The Things I Can Build

I can run a complicated job and hear a song before it’s recorded. Loving someone well, and feeling safe while I do it, is the work I’m still learning.

Give me a complicated construction job, and something in me wakes up. The bigger the job, the better. I can look at something that feels overwhelming and start finding a way through it — moving through possibilities, making connections, working out how the pieces need to come together.

There’s a kind of comfort in having something difficult to build. It gives all that movement in my head somewhere to go.

Music in Numbers

Music happens that way for me, too. I see music in numbers. There’s a structure to it that makes sense inside my mind, a relationship between the pieces that I can feel before I can explain it. I can hear songs before they’re recorded. Sometimes the music already feels alive inside me, and the work is finding a way to let someone else hear it.

I love that part of who I am. Creativity has given me purpose, opportunity, and a place to put feelings I haven’t always known how to express.

But the same mind that makes me feel capable in one part of my life can leave me struggling in another.

Talking with people. Being understood. Loving someone and finding a way to sustain the connection.

Those are the things that can bring me to my knees.

The Other Side of ADHD

I live with ADHD that can feel crippling. There are parts of the way my mind works that I value deeply, and parts that exhaust me. Calling it a superpower captures something real about the creativity, but it leaves out how hard ordinary moments can feel — especially when the person in front of me is someone I love.

I can hear a song before anyone has recorded it, yet struggle to find the right words in an important conversation. I can work through a complicated project and still feel lost trying to explain what’s happening inside me. There can be so much affection, fear, excitement and longing in my heart that getting it into a sentence feels almost impossible.

Sometimes I wish I could place the feeling directly into someone’s hands. Let them hold it for a moment and understand how much they mean to me.

But another person has to know my love through the way I show up — through what I say, what I hear, and what I make room for. I can’t ask someone to live inside my intentions. My love has to become something they can recognize and feel.

That’s where I’m still learning.

Growing Up Without a Dad

My abandonment issues make that learning harder. That’s a difficult sentence to write, because it asks me to admit how afraid I can be. I can run a job, make decisions, solve problems and carry responsibility. Then I can love someone and feel painfully unsure of where I stand.

Growing up without a dad left questions in me that I carried into adulthood. There was an absence I had to make sense of before I understood much about myself or the world. I’m still learning how much of that old uncertainty follows me into the relationships I want so badly to get right.

I think part of me is always hoping love will finally feel safe enough to rest in. I want to care about someone without also becoming frightened of losing them. I want to enjoy closeness while it’s happening, instead of letting worry pull me toward a future where it’s gone.

When Silence Gets Loud

That fear makes it hard to stay in the moment. A quiet stretch of conversation can leave too much room for questions. A little uncertainty becomes something I turn over long after I want to put it down. Is there distance? Has something changed? Did I miss a sign?

I know uncertainty is part of knowing another person. People have their own thoughts, their own hard days, their own reasons for being quiet. I want to leave room for that without making every silence a statement about me.

Still, understanding something and feeling settled about it are two different things.

When I love someone, a lot is happening beneath what they see. I may be trying to find the words for how much they matter while wondering whether saying it will feel like too much. I may want reassurance and struggle to ask for it plainly. I may be afraid of being misunderstood — and then make the conversation harder by trying so hard to explain.

I think about how tiring that can become, for me and for someone trying to be close to me. That matters to me. Their experience matters.

I want to understand my fear well enough to speak about it honestly, without asking someone to spend the relationship proving they’ll stay. I want to be able to say, “I’m feeling unsure,” and have a conversation — instead of letting that feeling become the whole room.

Something Wrong With Me

There are days when the thought comes out in its most painful form:

I think there is something wrong with me, and I don’t know how to fix it.

I’m not writing that because I’ve decided it’s the truth about who I am. I’m writing it because that’s how it can feel — especially when I look at the things I know how to do and wonder why the part of life I want most still feels so difficult.

I know how to approach a problem when I can see what I’m working with. I can study it, ask questions, make a plan and begin. With my own heart, I’m sometimes too close to see clearly. How much belongs to the present, and how much am I carrying into it? Did I say what I meant? What could I do differently — and when am I being unfair to myself?

Some days I’m frustrated with myself. Other days I find a little more tenderness for the person asking those questions. I need that tenderness, too.

If every hard conversation becomes evidence that I’m impossible to love, I leave myself very little room to grow. I want to take responsibility without turning it into punishment — to acknowledge where I’ve hurt or disappointed someone while still believing I can show up differently.

Understanding my ADHD matters. Understanding my fear of abandonment matters. So does listening carefully to the person in front of me, and recognizing that her feelings deserve attention alongside my own.

I also know a relationship takes two people. I can’t make a shared future happen just by wanting it badly enough. She has her own choices, needs and hopes, and there has to be room for both of us to be fully human.

Even knowing that, some days I still ask myself how I can build so much and struggle to keep someone I love. That question hurts because of how much I want a shared life.

The Romantic in Me

I’m a romantic. I’ve never been able to pretend otherwise. I love a beautiful sunset, a song that finds the right words, and the thought of sharing an ordinary evening with someone whose company feels precious to me.

I want the familiar voice calling from another room. I want to make dinner for someone and learn the small things she likes. I want to hear her coming through the door and feel that quiet happiness of knowing the evening has changed because she’s there.

More than almost anything, I want the joy of coming home and holding someone. Setting down whatever I carried through the day and reaching for her. Feeling her arms around me, staying there long enough for us both to settle into it.

And I want to offer that same feeling to her. Room to arrive tired. Someone who wants to hear about the little things in her day because they happened to her. Laughing in the kitchen, disagreeing without losing our care for each other, speaking honestly when something needs attention.

That kind of closeness asks for more than a strong feeling. It asks for patience, communication, and a willingness to keep learning who the other person is. It also asks me to be more honest about what I need — to ask for reassurance clearly, to listen without letting fear decide what someone means before they’ve finished speaking, and to give a relationship enough breathing room for both people to feel at home in it.

Those things are worth learning, even when I feel discouraged. I’ve put so much effort into understanding the work I know how to do. I want to bring that same curiosity into the conversations that matter, instead of deciding that every struggle means I’ve failed again.

What the Songs Teach Me

Music helps with some of this. A song gives me time to sit with a feeling. I can work on a line, listen to it, change it, and recognize what I was trying to say. Sometimes I understand myself more clearly after I’ve written.

I hope I can carry some of that honesty beyond the song, into the ordinary moments where a shared life happens. Because I want to live the kind of love I write about.

I want the person beside me to feel considered — to know her voice matters in the life we’re building. And I want to feel able to bring my own questions and needs into that life without being ashamed of them.

Still Building

I don’t have a finished answer for any of this. I have a mind that can make extraordinary connections. I have struggles that deserve to be taken seriously. I have fears I’m still learning to understand, and a heart that keeps wanting closeness even after finding it hard.

All of that belongs to me.

I’m trying to stop treating the parts I don’t understand as a final judgment on my future. There’s room to learn more about myself. Room to become a better communicator. Room for a relationship to be different from the things I’m afraid of repeating.

I can run a construction job. I can hear music before it’s recorded. I can imagine something into existence and work toward making it real.

And I’m still learning how to feel secure when someone gets close. Still learning how to make my love clear. Still learning to give myself enough patience to keep growing.

The life I want is worth that effort.

When I imagine it, the moment I return to is simple. I come home. She looks up, and we’re glad to see each other. There’s dinner to talk about, a day to catch up on, and time to spend together.

I don’t have to know every answer to know how much I want to grow toward that.

— Topher Ryan