain, my short-term memory, and my processing power are not unique to me, or people with an ADHD diagnosis, or a suspected or self-diagnosis, and you know what, actually, a lot of this stuff would be better understood as one long human spectrum with room for all of us instead of as different lists that you’re either on or not on.

All right, enough of that for now.

I sometimes do things that are awkward and clumsy. I’m sometimes distractable.

But can we also talk about screens everywhere? Why, in the restaurants? Why, at the gas pump? Why, at swim lessons? Like a lot of people with ADHD, I would point out that “deficit” is a bit of a misnomer: I have an abundance of attention, not a deficit. I just can’t always direct it at will, and I can’t sustain focus as well as if I had a different brain. You put me in a distracting environment, I will get distracted.

You see the trap here? I got myself a label to help build this understanding of myself, but there is no “me” without context. You put me in a distracting environment, I will get distracted. Would that not be true—to some extent—for literally anyone? Doesn’t that sound like a reasonable reaction, to become distracted by something that’s distracting?

Okay, that last bit was the part of me that’s always wondering how things must look. But also, on this topic, I don’t really care how anybody else understands it. I think my brain does things that brains are supposed to do, even if some of its systems are tuned such that they’re a little more sensitive.

I wouldn’t be me without the parts that pointed me to the diagnosis. What I’m calling distractibility today is also the part of me that is voracious, that is curious as hell. Call me Alice; I love a good rabbit-hole. These are the parts that beg me to consider, “What if?”

What if I hot-glued all this shit together, what would it make? What if I connected these ideas, where would it get me? What if I could make this place better? What if I could?

What if I could?

Squirrel, shiny object, Wikipedia or Reddit link marathon—they aren’t just “distractions.” Things get my attention for a reason. Good news is that I get to decide the reason. Sometimes I get stopped in my tracks by things that delight my soul. Or disturb me. Or are otherwise asking for my consideration. My world tees up these options for me, and sometimes I follow.

I want to learn to work with this news, this diagnosis that might tell me something or nothing and it’s up to me. The breadcrumbs got me here, anyway. This is my story, and I’m Gretel and I’m the witch and I’m the oven and I’m the magic.

None of this is news.

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