Diagnosed AuDHD After 50 - My Story (Part One)
Look, a lot happens in 50+ years and AuDHDers aren’t known for our ability to keep a long story short, so this is a tale told in two parts. And truthfully, it doesn’t even begin to cover it. This is not the whole story of my life. Far from it. But it’s a blog not a saga.
Here goes…
My first conscious memory is still clear as day. I was laying in my crib in our one-bedroom apartment. My parents were in bed across the room. I was looking out the crib rails and thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” I suppose it could’ve been more of a feeling than a thought, but it happened. I’m certain.
I’ve always felt like I don’t really belong. Like I was dropped off on the wrong planet and left to figure it out without so much as a map or set of instructions. Apparently, feeling like an alien among the humans is a common autistic experience. Go figure. I sensed I was different from day one, but could never put my finger on exactly why.
The people around me reinforced that knowing in all kinds of ways, too. Not always intentionally. Not always affirming.
Mature for my age, quirky, curious, precocious, creative, bold, an old-soul, a tom-boy, gifted, overly sensitive, aloof, nosey, melodramatic, defiant, selfish, stubborn, bossy, difficult, rude, aggressive, too much, a bitch, conceited, willful, weird, rigid, mysterious, overreactive, impulsive, serious, interesting, hard-to-read, a free-spirit, eccentric, are all labels I’ve been tagged with over the years.
As a kid, I was also regularly asked helpful questions like, “How can someone so smart be so stupid?” and, “Why can’t you just pick something and stick with it?”
Elementary school was weird. Or maybe that was me.
Kindergarten was a loud and smelly place. Enforced naptime on the floor? Are you kidding me right now? The injustice. Also, why does it take these kids so long to get through a book? It’s Mr. Mugs, people. Not War and Peace. That Mugs is hilarious though, eh? Better than those nitwits Dick and Jane. What a snooze fest.
The arts and social studies were my thing. English too, depending on the particular topic we were studying. I always liked to write.
I hated math because it hated me. I never even heard the word dyscalculia until about a year ago. And I was a teacher. I still don’t know my times tables by heart and can’t make change to save my life. A teacher.
Besides math, phys ed was the bane of my existence. With one exception, anything that made me seem tough, fearless, in control. Shot-put, football, lifting heavy things, challenging boys to after school fights. Labelled a ‘tom-boy’, might as well play the part.
It was in elementary school that I began (both consciously and unconsciously) to camouflage my anxiety and feelings of awkwardness behind the tough-girl (tom-boy) exterior. My natural tendency towards demand avoidance helped make this façade believable, and my obsession with The Outsiders at the time, fanned the flames.
I learned to keep the chaos and anxiety of my inner world hidden as best I could. When it got to be too much, my system would short circuit and meltdowns happened. Or tantrums, as they were labelled. “Stop being so dramatic.” “Such a willful child.” “Spoiled brat.”
Since forever, attempts to articulate the complexity of my inner life and the intensity with which I experience the world (for better and worse) tend to backfire. I’m met with raised eyebrows, perplexed expressions, rapid changes of subject, exasperation and/or invalidation. “You’re so particular.” “Don’t be so ridiculous.” “You think you’re so special.” “That’s weird.” “You’re so sensitive.” “Get over it, already.” “Everyone does that/experiences that.” “Always overreacting.”
Um, Ok. Whatever you say. I guess so, then.
Being constantly gaslit (even when it’s unintentional), causes a lot of inner turmoil, and makes it hard to trust yourself. Even when (especially when) you have the keenest of Spidey senses.
Cognitive dissonance.
In grade 5, after being administered a series of tests, I ended up in something called ‘enrichment’ where a handful of kids from our school board went once a week to do apparently gifted kid stuff.
I didn’t love it as much as I was supposed to, but my parents were proud. The teacher was super nice, but the bus ride and the unfamiliar routine sucked. I also didn’t understand the rationale behind some of the lessons and activities we did. Like, explain to me again why we’re out in the back 40 building rockets? How is this relevant to my life? I have zero interest in rockets, and you can’t make me care about them. My future will in no way involve rockets. If this is gifted, I’m out.
Channeling my inner Pony Boy, I rebelled by occasionally and intentionally missing the bus. Adults were confused and disappointed, so we had a meeting with the teacher and principal and I agreed to try harder.
With the herculean effort I thought everyone else must also be exerting to exist, I did ALL the things. Until I couldn’t.
Periods of illness and exhaustion coincided with or immediately followed (and still do) stressful/overwhelming events and circumstances. I was often sick as a kid. As my mother the nurse would say, I never got anything “normal.”
Puberty was my worst nightmare. I don’t want to talk about it.
Highschool was a blur. The first few years, especially. I spent them feeling like a foreign exchange student. I was constantly trying to figure out the language and customs of this bizarre culture. Still stranded on the wrong planet. Doing whatever it took to fly under the radar. Nobody seemed any the wiser.
I got detention on the first day of grade nine because the consumer studies teacher mistook my bluntness and honest questions for intentional sass and a challenge to her authority. The truth is, I had no clue what I’d done wrong, but I was clearly a badass. If the shoe fits.
I was in enriched English (meh), but still struggling in math. My report cards were clear evidence of a classic AuDHD spikey profile. Who knew?
Nobody.
Because failing grade ten math wasn’t an option for a person who intended and was expected to do great things, I tried harder. Though I was starting to wonder how much harder a person could try. Still, that’s what everyone kept telling me I needed to do to “reach my potential.” My parents got me a tutor who was able to guide me to a respectable pass. The following year I dropped down to general math, and stopped taking it all together the minute I earned the required number of credits. It felt like failure, and I was told as much. I had to cut my losses. Many years later I would fumble my way through a master’s level statistics class that almost broke me.
The waxing and waning cycle of performing like a well-adjusted over-achieving badass for as long as I could hold it together, and then crashing and burning, was unhealthy but sustainable. Until it wasn’t.
I wanted desperately to fit in, and sometimes I really did. I had friends. Sure, some of them probably hung around because of who my dad was and where I lived at the time, but giving people the benefit of the doubt was something I was proficient at. Anyhow, I was never a prom queen, but I wasn’t exactly a wallflower, either.
Unbeknownst to anyone, friends and all, I could never quite shake the feeling of being on the outside looking in. I was living in that Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong…”
Grade 11 loomed, and I just couldn’t go back there. After an intense and lengthy meltdown, my parents allowed me to switch high schools and I landed in a place and time that felt less claustrophobic. It was there that I hit my stride. At least that’s how it appeared on the outside. On the inside, I was still often a complete bamboozled mess.
Seriously, is there a manual or something I missed when I landed here?
Determined to master the rules of the game, I did what I’d been told to do to solve my problems in the past, I tried harder. I made it my mission. I paid attention to what other successful and popular folks were doing. I took copious mental notes. I kept meticulous track of what pleased people. I crafted a character out of bits and pieces of what I was drawn to and what seemed to work for others, all mashed together with remnants of what I recognized as ‘myself.’ It wasn’t a perfect fit, but close enough. I embraced the role with gusto and thought maybe I had finally cracked the code. Look at me, all human and shit.
Coincidentally, it was around this time that I discovered the social lubricant and anxiety quelling effects of alcohol. Up until then, I had dabbled but hadn’t done a ton of experimenting in that department. I don’t come from a family of teetotalers, so somewhat ironically, I was a bit of a late bloomer in comparison to many of my peers. I quickly made up for lost time.
Self-medicating in social settings kept the anxiety and awkwardness at bay. (Admittedly it still does, but moderation). In my youth, with lowered inhibitions and naivety, I made some very bad decisions and ended up in a lot of unsafe situations. Sometimes, I was taken advantage of. Sometimes, bad things happened. I never let on. I took it on the chin. Like a champ. The price you pay for being accepted, I guess.
Dissociation is a protective response.
I was often an observer of my own life, but not actually the person living it. My mask was almost ironclad but on occasion, it would slip. When it did, I felt the shame of other people’s disapproval, the embarrassment of not being able to meet expectations, and the fear of being discovered as the alien I surely was.
I doubled down, developing an ever more competent, confident, devil-may-care outer-shell. Don’t worry. I got this. Problem solved.
My exterior was incongruous with my interior, but I was skilled at convincing myself otherwise. The gaslighting definitely helped.
When the tension of it all became impossible to hold, meltdowns, shutdowns, and burnout (none of which I had a name for then) were inevitable. When they passed, I was always a little worse for wear, but saw no other option than to bury the humiliation, fortify my amour and soldier on.