The Big Reveal.

 So if I seem like I’ve been a little off-balance for the last couple of months…

It’s because, in addition to the usual bodily peskiness I live with, I’m having some big amazement and other emotions from a formal diagnosis of ADHD.

It has thrown me for a bit of a loop, especially as I’ve read and learned more about it: 

— how it shows up differently and later in women (and how women and girls have long been under-diagnosed, correlating with the decades of neglect of women in general by the male-dominated medical establishment);

— how girls with ADHD learn early on to “mask” or hide their special brain quirks, adding layers of stress to an an already complex situation, and why many docs think at first it’s just straight-up depression;

— how so many of one’s life choices and decisions can, in retrospect, identify where and how ADHD folks have made choices to protect themselves without knowing why — even as those choices may have also held them back economically and socially;

— how various corners of the medical establishment disagree on whether ADHD is a mental disorder, or simply a different way of being in the world with its own set of gifts. Right now it feels mostly like a huge disadvantage, as evidenced by the way schools and workplaces have been so slow to acknowledge its existence, much less to create accommodation for folks with ADHD;

— how several major events in the past decade-plus of my life now sensibly correlate with ADHD, more directly than with other issues like depression. Ten years of not being diagnosed fully or being offered the right kinds of treatment. And a lifetime of not understanding who I’ve really been, or how much of my real self I’ve spent masking and/or apologizing for over the course of my whole life.

*Comic Relief Moment*: I actually got this diagnosis in 2019, when it appeared in a discharge letter from a counselor I’d been working with. A letter I got only months before Lockdown.

I didn’t notice that part of the diagnosis at the time.

I only noticed it this fall. 

Hilarious, yes? 

I’m still giggling a little at that one, and you should too.

As you can imagine, living with all of this has made it very interesting and challenging for me to be “productive” in a society requiring regular productivity according to a narrowly-defined standard, and making few allowances for differently-brained people who need regular rest periods and room to create, and cannot thrive in a 9-to-5 workplace. I am learning that I was probably never meant to thrive in such a workplace, and the lack of other options at various points in my working life is playing like a really strange life-movie in my mind as I process the ramifications.

I am working with a counselor to help me navigate all this new information, and I’m giving myself time to feel everything. 

There is a lot to feel right now. 

And it feels a little like a dam broke inside me. So many things I’ve been masking or juggling inside are coming to the surface now. So many things that I’ve tried to mask for so long are now rising to the surface as if they’ve been somehow freed to express themselves. 

I may not be terribly fun to be around right now, for my family and my closest friends. And the outside world in all its forms is virtually screaming its demands for my attention and energy, something I can’t really give a whole lot of right now.

Which is going to make me look really self-centered, but for now I just can’t worry about the optics.

I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.

It explains so much.

I don’t know what it will mean in the long run, but for now it feels equally challenging and freeing, and I’m going to sit with that for awhile.

Please NO PITY PARTIES. 

I am fine, here and there a little fascinated by everything my body is telling me right now. I’m learning a lot. I feel supported (or at least fully accepted, which is a lot) by my family. 

I understand now why I use parentheses so much when I write. That’s a neurodivergent thing, too, an overreaching to be understood.

If anything, I am glad, grateful even, for the information. 

Information brings clarity, and I LOVE clarity. 

And I love you for being my family and friends.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.