My mom used to talk in code a lot for no fucking reason. She’d throw out the weirdest segues and irrelevant stories. When I (barely) graduated from a gifted kids high school, she jumped from telling me she was proud of me, to telling me that when my sister was little, all her teachers told her that she should be “tested” - heavily implying it was for learning disabilities - and added that “none of [her] babies are retarded.”
2 things - that sister had dyscalculia and never got beyond an associates degree because she kept failing math. And it took until my mom died to figure out she was also talking about me - and every one of my siblings.
When going through my mom’s things, I found out that she ignored the advice of several teachers and school counselors to get me tested for ADHD. Because she didn’t want a ‘damaged’ kid.
It prompted me to begin the process of being evaluated.
Insofar as the emotional aspects?
I had made a choice not to speak with her many years before. She was a badly broken person who refused to change in any way. Her response to having her failings pointed out was defensiveness and accusations against the accuser.
Sometimes you doubt yourself when it comes to cutting off a parent. Was it really that bad? Were they really that harmful?
I don’t think it’s fair to say I ever hated her. I went from mad to sad for her, to just disappointed.
Learning these things about her was more or less met with a bitter chuckle. Rueful, I suppose. It was further validation that she put her ego over my well-being. But I can’t change what is. I can’t undo a life of forgetting, of failing at things because despite accidentally deploying almost every ADHD coping mechanism, I still needed additional help.
I do regret that I didn’t know I had ADHD much earlier in life. It would have made so many things easier. I’m probably delayed about 10-15 years professionally because of struggles in school, as well as poor social skills (which are better in recent years, mind you). My most noticeable symptom is that I have object permanence issues - awareness of ADHD probably would have prevented me from developing some negative self assumptions*, and perhaps empowered me to not harm, or at least mitigate some of that harm for people who just ceased to exist for me when life was tumultuous and my working memory was too small to encompass them.
*And the assumptions are, if not valid, then reasonable to understand - when I am not interacting with someone, they just crystallize in my head into the person they last were. I have crushes on people I haven’t seen in years because they haven’t changed in my head. Conversely, I have a friendship with another object permanence person that is fantastic. We see each other once or twice a year and it’s like we never stopped talking. But for most people I atrophy and attenuate. I fade. People forget me. They get upset because I don’t reach out. I don’t remember they exist. And so when I see someone I haven’t seen in years and I remember them and want to give them a big hug and treat them like they are exactly as close as we were the last time we saw each other, they (rightfully) treat me like a stranger, and it hurts in a way that I … am going to talk to my therapist about, because I’m off the rails. But I feel that I don’t have a social home, because there’s no place my social self lives. I am a ghost.
That’s why I picked this username, actually. Because it means I’m still here.
That is a beautiful but tragic story. I’m in a similar situation, ADHD/autism - got diagnosed way too late literally after high school and after trying desperately to begin college and struggling ridiculously hard. I am basically 30 now I struggle with the same things you mentioned. “People permanence” is a problem for me too. I struggle with socializing and relationships too in so many ways I can’t possibly keep up. I often feel very lonely no matter who is there talking with me.
I want to give you a virtual hug as I could had written the exact same things for me. I struggle with the same stuff and now being close to my 40s it is exhausting. I got diagnosed with ADHD before almost 5 years but as I look deeper into I tend to believe it must be more like a childhood trauma result than just genetics. Lookup C-PTSD and the overlapping symptoms are way too much for this would be just a coincidence. But every step towards a better situation is a good step.
My mom used to talk in code a lot for no fucking reason. She’d throw out the weirdest segues and irrelevant stories. When I (barely) graduated from a gifted kids high school, she jumped from telling me she was proud of me, to telling me that when my sister was little, all her teachers told her that she should be “tested” - heavily implying it was for learning disabilities - and added that “none of [her] babies are retarded.”
2 things - that sister had dyscalculia and never got beyond an associates degree because she kept failing math. And it took until my mom died to figure out she was also talking about me - and every one of my siblings.
When going through my mom’s things, I found out that she ignored the advice of several teachers and school counselors to get me tested for ADHD. Because she didn’t want a ‘damaged’ kid.
Now that’s a tough pill to swallow. How’d you cope with that?
It prompted me to begin the process of being evaluated.
Insofar as the emotional aspects?
I had made a choice not to speak with her many years before. She was a badly broken person who refused to change in any way. Her response to having her failings pointed out was defensiveness and accusations against the accuser.
Sometimes you doubt yourself when it comes to cutting off a parent. Was it really that bad? Were they really that harmful?
I don’t think it’s fair to say I ever hated her. I went from mad to sad for her, to just disappointed.
Learning these things about her was more or less met with a bitter chuckle. Rueful, I suppose. It was further validation that she put her ego over my well-being. But I can’t change what is. I can’t undo a life of forgetting, of failing at things because despite accidentally deploying almost every ADHD coping mechanism, I still needed additional help.
I do regret that I didn’t know I had ADHD much earlier in life. It would have made so many things easier. I’m probably delayed about 10-15 years professionally because of struggles in school, as well as poor social skills (which are better in recent years, mind you). My most noticeable symptom is that I have object permanence issues - awareness of ADHD probably would have prevented me from developing some negative self assumptions*, and perhaps empowered me to not harm, or at least mitigate some of that harm for people who just ceased to exist for me when life was tumultuous and my working memory was too small to encompass them.
*And the assumptions are, if not valid, then reasonable to understand - when I am not interacting with someone, they just crystallize in my head into the person they last were. I have crushes on people I haven’t seen in years because they haven’t changed in my head. Conversely, I have a friendship with another object permanence person that is fantastic. We see each other once or twice a year and it’s like we never stopped talking. But for most people I atrophy and attenuate. I fade. People forget me. They get upset because I don’t reach out. I don’t remember they exist. And so when I see someone I haven’t seen in years and I remember them and want to give them a big hug and treat them like they are exactly as close as we were the last time we saw each other, they (rightfully) treat me like a stranger, and it hurts in a way that I … am going to talk to my therapist about, because I’m off the rails. But I feel that I don’t have a social home, because there’s no place my social self lives. I am a ghost.
That’s why I picked this username, actually. Because it means I’m still here.
That is a beautiful but tragic story. I’m in a similar situation, ADHD/autism - got diagnosed way too late literally after high school and after trying desperately to begin college and struggling ridiculously hard. I am basically 30 now I struggle with the same things you mentioned. “People permanence” is a problem for me too. I struggle with socializing and relationships too in so many ways I can’t possibly keep up. I often feel very lonely no matter who is there talking with me.
I want to give you a virtual hug as I could had written the exact same things for me. I struggle with the same stuff and now being close to my 40s it is exhausting. I got diagnosed with ADHD before almost 5 years but as I look deeper into I tend to believe it must be more like a childhood trauma result than just genetics. Lookup C-PTSD and the overlapping symptoms are way too much for this would be just a coincidence. But every step towards a better situation is a good step.
Fuck, man, the stigmatization of neurodivergence has done so much damage to so many people :(
It really, really has.
Can’t have ADHD if you don’t get tested! Fucking brilliant.