“I love how you eat apples,” a girlfriend once told me during college.

“How do I eat apples?” I wanted to know. My mind froze, suddenly unable to recall how to eat food, at all, apples or otherwise. She leaned across the couch toward me.

“Down to the core,” she whispered. “Like, all of the apple.” Her tone didn’t seem to match the message.

“Isn’t that how everyone eats apples? Until you get to the middle?” I asked, but she just shook her head at me.

At lunch in the cafeteria, I remembered her comment most of the way through my apple. The caf had two kinds: red and green. That fall I favored the greens. On one half of this particular green globe, the core was already exposed. Each dark seed sat secure in its own cavity, but I turned the apple over above my tray: a flick of the wrist shook three of them free.

I did eat my apples down to the core.

Was it student life frugality? The same set of instincts that led me to stuff an extra banana in my backpack for between classes? Yeah, yeah, it’s a buffet, not a supermarket. But how else do you get your money’s worth out of the meal plan?

Was it general summa cum laude, Honors Program, Presidential Scholar effort? The energy that had me up until 4 a.m. copyediting with the newspaper staff and traveling all weekend with the speech team?

I don’t know. Those details make it all sound more ambitious than could probably be true. As a drinker, I never set out to get right up to the line. I didn’t think I was chasing anything. I just—drank. And then I kept on, because I already was. There’s something about the brakes not being so good in ADHD brains. And once things really get going, the brakes seize up. I’ve learned to just try not to panic and to steer myself to safety.

Now that I’ve got the diagnosis—and don’t drink—I have the excuse and greater wherewithal to dive into the literature. I see that the guidance is to externalize the brakes. Make reminders around yourself to stop or breathe: I get nudges in front of myself to redirect a system that would otherwise barrel ahead. It could be timers or notes or alarms or posters, anything that gets the responsibility to stop myself out of my brain and in my way.

Some backstops are built in. The bottom of the bottle or the center of the fruit.

I guess that’s how I am. If I’m gonna have an apple, I’m gonna have an apple. I’ll come up for air when I run out of apple.

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Writing prompt: We need fire but can’t get too close. Discuss.

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