Becoming so completely obsessed with something, knowing it’ll likely only last for a few weeks, is not very fun. I personally have had quite a wide array of hyperfixations – most of them being extremely embarrassing. Allow me to list off a few.
Cameron Boyce was the first real person I can remember being obsessed with (R.I.P). I remember watching all of his dance videos and trying to look up bloopers from Jessie so I could marvel at how cute I found him. Despite me claiming this is a hyperfixation, it could truly just be a textbook case of teenage celebrity crushes. I just highly doubt that the average person who does not struggle with hyperfixations would take things as far as I did. One Direction could be in that same category that walks the line between crush and obsession as well. If you’re wondering, Zayn and Harry were always fighting for that number one spot for me.
My obsession, or hyperfixations, came to a peak when I discovered the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was a little behind on the bandwagon, considering I hadn’t quite entered my comic phase – that happened with The Walking Dead about a year after the MCU though. I watched the Iron Man trilogy, The Avengers, and the first Captain America film for the first time in 2015. In 2016, when I was fifteen, I started writing fanfiction for the superheroes.
Yep. Fanfiction. When I hyper-fixate, I am waist-deep.
If I hadn’t deleted my Wattpad account in 2019, you would have been able to see that the Avengers fanfiction amassed over 600k reads. Obviously, Marvel was one of my hyperfixations that was a little more successful than the others. I did the same for characters from the 2018 Rockstar Studios game, Red Dead Redemption 2 – but I was sure to wipe those from Tumblr as well.
More recently, my roommate introduced me to the USA television show that I’ve been stuck on for a few weeks called Queen of the South, which had its series finale this past June. I haven’t been writing fanfiction since 2019, but if I did, I’m sure you’d see plenty of content about James – because there’s just something about that man that I cannot put my finger on. The same goes for the insanely strong Teresa Mendoza because that woman is unbelievably amazing.
Anyway, if you didn’t know already, A.D.H.D is commonly associated with hyperfixations, despite not being a direct symptom for the disorder. I have trouble fully trusting doctors after being misdiagnosed on more than one occasion, so I refuse to go get professionally tested for A.D.H.D. Another reason I struggle with accepting my possible A.D.H.D diagnosis is that I was considered a ‘smart kid’ growing up and A.D.H.D doesn’t quite fit in with that.
Right?
For the longest time, A.D.H.D was just a really good Kendrick Lamar song to me, but now it seems to have a presence in my life that is not going away anytime soon, if ever. It’s not like I’m ashamed of being diagnosed with the disorder, but I think I’ve just gotten accustomed to ignoring the signs and being blissfully ignorant. The fact that I’m even writing this article proves I’m making progress, but I doubt I’ll ever get a diagnosis.
So, don’t mind me while I go drool over Teresa Mendoza.