Do You See Me Now?

I don’t know why it came as a shock. I had actively sought an assessment because I thought I had ADHD, in fact, I was convinced. People had been sending me videos of ADHD skits on social media because they ‘saw that and thought of me’ for years. I had completed a hundred ADHD questionnaires online and paid countless amounts of £3 subscriptions (which I also forgot to cancel) for results and all of them said I had it. So why when I was given a formal diagnosis did it feel like it was a scam? Like I had tricked the system or something?

I mean, it was good to have an answer. At the age of 44 I finally knew that I was wired differently. Not that I needed a psychologist to tell me that. I always knew that there was something. I guess I thought that it would have come as a relief. Don’t get me wrong, I did feel relieved but there was a bigger feeling than that and it was one that I wasn’t ready for.

I felt…robbed.

I knew that things would be different moving forward now that I had an answer and for that I was extremely grateful. What I wasn’t prepared for was the realisation that I had been living my life for the past 44 years totally blindfolded.

How am I the exact same person that I always have been but now everything looked different? I know I can’t change the past (I am aware I have ADHD and not a Time Machine) but I need to understand it. I need to unravel who I was to stand a chance at becoming who I am.

Would I change where I am right now? Not a chance. Do I think I would be in this position if I had understood myself sooner? Definitely not.

I am overwhelmingly grateful for everything I have and for how far I have come. If things had been different, I probably would have been living quite a beige 9-5 life tbh because that was where I was heading before the mask fell off. Gratitude is not what is missing here, it is understanding.

The purpose of this blog is to help me (and hopefully you) to not only move forward but to re-navigate my journey so far and come to a point of making peace with myself.

I hope that it will be a process of learning new skills and unlearning old beliefs through re-examining past situations in a new light. That all sounds rather serious and there are some dark bits obviously but I have done some pretty ridiculous things, so all in all it should be a giggle. I am also going to use music quite a bit so make sure you check out the songs that I attach to the end of each post. Sometimes music can say the things that I can’t…

Plus you’ll get to be here when I find out if I also have Autism so that’ll be a nice day out, eh?

I am going to try and post as often as I can. I have set myself a deadline of 6 months to change my life. I have some pretty big plans for what I want to achieve in that time so I would really appreciate you sharing this to anyone you think would find it useful.

L xx