I understand it’s popular right now. That words like bandwagon are thrown at it. Overdiagnosis. Trend. We are sick of hearing about it. ADHD is old news. Boring, even. Whatever, next, move on. But I will not move on, because I cannot. My neurodiverse brain doesn’t have that privilege.
It might be hard to imagine, and for your sake I truly hope it is, but some of us grow up feeling wrong. We look at those around us, the lucky ones who received the manual on ‘how to human’, and we scratch our heads. We hide our wrongness, remarkably well sometimes, and often for years. But it comes out, as it needs to, and in ways that make life hard.
It comes out in being late, for everything. It comes out in endlessly analysing everything you said, and did, and are, and hating those things. It comes out in overwhelm, in paralysing indecision. It comes out in half-finished jobs, and degrees, and in procrastination so intense it needs a new word to describe how impotent it makes us feel. It comes out in trauma, in self harm, in substance abuse and suicidality. In eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. It comes out in hurt, in emptiness, in an inner critic that destroys your confidence far quicker than any high school bully could.
However it comes out, and whatever it looks like for you, ADHD is real, and it can be debilitating. It’s trending because finally we are realising that it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to feel wrong anymore. We can talk about our struggles, validate our experiences, learn from our hardships and celebrate our differences so that we don’t have to spend even one more day feeling wrong for who we are.
Receiving my ADHD diagnosis not only allowed me to access the support and medication I needed to address the decreased dopamine my brain produces, but it enabled me to look back at my life and understand it. To have compassion for my confusion, my struggles and my hurt. Most importantly for me, it has given me a new lens to view my children, and their friends, and all of us who walk through the world with special, beautiful brains that feel it all.
I am so fucking grateful for the ‘trend’ of ADHD diagnosis. I am one of the ‘over’ diagnosed, and I jumped on that bandwagon like a life raft. I’ll never grow tired of talking about neurodiversity. I’ll never ‘move on’. And after a lifetime spent wishing so desperately that I could, I now realise that I truly don’t want to. To me, at least, that makes all the difference in the world.