It’s strange to say the least to discover that everything you ever thought about yourself and how you viewed yourself has all been well, quit frankly, utter bollocks. Like Frankenstein’s monster you suddenly find yourself existing, and you can’t work out what the hell is going on. Finding out about my ADHD has been baffling, challenging and for the most part, a real roller coaster ride of thoughts and emotions. But then, in all honesty, that has been my life. It seems that most people seemed to view me as I viewed myself. Inspiring, exiting, and extremely bloody irritating in equal measure. I’ve come to realise that most people just didn’t get me, but that’s OK. I forgive them, because I didn’t get me either.
I first found out that I had ADHD for sure was when I took a screening on the ADHDuk website. That was about a year ago, just before my 59th birthday. It was a shock to say the least. A thought shone the through fog of my brain in a really clear way. I don’t have really clear thoughts that often so I do tend to remember them. “This could be life changing”, I thought. I’d always known that I was other, you know, different. That by most people’s standards I was a bit of a fuck up. But now I was being told that all my failures and losses, all the heartbreak wasn’t my fault. It was not me that had to change, it was the world around me. This was a revelation. Maybe I wasn’t lazy and stupid after all. Maybe I didn’t have a character flaw, but a cognitive flaw instead. Is it even a flaw at all?
Up until this point I’d spent the most part of my lifetime trying to bend my weirdly imaginative, creative, seemingly bonkers brain to the will of everyone else and quite frankly it was getting a bit exhausting. This new message was inspiring, now I could begin again, and this time it really would work out. So I took a deep dive into the world of ADHD. I’d always had times when I got lost in learning for days (what I now know to be hyperfocus). I used to think of it as going down rabbit holes. ADHD was the latest rabbit hole. I soaked up as much knowledge as I could. I bent the youtube algorithm to my will. I ‘came out’ to all of my friends and was amazed to find so many saying, yes I have that too. I was equally amazed to hear some of my friends say, ‘of course you have ADHD, didn’t you know?, or ‘how did it take you so long to figure THAT out!’ I was, however, a little disappointed to hear some of them saying with such authority, “Oh I’m like that, everyone is”. These days if I hear this mantra I try to gently explain my life situation and kindly offer a life swap. Interestingly no one has taken me up on the offer, but I digress.
So this honeymoon period as I fell in love with ADHD was inspiring, exhilarating, and above all massively empowering. At last I could start to forgive myself and not be so f**king hard on myself. I could start to accept who I really was. Now, yes NOW! It would all be different. From now on I would finally achieve things and get shit done. From now on, everything would be easy, and I would never, ever, EVER have to struggle again.
The honeymoon period was short lived. I then entered a weird period of stress and self loathing, the likes of which I had never experienced before. My mind seemed even more fucked up and dysfunctional than it had ever been. I hated me even more. Discovering I had ADHD was supposed to make me feel better so why was it making me feel a whole lot worse? I have come to realise that my mind wasn’t working differently, I was just becoming aware of it. It’s like not showering for years and then just taking a shower and wondering why you are suddenly even more dirty. You aren’t, It’s just that all of the years of dirt and shit have come to the surface. At this time I was trying to ‘persuade’ the NHS that I should have a formal diagnosis, and for once I was determined not to get fobbed off. I never realised what an act of courage it was for me just to not get fobbed off. All of this was making me acutely aware of how my mind really works.
I suppose there are two things that I find hard to comes to terms with in all of this. One is that it has happened so late in my life, and the other is that for the whole of my life, up until this point I may have been disabled, or somehow differently abled, and I didn’t even know it. Now that is weird. Can you imagine walking around the planet for almost sixty years and then one day glancing down and thinking, “shit! I’ve only got one arm, I never knew that. I wondered why it was difficult to lift a tea cup”. It’s weird to think that a disability could be so hidden. I don’t wish to demean, or make light of anyone’s struggles with disability, or discrimination. The point here is that my ignorance of how my brain works had never alerted me to the fact that I may need help. Worse still, my imposter syndrome had always told me that even if I did need it I wouldn’t be worthy of of it anyway.
This view shifted when I arranged to move my stuff out of my old lockup in London. I had separated from my partner over three years ago, but had kept a load of hoarded crap that ‘might come in handy one day’ in what was now her lockup. Think of it as my own personal museum of impulse purchases and half baked ideas. She was planning to take a sabbatical and spend some time abroad so she really needed to reclaim this space. I’d spent three years putting this off. It was time, as the saying goes to ‘man up’ and sort this out. I knew it had to be done, but the whole idea filled me with dread.
We talked on the phone about this and the conversation turned to my diagnosis, and I did something that I never do very often. I asked for help. I said that I would find it almost impossible to do this task on my own, that I would never get down to doing it. “It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” I explained, “its just that my brain can’t do it.” I also explained that the simple most boring tasks are the ones that my brain finds so difficult and stressful. I asked if she could help me, even just be there with me. I would do it, but I needed two things, a fixed deadline, and help. We arranged a time. She arranged time off work so now I felt that I couldn’t back out. So I travelled down to London and we spend two days in the grime of a South London garage sorting and mainly throwing out a life’s worth of my crap. I have to say that for the most part it was not as stressful as I was anticipating, and the ticking clock of only having two days really helped to galvanise my mind. My ex and I are still the very best of friends and so the whole experience was, well fun. I found, however, the packing of the car in readiness to leave to be the hardest thing. Perhaps it was the realisation of the finality of it all, but that was when the meltdown occurred. She was leading operations, as she always used to in matters of packing and organisation. She was directing me to place boxes in the car, but my mind became weirdly overwhelmed. A strange mental paralysis took hold of me. It was a simple task. I knew what was to be done, but I just couldn’t get my fucking brain to do it. I just stood there, zoned out, mentally paralysed, utterly overwhelmed. Now my ex is an extremely patient person but at this point I could see that she was loosing this precious commodity. I have to say that, even to this day, I don’t blame her. Just move the box over there!”, she barked. It was then that it happened. The latest in a series of many mini meltdowns that I had been having recently. I said I needed to take a break. I walked away, round the corner to the entrance of the garage complex and just silently cried. As I clutched the bars of the security gate and stared at the outside world I felt imprisoned by my own mind. That was at that moment, for the first time in my life, I felt truly disabled, truly in need of help. It was a simple task, and I just couldn’t do it. What kind of useless fuck was I?
The feeling soon passed. That’s one of the joys of a lack of emotional regulation. I gathered myself and returned to the garage. We talked. I explained about the executive function and how it can give rise to overwhelm, a lack of emotional regulation etc etc. She listened, pondered (she’s very good at that), and then apologised for loosing her patience. She said she would handle things differently in future. And in that moment, in a dank, dusty garage in Peckham we understood each other better than we had ever done before.
But that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Understanding. For me, the most powerful thing about discovering that I have ADHD is just that. Discovering that I have ADHD.