AuDHD Unmasked
The long, painful path to identifying my AuDHD
My brain never quite fit in my head; it squirmed around like it belonged to someone else.
My inner thoughts were filled with anguish, self-deprecation, and at least twenty different ideas, all set against a constant background noise.
Throughout school, I continuously moved from one friend group to another, not by choice. I always craved that elusive ‘best friend’. People I thought I was close to ghosted me on multiple occasions.
I was often told I talked too fast. I was too bossy, loud, opinionated, excitable, and annoying.
I was just too much.
But I was a bright, high-achieving student. I was incredibly rule-bound, which meant being very well-behaved.
When I was old enough to make my own decisions about life, things started to fall apart.
I couldn’t settle for anything. I always craved novelty, chasing hare-brained ideas, and obsessing about getting a new pet, car, or hobby.
How did I deal with the hyperfixations before Google could give me an instant dopamine hit? I have no recollection, though I frequented the library often.
I drank to quell the anxiety. Alcohol helped me ‘fit in’ socially, or at the very least, it made me less aware of the raised eyebrows. It became a crutch, which was replaced for a few years by smoking dope, which spiralled my anxiety further.
I was obsessed with wanting to start a family and based all my decisions about further education on achieving that goal as early as possible.
I was emotionally dependent on the men in my life – I was never single for long, it seemed an unbearable fate.
This made me incredibly vulnerable. I endured twelve years of emotional abuse, control and gaslighting in one relationship.
Within those years, I experienced a full-term stillbirth. It crushed me and exacerbated my dependency on alcohol. I didn’t drink in pregnancy; that was the one time I could stay away from the bottle.
A year later, I fell pregnant with my amazing daughter, who’s now 16. She’s the reason I stayed as long as I did, but also the main reason I left him.
I wanted her to know her worth.
To expect to be valued in her relationships with others.
It’s so complex. My parents are still happily married, yet I was vulnerable to this man’s abuse. She had no chance if she lived by my example during her younger years.
I was single for six months—a long time for me! I set a high bar for future partners.
The universe complied and sent me the most wonderful human, my now husband. He made me feel genuinely seen.
Turns out he’s neurodivergent too.
We held space for each other that neither of us had experienced before.
We embarked on sobriety together in 2019.
Our son was born in 2020 – a lockdown baby diagnosed at a day old with Down Syndrome. That’s a story for another post.
My daughter is the reason we started researching neurodivergence; she’s on the waiting list for an assessment.
At first, I was in fierce denial that she could be autistic or have ADHD, or both. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with her. She was just like me….
Yeah, so that’s how that went down! We joined a group for homeschooled teenagers, not surprisingly, all of whom are neurodivergent, both the kids and parents!
This is a group of beautiful people, where I felt comfortable for the first time, despite being overwhelmed by all the sensory input and oversharing.
I initially found myself identifying with multiple autistic traits. I couldn’t see the ADHD because my visual sensory issues mean I’m meticulously tidy.
However, I stumbled upon a video on YouTube by Purple Ella about how AuDHD felt for her; it was like listening to someone tell my life story. She, along with many other wonderful neurodivergent content creators on YouTube, bring the diagnostic criteria for autism and ADHD to life.
Knowing about the AuDHD hasn’t changed my struggles with daily life, but it has made a massive difference to my narrative and how I speak to myself.
I can find kindness where there was frustration and acceptance where there was disdain. I appreciate myself. I’m peeling away layers to see myself as the real me, not the one hiding behind the mask.
I struggled to run through this story as an overview, because so many details and nuances are missing. It feels like I’m lying by omission.
I intend to write separately about moments, thoughts, feelings, and events that will flesh this story out.
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