as a chronically late human being the limitations of the “lateness is disrespectful & rude” discourse is incredibly interesting to me. see also, the ableism.

& i know the ableism comes up every time we have this talk but y’all really seem to act brand new every time & I just ????

for example, the way my ADHD is set up, I have virtually no concept of time. not in the cute, quirky way either. I mean I literally could not tell you how long it takes me to do something as simple as getting dressed without timing myself for a week.

I don’t know what 5 minutes feels like, and I have to listen to music or a television show while i do anything so I can somewhat frame time, otherwise I’ll spend 5 hours “cleaning” my house aka stopping for a 10 min break that turns into 3 hours of unchecked scrolling.

fun fact: i hate being late. i really do. i set alarms & have routines that I attempt to stick to to avoid being late. But it still happens. Getting to work is the worst for me. I shit you not, even when I manage to wake up 2 hours early, I show up late.

why? because i have no concept of time. my brain does not register time the way “normal” people’s do. Worse, I have a memory that works in fragments & clips so I misplace things a lot & have no memory of where I placed them.

Do you know how fucking embarrassing it is to explain, as a professional adult, to your professional adult boss that you’re late for the 4th day in a row because you spent 35 minutes looking for your keys that morning. AGAIN. just like you do every. single. morning?

it’s always “get a key rack”

duh.

“have you tried post-its?”

only every day since i was 7.

“make a checklist.”

if only i could remember to check it.

the solution always seems so simple to folks who’ve never had to experience it.

and like.. I get it, truly. because i’ve lived in y’alls (neurotypical folks’) world my whole life. I understand why the solution seems so simple. I get why my inability to “just be on time” is infuriating. it infuriates me, truthfully.

i remember one day, i’d spent 20 minutes looking for my keys, just to pull up to my office garage & realize I’d misplaced my badge that let me in the building. I was 30 minutes late & turning around would’ve made it worse.

I was so pissed with myself I just.. broke down.

in that moment I hated myself for being so forgetful, for not being normal, for being broken, for being so scatterbrained. for being irresponsible and rude and unprofessional and everything else everyone had ever called me or told me about myself for being so... me.

when the standard is that you’re either punctual or you’re a disrespectful waste of a human being (some of y’all are capital H, Harsh) it’s so hard to communicate issues like not having a grasp on time or always misplacing things. It always reads as an excuse and it feels shitty

to be the person that’s like “hey yeah ima be late on account of literally who I am as an individual”. & then to have folks belittle others for “leaning on lateness as a personality trait” is just so .... othering.

anyway, this is ur note from ur friendly neighborhood ADHD afflicted homo reminding u to be less of a dick about folks being punctual. most of the time someone’s lateness has nothing to do with u probably, and besides, time isn’t fucking real anyway. relax y’all. just relax.