I don’t really know how to answer Lizzo’s question right now, to be honest. Everyone I know who is neurotypical seems to be experiencing a lot of trauma. There seems to be a lot of crying, a lot of anger, and a lot of emotion. It’s kind of weird, but I’m not really feeling much. I’m calm.

This could be a trauma-response. Some people stay calm during a crisis, then break down once they have a time to process. If this is the case, I suppose I’ll see this change down the road as we go into an unfamiliar future. It could also be a result of depression, but when I get depressed, I don’t want to do anything. Right now, I’m doing things.

It could also be that those of us with ADHD tend to thrive in crisis situations; I’m taking in information, getting things done, and I’ve been able to help a lot of other people this week. I’ve organized things both in community and in my schools. While I’m not finishing everything perfectly (I start a lot of things all the time and sometimes things don’t get finished), I’m doing pretty well with things. As long as I have ways I can help, I’m doing really well. Turns out, this is common for us shiny people.

Kelly Babcock, a blogger and writer who also has ADHD, actually wrote about it just a couple days ago. I don’t echo everything he writes about, but a this part really rings true: “I’m well acquainted with not really knowing what I’ll be doing in a week; I’ve lived my entire life like that.” It’s just true – I can’t really see too far ahead. I know I’ve written about not being able to answer questions like “where do you see yourself in five years?” because I don’t know where I see myself in five days. I think this might be helping me cope with what’s going on better than some NT friends.

I asked a private ADHD group on Facebook about this, and 99% of the responses were in strong agreement: they feel calm, able to do what they need to do, and focused in some ways. It’s nice to have a place where people get it.

On the flip side of the relative calm is the guilt. We can see people rushing around, worried about important things, and we realize that people are having a lot of strong emotions around this. Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, actually said in his address today that it would be “unnatural” not to have strong emotions at this time (wow, thanks for othering us). Some of us shiny people, me included, are feeling almost a sense of survivors guilt – we are doing okay in a world where almost everyone is feeling not-okay at best. In some ways, I don’t know how to relate.

What I do know is helping where I can. I’m trying to organize things, responding to friends who are in need, and picking up things from the store for folks who shouldn’t go to the store for themselves. Friends who are reading this: please reach out if you need help. I’m actually doing pretty okay, so I am ready to support folks who aren’t doing okay. Then we can be okay together… at an acceptable social distance.