Apparently I’ve been blogging about my ADD / ADHD shenanigans for quite a while.  I was aware that I’d written a good deal about them in my MySpace blog back in the day, but I had forgotten about my Xanga blog…or at least how much I had actually written in it.

Recently, I had a random recall about a comment somebody left on one of my Xanga posts.  At the time, I was writing for a very small audience (a couple cousins and maybe a friend or two).  I never categorized or tagged any of my posts.  More than anything, I was really writing just to clear my head.  Being as lost as I was at the time, I didn’t feel like I was in the best place to reach people and make a difference.

That’s why this comment really stuck out…it was from some random person, whose life I’d actually touched with my words.

Once I remembered the comment, I decided I had to find it.  Now, Xanga was many lives (and many email addresses) ago, so it took a bit of detective work (self-hacking) to uncover it all…but I finally got there.  While I expected a total of maybe three posts, there were actually 180.

As I scrolled through about two years worth of posts, looking for the comment that triggered this quest, it was like reliving it all over again.  I found myself impressed by my own wisdom.  Not to sound cocky (cause I’m not); I mean, I was honestly shocked.

My life has changed a great deal since then…in a lot of ways.  Yet, in a lot of ways, I’m still haunted by many of the same ghosts.  Those two years were life changing for me.  When I started writing, I didn’t know I had ADD / ADHD; I hadn’t yet been diagnosed.  In the early posts, I’m so frustrated, trying to figure out what is wrong with me.  Then in the later posts, once I’ve been diagnosed, you can hear the relief and the, “What now?” of me trying to work it all out.

I laughed…I cried…and then I had to go buy a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger for lunch (because apparently I used to write entire blog posts about them.  Who knew?).

In general, the posts were very enlightening, even to the person who lived the documented experiences.  When I found the post (droid) I was looking for, entitled, “Colored File Folders and the Organization of Life,” I was excited to actually find two comments, instead of just the one.

I remember, back in the day (2006), reading that comment (or those comments as it turns out) and thinking that I had actually made a difference.  I poured my heart out on a random electronic canvas and my story, as it was received, made others feel less alone and more understood in their own lives, “You have a much more articulate way of explaining how I feel than I do.”  When I started blogging, I never expected to really reach anyone.

In that moment, though, I realized, as the one poster said, “The internet can be a good thing once in a while.”  I’m not sure I fathomed how wide a reach the Internet would allow, but I knew I had just used it to reach at least two people.

For all that I go through and all that I’ve been through, if I can make a difference in one life…then it will have all been worth it.