Anyone that says otherwise is gaslighting in the same way that saying some of Rogue from X-Men's powers are a blessing while dismissing the fact she can't touch the person she loves without killing them. Any perceived benefits of having it are overwhelmed by the mountain of negatives.
I was diagnosed June 3rd 2022 by a lovely woman named Lynn. That day has been both a blessing and a curse. Initially there was tears of relief, tears of vindication, tears of sadness and loss.
Tears of relief and vindication came because I finally had reasons for why I struggled with many of the things I struggled with my entire life and tears of vindication because despite what my teachers and parents told me all through school I wasn't lazy, I actually was trying (probably harder than most), I really did apply myself it just wasn't enough or in ways that fit in a neurotypical world.
Not too long after came the tears of sadness and loss as all of the "what could have been", "if only I had been diagnosed as a kid", "if only I didn't have to struggle so much harder", all the things you wanted to be but didn't have the grades (I totally would have been a meteorologist) and many other thoughts like those started pouring in.
The hardest part which is honestly the reason why I'm writing this now was starting to recall all the moments of disappointment and letting people down. Continuing to get bad grades even though I promised to try harder, forgetting projects or homework, forgetting I was supposed to hang out with friends, promising to help someone and then be forgetting about it, etc.
The wave of fear and panic that would come over me when I realized yet again I failed, I let somebody down is something I won't ever forget.
Eventually that caused me to have an always present background level of anxiety, it was something that was always there but I never really noticed. I wasn't really an anxious kid per se but when I did need to get a project done or pay attention and finish a test on time or even leave the house to go play with a friend there was enough of that background anxiety that adding the worry of disappointing somebody again built up my anxiety to a small explosion of "just fucking do it".
It definitely wasn't the best way to be a kid but between that helping me sweak by in school and eventually figuring out how to read people to avoid it disappointing them I survived pretty well for a while.
Fast forward to the end of 2018 when I figured out that I was transgender. I finally accepted it sometime in 2019 and (very slowly at first) that background level of anxiety started going away. It took a bit over a year to finally be able to force myself to reach out to a doctor about it and eventually started hormones in 2020. Within two days everything suddenly felt right in the world like a wave of inner peace washed over me or something. I'm pretty sure now that was the rest of that constant background anxiety leaving my body, along with it my ability to use anxiety to mask my ADHD.
Over the course of the pandemic and various layoffs I started noticing how hard it was for me to do simple things like shower everyday or load and run the dishwasher and eventually getting to the point that I couldn't even get myself to play video games.
The thing that finally made me reach out for an ADHD diagnosis was when I realized I couldn't follow along with online courses or tutorials anymore. No matter how much I wanted to learn something I couldn't follow along for more than 5 or 10 minutes on a good day before I would be tabbed out doing five different things and then realizing that I had to keep going back and rewinding to the same spot five and six times before giving up.
After my diagnosis I'd wanted to try a stimulant and I went through a whole range of them with varying degrees of side effects or effectiveness and each of them had their own level of "is this how much easier life is for neurotypical people?". Which sounds kind of great but at the same time it only lasted a few days at best before most of the medications quit doing anything which led to a very depressing roller coaster of a year. Having that little taste of not feeling like a complete useless failure that gets snatched away a couple days later was not great. I think I owe myself more credit than I realized at the time, I actually don't know how I didn't just give up and fall into the "nothing is ever going to work" mindset that you see so often in reddit posts.
Other than some supply chain shortages thanks to the DEA's war on neurodivergent people.... I've been mostly okay for the last year, meds don't help as much as I really could use them to but I get by.
Unfortunately there's a lot of things that meds don't help with motivation and task initiation are huge ones for me but they also don't help with things like reading body language or the subtext/implied expectations of conversations.
That last one hurts the most, I used to be pretty darn good at figuring out what people were thinking and feeling and what they expected of me but the last year or two I realized it almost doesn't exist anymore which has led to disappointing some people that I really care about.
I wish there was a way to put into words just how utterly devastating it is to over and over disappoint someone you care about because of part of something you are born with and have no control over.
Making lists, setting reminders, getting into routines, etc can sometimes help with day-to-day tasks and appointments but they don't help you interact with the world around you or the people you care about.
And absolutely no fault to them but they can only hear ADHD being the reason why something happened or didn't happen so many times before it just sounds like an excuse for everything and they just give up trying.
The icing on the cake is being completely cognitively aware of the ways that ADHD affects you but being completely powerless to do anything about much of it except keep trying despite how many times you're told you're not trying hard enough. Keep trying.
Ultimately you're responsible for your own behavior and if you don't keep trying you'll never find new ways to do things better or be better to those you care about.
Just. Keep. Trying.
-km, 2024