25/08/24

When I was 20/21 years old, after almost a year of psychiatric visits and appointments, after two misdiagnoses and after long-term wrongful medication by my medical team, I was diagnosed with primarily dissociative/inattentive ADHD. 

Growing up, I always felt as if everyone else attended a meeting at birth on how to be human and somehow my invite was lost in the mail. I always felt like other people knew something that I didn’t. I always felt like existence was an exclusive club and that everyone knew how to exist except for me. Still do.

I am very intelligent and extroverted but I'm forced to be antisocial due to my inevitable overstimulation and episodes of executive dysfunction. I am clumsy, explosive, artistic, impulsive, scattered, irritable, smart-tongued and mostly keep to myself. Was, is. Etc.

When I was younger, my parents constantly reprimanded me for being rude and antisocial. As I grew up, they started to just leave me alone. I don’t know if this is just the middle child syndrome or if they deliberately did so.

I was mostly left to my own devices because I did well in school and as we know, parents really think this is the only way to measure a growing child’s mental health. Things got tougher as I stepped into late adolescence. 

I started struggling with school because studying became impossible. There’s even pictures of me taken comically by my sister and mother during Matric year, sleeping on my study table moments after announcing I’d be going upstairs to study. None of us knew it back then but I was at the verge of insanity.

I started joining competitive school clubs to deliberately keep myself out of class and would even skip classes and no one would question it cause there could have been so many reasons under the Sun why I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I was labelled by teachers and mentors as lazy but with tremendous potential, even to this day by consultants and residents alike. I was having the time of my life and yet unknowingly letting my brain unmask itself to the max.

The funny thing is that at the time of my diagnosis, I was actually in a long term relationship with a known childhood presenting ADHDer who I absolutely resented and now know it’s because he had something that I didn’t have: the freedom and validation of knowing that I’m different, and that that’s okay ❤️ 

The same thing, according to my psychotherapists, that attracted me to him, is the same thing that I hated him for. I was attracted to his truthful existence, yet hated him for being able to have this, that which I always craved but never had, because I found out too late, and because the disorder is excruciatingly difficult to diagnose in women/girls as it doesn’t primarily present as physical hyperactivity, rather mental hyperactivity.

I find it rather comical that although we were sickeningly close, he never knew any of this about me, and that his lack of attention was partial to our split on my part 🥴 

Now, I’m not gonna get into the nitty gritties of neurodivergence of any sort. It’s really not that complicated. It’s like having your heart on the right side of your chest instead of your left. Is it peculiar? Yes. But it’s normal. It’s just an anatomical variant.

Neurodivergence is also like that. There is a typical neurotype - which is what most people have. And then there’s neurotypes that diverge from this typical setup due to neuro-developmental issues. While most people are neurotypical, we are neurodivergent. Simple as that. 

Neurodivergence by definition refers to non-acquired, neuro-developmental differences in brain function, structure or organization, present from birth or emerging during early development.

The NDs are your ADHDers, ASDs in their varying capacities/spectrum, Dyslexics and Tourette’s to name “The Originals”. Other NDs are referred to as acquired neurodiverse conditions such as mood disorders and neurodegenerative disorders. 

“The Originals” have always had a difference in their brain structure from birth as evidenced, for example, by ADHDers when you get a CT of our brains. 

These differences are pretty subtle and differ from ADHDer to ADHDer and include but are not limited to a smaller cerebellum, caudate nucleus and prefrontal cortex as well as reductions in volumes of the amygdala and hippocampus. 

I always get so annoyed when people call neurodivergence a mental illness unless if they are co-morbid. 

Dear ND, there’s nothing wrong with you. You just feel this way because the world is designed for neurotypical people, just as it is designed for right handed people and not left handed ones. 

This is why we suffer, and why we are given doses of controlled drugs to help us become temporarily neurotypical so we can “function”. Otherwise, I was happier in Europe, where the system caters to both neurotypes and no one makes you feel like an outlier by setting impossible deadlines, timelines or rules. 

It always makes my heart smile when I think of the fact that there are some countries that actually don’t medicate their NDs. Instead, they make their systems naturally inclusive such that all an ND would need is occasional cognitive behavioral therapy. I miss those days.

Another thing that annoys me is when people say that NDs didn’t exist until Gen Z. They did. Instead of diagnosing them, you called them weird, class clowns, unfocused students, sensitive, gifted, problem children, eccentric, incorrigible, lazy etc. We are just the generation that’s bringing the issue to your face and consideration. 

By the way, avoiding taking your child to a psychotherapist will not stop them from knowing that they are different. It will just make them feel like they are different and that what they are is not normal - and that they should hide it from the world and keep it masked. It also makes us feel like you hate us for being that way.

Anyways I’m not sure if I’m at the right place to stop rambling, but I’m gonna stop here. Maybe I’ll write about my ND journey in depth, but this was just me being open cause as much as I have never been a masker, I’ve never openly shared either. 

My birthday gift to myself is more self honesty and self love. I know there’s many people out there like us, who feel alone, and who might wanna hear from a fellow ND. 

✨ We are one tribe ✨

See you soon! (Probably on something totally unrelated 💀)

So hi, I’m Pearl. ND: ADHD/D.