The Snowball Effect

by Haley Cass

“What the hell is the matter with you?” The woman demanded to know before she crossed her arms tighter and then grimaced in disgust at – what Regan guessed was – the wet stickiness of the coffee that still soaked the material. “I mean, adult-identified ADHD. But I don’t really like to look at it as something that’s wrong with me.”

If she wasn’t jam-packed at work, what could she say now? Short of, actually, I’m not ready to see you, and I don’t exactly know why, but I also don’t really want to put in the mental energy to figuring that out, anyway?

“The trick to never letting that get to you is knowing that if someone doesn’t truly know you, ninety-nine percent of the time? Their opinion says far more about them than it does about you. Or, in the words of my grandmother: judgments made in ignorance are better left ignored.”

The difference was that Regan rarely got in her own head, worried that she would sound silly. In fact, she was all too willing to fall on her sword and play the fool – play into what people so often thought of her – in order to direct a situation to an easy resolve.

too. real. ouch.