Overrun/Helpers

They do not stop. The thoughts come like ants — small, relentless, crawling over everything you try to see clearly. Intrusive thinking is one of ADHD's most exhausting features: a constant parade of unwelcome guests marching through your mind at 3am, during meetings, during moments you desperately want to be present. This close-cropped self-portrait maps the colony across the face: ants lining the eyelashes like distorted mascara, ants crossing the cheek where tears also run. The electric purple is the colour of a brain that cannot rest. The tears and the ants coexist without hierarchy. Both are real. Both are mine. To paint this was to admit: I am not overrun by weakness. I am overrun by aliveness.