The Life I Didn’t Get — and the One I Built Anyway
As usual I started this post with a plan-I was going to write something neat and informative about ADHD in adulthood. Something with a clean arc. But instead, I’m following the dopamine, and all the emotions that came up today. Because honestly, that’s what this **gestures vaguely at everything** is — and also, that’s what this brain does.
So today I want to talk about my late ADHD diagnosis, rage, grief, and the deep unfairness of realizing how much harder everything has always been — and how no one told me why. But also, about the joy and love and magic that I have in my life.
Getting Diagnosed at 23
I was in college — sophomore year, finally focusing on classes I mostly enjoyed. I wasn’t working anymore because my grandmother had passed the year before and left me enough to focus fully on school. I should’ve been thriving. I had space. Time. Support.
Instead, by the end of October, I was failing most of my classes.
And still, I thought it was a me problem. That I just needed to try harder. Be better. Get my life together.
But thanks to my (now) husband and his endless patience, I started therapy. I found one of the best therapists I’ve ever known, and through our work, I finally got an ADHD diagnosis and saw a psychiatrist. I started on 10mg of Adderall IR.
The psychiatrist said, “This will change your life.”
I laughed, and I was excited.
But I wasn’t prepared because they were right.
So much more right than I think even they knew.
The Monologue Moment (aka My Brain Works?!)
I’ll never forget the first day I took my medication. I had to memorize a monologue for an acting elective. Usually that kind of task would feel like dragging my brain through gravel. But this time?
I just... did it.
I sat down, and I memorized it.
No spiraling, no restarting 40 times, no emotional breakdown mid-process. Just quiet focus and clarity.
When my boyfriend came home, I told him how wild it was.
And then I got mad.
“Wait — this is how easy it’s always been for everyone else?”
Anger Turned Grief Turned Clarity
My psychiatrist told me I had been putting in 300% of the effort for 10% of the reward.
And that broke me a little.
I cried. A lot.
I grieved the life I could’ve had:
I could have finished high school like everyone else instead of scraping together a GED at night while working two jobs.
I could have gone to college sooner. Maybe gotten a scholarship.
I wouldn’t have had to join the Army.
I might’ve believed in myself earlier. Trusted myself more.
I was sad. I was angry. I was tired. But I was also, strangely, okay.
Because while ADHD has made a lot of things harder, it’s also brought me places I never could have planned for.
Like here.
The Life I Got Instead
I didn’t get the “perfect” life.
I got this one — with all its mess, magic, grief, and glitter.
I met the love of my life — someone kind, hilarious, wildly patient, and deeply good.
I became part of his incredible family and learned what it actually means to be loved unconditionally.
And I found this career path — one where I get to talk to people like you.
Where I get to turn my experience into connection.
So yeah. I’m grateful. And I’m pissed.
Both things can be true.
ADHD Is Still Hard (and Society Is Worse)
Even with support, meds, insight, coaching tools — ADHD is still hard.
Not because our brains are wrong.
Because the world isn’t built for us.
School wasn’t built for me.
Workplaces weren’t built for me.
Even waiting rooms aren’t built for me.
And as a queer neurodivergent person, it’s rare to find spaces that were made with me in mind at all.
So eventually, I stopped trying to accommodate the world.
I stopped shrinking.
I stopped asking for space and started taking it.
You Get to Take Up Space Too
You don’t have to apologize for how your brain works.
You don’t have to perform normal.
You don’t have to justify your needs.
You’re allowed to grieve what could’ve been.
And you’re allowed to celebrate where you are now.
You’re allowed to cry and scream and be joyful and lost and brilliant and furious — all at once.
I know this blog post kinda went everywhere, but so do I.
So does my brain.
A depiction of what my Adderall XR looks like- but like... branded and honestly this thing deserves a spot in the night sky among the heroes of legend.
