9 Random Fashion Artifacts I (Re)Discovered in My Apartment

Turns out starting ADHD meds *does* make one want to methodically sort through the chaos of one's closets.

Hi hi hi.

We’ve reached that part of January where it seems like it should already be the 20th and yet, New Year’s Day was literally last week.

What better time for a random post idea from yours truly wherein we dig deep into the recesses of my closets.

In true me fashion, I landed here in an extremely circuitous way. Hence, a brief(ish) story time for you, to use the parlance of the youths on TikTok. I guess this is my version of the intro to a NYT recipe.

Meander with me, won’t you? (And you can tell me if you hate this sort of set-up too. I promise.)

I think I may have offhandedly mentioned in a previous post that I recently started taking ADHD meds for the first time in my life. My therapist, Christine, and I have been discussing this for some time and, of course, I kept punting on actually investigating it further. Which tracks.

When she first brought it up, I was like there’s no way. But we’ve been together for almost 10 years (!!) now and she knows how I think and process and operate as well as anyone—so I also didn’t take the conversations lightly.

As a person for whom school and tests and homework (and the grownup versions of those) were always pretty easy breezy, I just assumed that could never be me. I’ve rarely missed a deadline or a due date, but I sure do love to get right up to the line. Christine always likes to say I need an “edge” to really get stuff done.

Turns out, I had a very oversimplified grasp of the ADHD situation. I guess I’d just always thought my racing mind, pinging all over the place, all the time was just…me. And it is, to an extent. I had no idea that other things like deeeeeeeply internalizing criticism, the way I get frustrated/irritated quickly, my perfectionism (down to my compulsion to retype an entire sentence when I spot a typo), my penchant for talking A LOT and too LOUDLY, my constant (literal) hand-wringing and foot wiggling, the way I hyperfixate, and many other traits could possibly all be signs of adult ADHD.

I also figured the internet had simply broken certain parts of my brain to the point of constant distraction. Which is also partially true. We’re all forever marked. But that’s another story.

Anyway, I finally dug into the matter with Christine and a psychiatrist and we eventually landed on a decision to try meds. I didn’t want anything to fade out the quirks that I love about this mind of mine, but maybe just maybe I’d be able to quiet some of the less helpful intrusive thoughts that never seem to STFU.

Turns out, Vyvanse is a hell of a drug. For me, anyway.

I’m still a total weirdo inside this head, but I’ve got more focus (especially for shit I don’t typically want to do) and my general anxiety is much more under control. Like, it’s so glorious. I thought I just had to live with that. I think so many women do and it’s one of the reasons we’re seeing so many of us in our 40s just now heading down this path. Also, nobody was going to do anything about a kid in the ‘80s and ‘90s who got straight As and never caused trouble in class. Kids who really needed help barely got it then. Plus, as girls and women, we all just found work-arounds to whatever was happening inside of us and too often decided not to bother anyone with it.

Anyway, I’m not a doctor—18+ years of watching Grey’s Anatomy notwithstanding—but I am v. happy to talk more about my experience any old time.

See, I’m still long-winded as ever and now we’ve finally arrived at the point. I think.

One of the first things I noticed after we landed at an appropriate dosage was how much I wanted to organize the F out of my apartment and actually DID it. Now, do I still have to deal the massive pile of things currently sitting in my guest room that have been cleaned out of closets and need to be sorted into donate/sell/etc piles and then donated/sold/etc’d? Absolutely. But it’s going to happen.

In the process, I’ve unearthed some gems. Some fashion fossils of lives I used to live that I thought might be amusing to those of you who also lived through these eras and likely owned some similar items. Because we know I love nostalgia almost as much as I love Blondie and the British Fruit Witch.

There are so many things I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of over the years, but such was life living in small apartments in NYC and being a person who loved to move—between apartments and coasts¹. Alas, not all of us can be Kimberly Noel Kardashian with a warehouse of sartorial choices past.

I hope these items I managed to drag around amuse you as much as they amused me. Some I had forgotten entirely and others I hadn’t properly laid eyes on in ages. I present them to you in no particular order…and with not particularly good photography.

Marc Jacobs Reverse Heel Shoe

Remember when he did these for S/S 2008?