Living with ADHD without brakes

The diagnosis at least show us there's a brake to step on

This is the testimonial from Amy, 50 years old, ADHDer from the state of Georgia in the United States. I'm sure it's a story with which millions will relate and see themselves!

I always suspected something different about me. I'd watch videos, memes about ADHD, and always saw myself in them. Today, at 50, I was diagnosed. It's a relief in a way. I never understood my difficulties, and now I really want to take care of myself. I can't stand not being able to achieve any of my life's dreams.

I can't stand living stressed and tense all the time. My emotional and physical disorder is extremely exhausting. I just want to try to live a normal life, fulfill my responsibilities, be a patient mother, and less aggressive because I don't understand my feelings and mood swings.

I just want fair support and relief. We suffer. It's even worse when there isn't a confirmed diagnosis, and accessing neuropsychological evaluation is difficult, even with insurance.

Living with ADHD without brakes is truly exhausting. When your diagnosis also came in adulthood, many things about your past start to make sense, for example, after entering grad school twice and not finishing due to procrastination and missing deadlines.

I started suspecting something was up after finding it super strange that my focus was terrible, but at the same time, I could read a book just fine in a room with 40 noisy colleagues in my school classroom. But mainly, years later when I was studying for the Bar Exam, and I, who love studying law, would get lost in class because I was so focused on my own annotations for 3 hours that I couldn't even feel my body properly; it felt like I was completely numb.

My husband lacks patience, but he recognizes when I give that vacant-eyed response, which can be a yes or no while I am not knowing what I'm answering. I'm used to "are you going to respond or not?", and he knows that probably not because I'll forget, and then he would have to ask the question again, maybe more than twice.

However, I used to like the feeling that nothing for me is difficult; everything has a solution, and in the end, it worked out. Because apparently I hadn't missed many opportunities. But now, being a mother, exhaustion was leading me to give up at the end of the process. The liberation of discovering that it wasn't simply a lack of interest made me understand a lot about what I go through in this life.

And that feeling that everything works out in the end simply wanes as the responsibilities in life become more complex. I'd say that until my university years things really worked fine, although I'd be able to explore my choices much more if I could have more control of my life. But things started to really complicate when I had to fight to get a job, to earn my money, to have more serious relationships, marriage, children...

Anyway, I'm more than grateful for the fact I could take my ADHD diagnosis. For some, it may be only a sheet of paper with a prescription, but for me, it's a document explaining several behaviors I went through during this half-century I've been in this life.

And more important than a document of explanations, it's a document full of blank sheets to be written as I wish and with the fantastic pen of self-knowledge!