“You’re tired. What have you done today?”
A shadow passes over her face. “Nothing. I’ve been a potato.”
“Fair enough.” That makes two of us.
She sighs, frustrated. “It’s not. I hate it. I have these days sometimes where I literally can’t make myself move. I took a shower this morning, then I lay there and stared at the ceiling for three hours trying to make myself do something.”
I shrug. “You’re a guest. You don’t have to do anything.”
“I don’t want to be lazy. Ihatewasting time like this.”
I consider her. She looks genuinely annoyed. “This an ADHD thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Happen a lot?”
She fiddles with my chest hair. “About once a week.”
“You tried to stop it?”
“My whole life.” She groans. “The meds help, but every so often my brain just craps out, like I’ve used all my mental energy. And I can’t do anything. And I really, really want to, my body is like, revving to go, but I just can’t make myself get up. There’s, like, this insurmountable gap between what I want to do, and actually doing the thing.”
“Sounds like you don’t have a choice then,” I say bluntly. “Don’t see the point in being angry at yourself. I take the day off when my leg flares up.”
She frowns down at my thigh. “It’s not the same. I should be able to push through. You physically can’t.”
I raise my eyebrows. It’s probably the unkindest thing I’ve ever heard Summer say. “I think you’re being shitty,” I tell her frankly.
“What?”
I sift through my thoughts, trying to work out how to word it. “Have you ever seen Fraser or Alec get in the trailer of the tractor while I’m driving it?”
“No?”
“They don’t even wait for me to stop. They’ll grab the side and jump right in.”
She blinks. “…Okay?”
“If I need to get in while one of them is driving, I make them stop the tractor. I don’t jump. Because I know my leg is weak.”
She’s looking at me like I’m very odd. “That…makes sense.”
“If I insisted on jumping into the tractor, just ’cause they both can, I’d be making my life harder.” My head hurts. I’m shite at metaphors. “You can’t jump into the tractor either, but you’re insisting you should be able to. Why? Because your shite is in your head and not your body?”
“It’s not the same?—”
“Maybe, maybe not, but it’s more similar than you’re letting on. Maybe other people don’t need days off, but you do. Deal with it. Your brain is different from other peoples’. You need different things. You know this. You have a diagnosis telling you this. But you expect yourself to rise above it and act like everyone else, anyway. It’s shitty of you. This is a symptom of how your brain works, not a choice. Accept it and move on.”
Her mouth opens and closes a few times. “Yeah. I guess,” she says eventually. “My therapist says the same thing. It’s just—my Mum hated it when I needed a day to rest. She said I was being lazy.”
Aye, I bet she did. “People are shit at understanding anything except what they know. They’ll treat you badly because they can’t be arsed to empathise with you. That’s on them. But if you decide to join in and treat yourself badly too, that’s your own fault.”
Her mouth quirks. “I…this is the most aggressive pep talk I’ve ever received.”
I snort. “Aye, well, I’m not known for bein’ sweet.” I tug the covers over her firmly. “Just give yourself what you need. What do you want to do right now?”
She sighs. “Nothing. I just want to sleep.”
