Dear Santa:

I thought I was being good this year. Then I found out I have ADHD.

Holiday Festiveness.

People who have problems often get really great stuff for Christmas, so I had been wondering what wonderful things might be under the tree for me this yuletide season.

A lot of research later, and I’m wondering if I should even bother putting up a tree.

It turns out that we ADHDers have no idea what being good is. Well, maybe that’s not the best way to put it. We know what being good is, but we don’t have enough awareness of self to know when we’re not being good. So, I’m sorry about how I’ve behaved, but it wasn’t completely my fault, my brain deserves some of the blame, and it and I aren’t always communicating with each other.

Please don’t get me wrong here Santa, I’m not saying I’m not responsible for my actions. But I am saying I would have been a lot better behaved if I’d known a few things.

I’d have tried very hard not to snap at people when they interrupted me during hyper-focused activities such as reading, writing and staring vacantly at the TV.

I would have tried to be more tolerant of those around me who couldn’t make me see what they were trying to explain. Right or wrong, I think that everyone is entitled to an opinion. But sometimes they catch me at one of those times when it seems like people are speaking a language from some distant planet. Try as I might, when that happens I can’t, for the life of me, understand what they’re trying to say. So, my first response should not be to dismiss them, I know this now. It rarely happens that they are right, but that doesn’t make them all fools.

I’d have stopped cursing at pretend-news shows that offer nothing but gossip that relates to famous people. And I’d have tried really hard not to make fun of those who watch these shows thinking they really are watching the news.

I’d have been less angry at other drivers on the road, I’d try to understand their perspective.

I’d like to think I’d have stopped making fun of radio announcers and their poor grammar, stopped laughing at their tragically comical mispronunciations of place names, but honestly, so many of them could use a course like “English as a First Language” …

Okay, I can see I might be getting a tad bitter here, and that would be my latest sin. But really, I think I’m pretty positive for a guy who is trying to salvage the good out of 51 years of being deluded about his life.

And I think, if you’re willing to consider my request, that I have the perfect Christmas gift to ask you for. It would be a very useful thing for me, but it’s not just for me. It would help others across the country, across the continent and around the world. It would help not just those of us with ADHD, but those people who love us and want to understand what’s going on.

For Christmas, I’d like you to bring ADHD awareness to the world. I know there are bigger problems; AIDS, cancers, wars and crime. But I think that if we could resolve some of the problems surrounding the lives of those of us with ADHD, we could all work together on these other things.

I know I don’t deserve anything, but I’m not asking just for myself … I’ll leave milk and cookies as always, (don’t worry, Zoë didn’t bake them) and a carrot for each reindeer.

love, Kelly