Time Dyresgulation As Metaphysical Rebellion
Why ADHD Isn’t Late, It’s Out of Sync with Empire
We’ve all heard it—“You’re late.” But what if ADHD isn’t about lateness at all? What if it’s a radical disobedience to empire’s rigid clock, a metaphysical refusal to sync with the tyrannical march of industrial time? This essay dives deep into how ADHD brains disrupt the colonial time regime and why your “time dysregulation” is actually a spiritual rebellion.
#ADHD #TimeDysregulation #Rebellion
There’s a myth we’re sold every damn day: that time is a sacred, linear stream we all must obediently paddle downstream—on schedule, on cue, on time. The clock is king. The empire demands punctuality, discipline, and a rhythm of productivity that’s mechanical and merciless. The problem? For so many of us with ADHD, time isn’t a river—it’s a wild ocean, crashing in unpredictable tides. And guess what? We aren’t late. We’re out of sync with a rigged system.
This isn’t a disorder. It’s a rebellion.
The way ADHD messes with time—scattered minutes, lost hours, hyperfocus bursts that feel like falling into a black hole—is a direct metaphysical dissidence against empire’s tyranny of time. The empire wants you to live on a schedule crafted to squeeze you dry, a tempo that flattens creativity and numbs your soul. But ADHD brains refuse this clockwork dictatorship. They glitch the program, unplug the matrix.
Empire’s Time is a Straightjacket
Industrial capitalism and modern bureaucracy invented the idea of time as a single track to conform to: work, consume, repeat. The 9-to-5, the calendar invite, the “just in time” economy—these are mechanisms of control disguised as neutrality. The empire's time is linear, sanitized to death. You’re either on time or you’re a failure.
But here’s the kicker: ADHD brains operate on multi-dimensional time. It’s nonlinear, elastic, messy, and—yes—often “late” by empire’s definition, but that lateness is a fracture in empire’s timeline. It’s a crack in the seamless façade of control, a temporal sabotage.
Time Dysregulation = Metaphysical Rebellion
Think about it: what if “losing track of time” is actually a spiritual refusal to assimilate? What if the ADHD experience of time is a code of resistance, an energetic blueprint pointing beyond empire’s temporal chains?
Those hyperfocus spirals aren’t flaws; they’re moments of temporal transcendence—where the linear stops and something else, something freer, expands. Those scattered moments are cracks where the soul refuses to be domesticated, where cosmic rhythm beats beneath the clock’s tick.
ADHD time is a message: the empire’s tempo is a lie, and we don’t have to march to it.
The Psychic Toll of Forced Sync
But this rebellion comes at a cost. The constant pressure to “catch up,” to pretend you fit the empire’s schedule, breeds shame, anxiety, and exhaustion. It’s not ADHD that’s broken—it’s the system that refuses to bend.
When you live on empire’s time, your neurodivergence is pathologized, suppressed, medicated into submission. The empire isn’t interested in your unique temporal signature—it wants you predictable, controllable, on time.
How to Live Outside Empire’s Clock
Here’s the radical truth: reclaiming your relationship with time is alchemy. It’s dismantling the false narratives and honoring your own rhythm, your own cycles.
Reframe “lateness” as temporal sovereignty. You’re not late; you’re navigating a different dimension.
Honor your hyperfocus as sacred passage, not a glitch.
Create fluid structures that flex with your flow, not chains that crush it.
Resist the internalized shame of empire’s clock—it’s the empire’s, not yours.
This isn’t just personal. It’s political, spiritual, cosmic. ADHD time is a crack in empire’s foundation, a flicker of chaos that refuses order, a rebellion encoded in the very fabric of your being.
Let’s stop calling it “disorder.” It’s disobedience.
The empire is terrified of those who won’t sync—because in refusing to be late, you’re showing the truth: empire’s time is an illusion. It’s a construct designed to break us. Your time is wild, sacred, and free.
How do you live in your own time?
What does it feel like when your clock refuses to tick their way? Spill it out. Because that’s the real revolution—right here, in the seconds you steal back.
If this hits you, share your own experience of living outside empire’s time. Let’s build a chronos rebellion together.