I remembered the chicken yesterday.

Several times.

I remembered that it needed taking out of the freezer. I intended to do it. I reminded myself again later.

And at 6:50pm, my brain suddenly announced:

CHICKEN.

It was still in the freezer.

This would be an entirely unremarkable ADHD story were it not for the fact that something about it felt different.

I had remembered.

Then I had lost the reminder.

Usually my brain is full of tabs.

Some are useful. Some are ridiculous. Some have been open for several days and nobody knows what they’re doing there. One is playing music, although I can’t find it. Another has decided that whatever I am currently doing is considerably less interesting than the thing it has just discovered.

They interrupt each other constantly.

And I have spent years wishing they would shut up.

Recently, for brief stretches, they have.

I have just started ADHD medication. It is far too early to know what will ultimately change, what won’t, or whether the things I am noticing now will still be there in a few weeks.

But for the first time, I have experienced periods where my mind feels noticeably quieter.

And I like it.

I can sit with one thing.

I can concentrate without several other thoughts simultaneously demanding that I look at them.

There are spaces between thoughts that I don’t think I realised were supposed to exist.

But I have discovered something unexpected.

The noise was doing jobs.

Not efficiently.

Not reliably.

And certainly not peacefully.

But over forty-one years, I had apparently learned to use some of it.

One tab might interrupt the task I was doing, but another would eventually flash:

Don’t forget the chicken.

Another would remind me what came next.

Another would notice something in the room and insist it needed doing.

Another would remember the thing I had forgotten three interruptions ago.

It was chaotic.

But it was my chaos.

I had built ways of functioning inside it without ever consciously knowing that was what I was doing.

Now, sometimes, I have one tab.

And the strangest thing happens.

I can focus beautifully on what is in front of me, but the other information doesn’t always arrive when I expect it to.

Imagine I am designing a poster.

I’m thinking about purple flowers. Perhaps some foliage. Where the words should sit. Whether that shade works against the background.

Someone walks over.

“That’s lovely. What’s your name?”

And internally there is a peculiar moment of:

Purple. Foliage. Words in the—

Why are you looking at me?

What information do you want?

My name.

What is my name?

Eventually:

Frost.

Of course I know my name.

The information hasn’t disappeared.

It just wasn’t on the tab I was using.

And apparently I have spent decades relying upon other tabs to shove their way to the front without being invited.

That has made me think differently about executive function.

Because quieter does not automatically mean easier.

Being able to stay with a task is not the same as knowing what comes next.

Concentration is not working memory.

Starting is not switching.

Remembering something once is not the same as remembering it at the moment when you need to act upon it.

And reducing one difficulty doesn’t necessarily make all the others disappear neatly behind it.

Sometimes it makes them easier to see.

That is perhaps the strangest part.

I have spent much of my life trying to understand where my ADHD ends and my autism begins.

Of course, human brains don’t divide themselves into such convenient departments. There is overlap, interaction and contradiction.

But ADHD has always been loud.

It wants the interesting thing.

The new thing.

The thing happening over there.

The thing I have just remembered.

The thing that absolutely must happen immediately despite having survived perfectly well without my intervention for the previous six months.

Autism often feels different.

It is quieter, but considerably more authoritarian.

It has rules.

Sequences.

Expected ways of doing things.

It knows when tea happens.

It knows what Sunday is for.

It knows that the bath belongs between daytime doing and evening being.

And apparently, when some of the other noise quietened, I became extremely interested in documenting these routines.

At one point I genuinely wanted to abandon the work I was supposed to be doing so that I could write a list of my daily routines and explain why each one was important.

Which felt rather like discovering that, behind the chaotic office I thought was running the building, there has been an entirely separate management department holding a clipboard all along.

I don’t yet know what any of this means.

That matters.

I am at the very beginning of titration. What I notice today may disappear tomorrow. A different dose may feel completely different. Some things may be medication effects, some may be ordinary fluctuations, and some may simply be things I am noticing because, for once, I am looking closely enough to see them.

There is also a danger in trying to assign every thought to a diagnosis.

Perhaps that isn’t the point.

Perhaps the interesting thing is simply that when one part of a complicated system changes, you finally notice all the adaptations that had grown around it.

I had thought I wanted somebody to close the tabs.

I hadn’t realised that I had learned to use their flashing, shouting and interrupting as reminders.

So now I am trying something different.

I have bought the tabs a notepad.

When a side quest appears, I can write it down.

If it is still important when I finish what I am doing, I can come back to it.

I don’t have to follow every thought simply because it appeared.

And I don’t have to rely upon it screaming loudly enough that I remember it later.

Perhaps that is what this stage is.

Not becoming a different person.

Not suddenly acquiring perfect executive function.

Not replacing a chaotic brain with an efficient one.

Just discovering which parts of the old system were difficulties, which became adaptations, and which pieces might need new scaffolding if the landscape changes.

It might be messy for a while.

I expected that.

I have spent more than four decades learning how to operate a very busy mind.

If it becomes quieter, perhaps I also have to learn how to operate the quiet.

For now, I am listening.

And occasionally, several hours later, my brain still shouts:

CHICKEN.

— Frost ❄️