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Times like these and Dave wondered if maybe moving to Long Island to be closer to Max would have been the better move. He knew Max thought it would’ve been. But he still showed up to support the decision Dave made.
Dave knew the friendship he had with Max wasn’t typical. They both just happened to be wired in specific ways that spoke to one another.
After dinner, Dave helped Max clean up and then they worked on the “this is what done looks like” list together.
That had started some time in high school. Max would remember the exact date, but all Dave had were impressions of memory. He was still trying to go to school full time because he didn’t want to stop playing ball.
He’d been to a few doctors and one of them had diagnosed him with inattentive ADHD.
Dave had been so mad.
It had felt like the most unfair and unbelievable conclusion.
His mom hadn’t really known what to do. He knew she’d done her best, but he hadn’t made it easy on her either.
He’d get mad and throw fits, frustrated thatthiswas just how it was going to be. His brain was a battlefield. He was expected to live with a constant war of thoughts piling on top of one another until they spilled over.
He’d fought it.
He thought he could negotiate his way out of it.
And when that didn’t work, he’d avoid, avoid, avoid. Running away from anything that confronted him with reality.
He’d finally told his friends about his diagnosis. He’d had kept it a secret for as long as he could, afraid they’d treat him differently.
But they hadn’t.
They’d just accepted him and moved forward with the information.
Dave had had a harder time moving forward. He’d have a couple of small victories and then one setback, and it would cause him to slide back into despair.
But his ma wasn’t around for whatever reason (he couldn’t remember the details), and he had to get himself up and to school. Every day it got harder and harder.
Max and Leslie took turns picking him up in the morning.
Max also came over to the house on the weekends and would clean and do laundry.
He never, not once, complained about it. In fact, he seemed to really enjoy putting things back in order.
Even though it made Dave feel like he wasn’t doing something right.
It couldn’t be normal, to have your best friend cook and clean for you.
Looking back, Dave could see the telltale signs of depression.
Hopeless was an emotion he didn’t wish on anyone.
Thankfully, even though he’d started missing school more days than he went, he had still been going to see his doctor. After some years of trial and error, they found the right combination of anti-depressants and ADHD meds to help him.
He’d had to adjust over the years to keep up with life changes but finding something that had helped him feel less helpless had been a game changer.
At the time, Dave had had no idea that Max had been trying to figure out ways to help him get organized.
Until one day Max had come over with this book he’d found in the library. Something about living with ADHD.
Dave had already decided he was going to drop out of school, but the binders helped him be able to do the basic things he needed to get done so that Max and Leslie could pursue their own dreams.
And that had given Dave the courage to chase his own. Because he no longer felt trapped by his limitations. He had the tools to help him get the things done that everyone else found so easy to do.
