The Spaces Between Messages

I haven’t written here since the 14th of June.

Not because nothing happened.

Mostly because too much did.

Which is usually how it goes, isn’t it? You start something because you want a place to put your thoughts, and then life immediately becomes the sort of thing you can’t quite put anywhere.

The blog was supposed to be the place for half-formed thoughts. The honest draft. The bit before I try to make everything sound more together than it actually is.

And then life got loud.

Work got loud.

Caring got loud.

Music got loud.

My own head got loud, which is always helpful, because apparently it saw a quiet moment and thought, absolutely not, we’ll be having none of that.

There’s something strange about trying to write when you’re in the middle of it. Not after it. Not once you’ve learned the lesson and become a better, calmer, more marketable version of yourself. But while you’re still slightly confused, slightly tired, and eating something that technically counts as dinner because it was warm at some point.

That’s probably why I went quiet.

Not because I had nothing to say.

Because I had too much to say, and no idea which bit was the point.

I think ADHD makes that worse sometimes. The thoughts don’t queue politely. They don’t arrive in a sensible order, take a number, and wait to be dealt with. They all turn up at once, each insisting they are urgent, each holding a clipboard, each somehow louder than the one before.

So you either write everything, which is chaos.

Or you write nothing, which is easier.

For a while, I chose nothing.

In fairness to me, quite a lot has happened.

There has been the usual balancing act of trying to be a person while also being responsible for other people. Trying to work, care, conduct, reply, arrange, remember, eat, sleep, and occasionally drink water like someone who has heard of basic human maintenance.

There has been the strange ongoing business of fighting for myself.

And I do mean fighting.

Because people say that like it’s empowering. Fight for yourself. Choose yourself. Put yourself first. Lovely. Very clean. Very Instagram-caption-ready.

But actually doing it is messy.

It means making decisions that feel selfish even when they aren’t. It means wanting things and then feeling guilty for wanting them. It means realising you’ve spent a lot of your life being useful, available, needed, responsible, and then wondering who you are when you’re not doing something for someone else.

And then, somewhere in all of that, I met someone.

Which is a very small sentence for quite a big thing.

I don’t know how to write about that properly yet. Partly because it’s new. Partly because it feels private. Partly because I don’t want to turn a real person into a plot point just because I have a blog and poor impulse control.

But I did meet someone.

And it has made things feel lighter in places I didn’t realise had gone so heavy.

That’s the lovely bit.

There is, obviously, another bit.

Because when you’ve spent a long time feeling disappointed, or unwanted, or like you were always the person people chose after they had run out of better options, someone kind turning up doesn’t just feel nice.

It feels suspicious.

You don’t just enjoy it.

You inspect it.

You look for the catch. You look for the change in tone. You notice the gaps between messages. You wonder if you said too much, felt too much, replied too quickly, made it too obvious that this means something to you.

And with ADHD, there’s the dopamine of it all.

The message.

The laugh.

The feeling that someone is thinking about you.

The little bright spark in the day that suddenly makes everything feel a bit more possible.

It’s good dopamine.

Dangerous dopamine, maybe.

Because you want to chase it.

Not in a creepy way. Not in a grand romantic montage way. Just in the very human way of wanting more of the thing that made you feel less alone.

But then you have to try not to get carried away.

You have to try not to run at it holding every feeling you’ve ever had like an overpacked suitcase.

You have to remind yourself that something can matter without needing to be held too tightly.

Which is annoying.

Because I am very good at overthinking, less good at just letting things be.

There’s a saying that when a man knows, he knows.

And I don’t know if that’s true.

I don’t know if men know, or if we just occasionally feel something very strongly and then spend the next few weeks trying to work out whether it was intuition, trauma, loneliness, hope, or caffeine.

Maybe it’s all of them.

Maybe knowing isn’t a thunderbolt.

Maybe it’s quieter than that.

Maybe it’s the feeling of your shoulders dropping slightly when their name appears on your phone. Maybe it’s laughing without having to perform. Maybe it’s wanting to tell them ordinary things. Maybe it’s the terrifying little thought of, oh, I could be hurt here.

And maybe that’s what makes it feel real.

Not because it fixes everything.

It doesn’t.

Life is still loud.

The caring is still there.

The work is still there.

The ADHD is still standing in the middle of the room pressing buttons it absolutely should not be pressing.

The old wounds are still old wounds.

But something has shifted.

Not solved.

Shifted.

And I think that might be why I needed to come back here.

Because the gap wasn’t empty.

I was still living inside it.

I was still trying.

Still getting things wrong.

Still fighting for myself.

Still learning that wanting something doesn’t automatically make me too much.

Still trying not to confuse excitement with certainty.

Still trying not to confuse fear with wisdom.

Still trying not to scare away something good by gripping it too hard.

So no, this isn’t a neat update.

It isn’t a grand return.

It isn’t me saying I’ve worked it all out, because I absolutely have not, and honestly that would be suspicious behaviour.

It’s just this.

Life got loud.

I went quiet.

I met someone.

And now I’m trying to let hope be hope without turning it into a full-time administrative task.