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I was diagnosed a few years ago. I was 39. I’ve been on meds since.
My HS experience was fairly typical for an ADHD kid before ADHD was a thing… I was called lazy, I was told I needed to apply myself (whatever that means), etc. I believed it. I just thought I was a lazy ass little shit. I didn’t know why, but the evidence was clear. I understood the information, I just didn’t do any of the work.
Oh well. Live and learn. I eventually made it through college, and into a career, all without meds. It was a painful struggle, especially when dealing with the more monotonous tasks associated with having a job… I was chronically late, I slept in a lot… I was just all over the place.
Now, with the meds, I still have my hair share of bad days, but when I’m faced with the horrendous burden of monotonous tasks, instead of having to force myself to do it, I usually have more of an attitude of “whelp, I better get this done so I can move on”. It’s no longer an impossible task to simply get myself started on something that’s not very stimulating.
It’s nice.
That does sound reallu peaceful compared to this. I bet it was even harder at you time of youth when people didn’t understand the condition.
It’s honestly really super weird nobody noticed that I might be a bit odd. Like I had alll the signs now that I recall. Even some stuff related to asperger. But I just went straight trough the filters
Well, my parents weren’t the greatest. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all that they did for me, but I rarely ever saw my doctor outside of getting shots or whatever… Typical stuff.
Basically, unless I had an obvious and physical problem, like a not insignificant injury or infection, we dealt with it ourselves. So I’m not surprised that I fell through the cracks, so to speak.
I did ok in school. I could have done way better, but I at least passed pretty much every class I took. There were some exceptions in college due to extenuating circumstances, but I got it done.
The change happened when I started researching ADHD because my SO has a solid diagnosis for it, so I wanted to understand them a little bit better, and a lot of the symptoms just resonated with me. So I took action, got assessed and now I’m medicated for it and I couldn’t be happier about it. My brain works differently. I’m different. That’s not a bad thing (could you imagine how boring it would be if we were all the same?). I’m proud of myself.
I’m not really shy about telling people about it, though I tend to keep it to myself until it’s relevant… I don’t go into a room full of new people and blurt out that I’m on meds for ADHD. But if someone asks, I don’t have any hesitation in telling them. There’s so shame in it, there’s no reason to be ashamed of it. My brain works counterintuitively, and I’ve done my job as a human, and gotten treatment so I can function normally. I’m not responsible for my brain chemistry being all screwed up.
Anyways. I feel like I’m talking in circles now. I hope you have a good day.