KashiaExplores: Tales of Discovery

Sometimes I wonder if friendship is just a form of emotional squatting—someone moves in, takes up mental space rent-free, and refuses to do the dishes. And in my life, that someone is Layla.

Let me be clear: I have nothing against people with ADHD. I respect neurodiversity. But Layla? Layla seems to treat her ADHD like a pet dragon she feeds exclusively on Haribo and impulse buys. She’s allergic to structure, addicted to shiny distractions, and insists on dragging me along for the ride—usually while dragging three overstuffed bags of mismatched nonsense.

She moves flats like I change playlists: constantly, without warning, and based entirely on vibes. This year marks her second relocation in just over twelve months. I helped her pack last time. And now? Guess who’s being summoned again? I had plans—real, grown-up, self-care plans. A canal-side café, a few quiet hours of writing, some sweaty redemption at the gym. Instead, I’m roped into another cardboard-box opera starring Her Royal Chaoticness.

And the worst part? She’s not learning. She keeps picking dodgy landlords like she’s on a game show called How Fast Can You Regret This Lease? She complains endlessly about rising rents, as though the entire housing market is personally conspiring against her. There’s no strategy, no reflection, just chaos on repeat.

Every time we meet, it’s a one-woman monologue—her job, her flat, her boyfriend Rami (a human mood board for disappointment). I rarely hear a single proactive word. Just a low hum of discontent set to the rhythm of poor decision-making.

Even on my birthday trip to Alicante—a supposed celebration of me entering the fabulous 40s—Layla turned into a wandering toddler. She didn’t know the address of our Airbnb, had zero interest in contributing, and basically just floated along behind us. If she got lost, she’d probably end up adopted by a local fisherman, none the wiser.

She stopped every five minutes to window shop or buy some ridiculous trinket: rainbow backpacks, novelty kitchen utensils, hairpins shaped like sushi. All things destined to either explode out of her hand luggage or remain forever buried under the weight of other shiny, forgotten objects.

She’d return to the beach like a magpie with a PowerPoint presentation: “LOOK WHAT I FOUND!” and proceed to unpack her loot like we were on QVC: Beach Edition. Maya politely played along. I said nothing, biting my tongue with the intensity of a monk in silent retreat.

And then there were the olives.

On our final day, she raided the fridge like a doomsday prepper with a conscience. She refused to let any food go to waste. Which, in theory, is admirable. In practice? We were forced to feast on lukewarm olives under a slowly melting sun. She brandished them like an eco-warrior with snack-based guilt. Meanwhile, her hair was twisted up with a pencil in some sort of tragic faux-Japanese bun, flopping around like her attention span.

I didn’t help. My hands were sandy. My spirit was too.

Then came the moment of… I won’t call it grace, but let’s say, shared suffering.

The weight of “parenting” Layla that day didn’t fall solely on me, for once. There were five of us in the group, and Karina—sweet, patient, fresh-to-the-torture Karina—took the brunt. Possibly because she’s the one who’s spent the shortest amount of time with Layla over the years and therefore hasn’t developed the emotional scar tissue the rest of us have.

It’s true what they say: compassion has an expiry date, and it spoils faster the longer you know someone.

Around six in the evening—hours after they had eaten sandwiches during their shopping spree—she suddenly announced she was hungry. Maya and I were the only ones who’d skipped the shopping and gone on a four-hour hike along the coast. She had this idea that she could live off the tiny sachets of olives and crisps she’d been hoarding. Karina, who had spent the whole afternoon as her unofficial handler-slash-financial advisor, gently reminded her, “I don’t remember us eating sandwiches.”

To which Layla replied, wide-eyed, “Of course we did! It was right after I bought the little rucksack!”

Karina blinked, sighed with the weary grace of a preschool teacher, and offered a resigned smile:
“Oh yeah. I remember now. I think your ADHD is becoming contagious…”

We all burst out laughing—including Layla.

She had this sudden burst of clarity—an actual eureka moment:
“Wow… is this what you guys deal with all the time? I feel sorry for you!”

And in that moment—holy words indeed—a flicker of self-awareness. A rare solar eclipse in the Layla-verse. I said nothing, of course. What would’ve been the point? But inside, I nodded. Yes, Layla. Welcome to our personal sitcom.

And oh, the material we’d gathered. Comedy in bulk. Vivi, for one, had abandoned subtlety entirely—her disdain for Layla now in high-definition. She had the patience of a broken vending machine and used every opportunity to scold Layla like a strict matron on a school trip.

At one point, we stumbled into a late lunch—the only café open during the strange vacuum of siesta hours. By pure luck, it was just off our favourite square, where that enormous Ficus macrophylla lives like some enchanted beast, its theatrical roots spilling across the plaza like something straight out of Studio Ghibli. A homeless man had even constructed a makeshift den inside the tree, which reminded us weirdly of Stas and Nel, that Polish classic we all suffered through in fifth grade.

As we sat there sipping our Tinto de Verano (non-alcoholic beer for me, because someone had to keep the group alive), a man appeared pushing a stroller filled not with babies, but with five gleaming chihuahuas. Naturally, Layla reacted as expected: like a sugar-hyped nanny in a supermarket, snatching up toddlers before anyone could object. She picked up two of the dogs, who immediately began licking her face, and she collapsed into giggles like a five-year-old in a tickle ambush.

It was, admittedly, hilarious. The man, seizing the moment, used this surreal puppy ambush as a tactic to sell tissue packets. Which, to be fair, made a kind of odd logic. You get licked into a soggy mess—you need tissues. Fortunately, Layla didn’t need to buy any. Ever the overprepared chaos-mum, she had already distributed tissues to all of us on Day One, as if she were leading a school trip into the apocalypse.

Meanwhile, Vivi sat next to her with a face so sour it could curdle wine. Pure visible discontent. Luckily, Layla was too enthralled by puppy love to notice. The whole thing was its own genre of comedy. I snapped a photo—my own little keepsake for when I’m old, wrinkled, and prone to nostalgic disbelief.