Taken from another conversation:

Having #ADHD is having constant, hard to explain anger at a system for changing the rules that I thought I understood.

It's playing poker when suddenly MTG cards are being laid down in other people's hands and I'm like wait

Wait

When

What

How does a full house go on the stack you can play instants against my queens what's going on I swear to god I knew the game we were playing a minute ago

Where are you getting these cards from we're drawing from the same deck we were very clear on the rules before what's going on

Why

Why are you looking at me like I'm doing something wrong

Oh god

Oh god I'm doing something wrong

I swear to god I knew the game we were playing.

And that's b/c of a common problem those of us on #neurodiversesquad run into before we grok our respective d/x:

When someone asks us "Why can't you just [x]?" or says "You should be able to [y],"

It doesn't occur to us that "I'm physically incapable of doing so" is an answer.

The most common accomodation that kids in public schools need from teachers is for some kind of sensory processing issue.

It's an easy fix. They can't listen to the teacher AND take notes AND absorb the information.

Literally can't.

So, you give them the notes. Or make the slides from the powerpoint available online. Or, or, or...

So many things.

But disability advocates in schools say it's like pulling teeth trying to get teachers to do that.

Because [abled] teachers have a very clear idea of how a student should learn, and the kid should just try harder.

And it's like

If I'm not tall enough to reach the top shelf, no amount of "try harder" will let me get something off of it.

Lend me a fucking stool.

I know I'm mixing my metaphors, but that's one I reach to often.

My experience of finding out at 30 that I'm #ADHD,

Was like finding out that I'm too short to reach the top shelf, have been my whole life, and nobody told me. And I thought I was just a peice of shit for failing.

A dyslexic friend once described being a kid with dyslexia by saying "Nobody ever explained to me that the words on the page were supposed to make sense."

And I'm like

Likewise,

Plenty of people told me "You're so smart, [x] should be easy!"

And nobody, not one person ever in my life, followed up with "And if it's not easy, that might be a sign of something."

They just labelled me another underachieving gifted kid.

I've been fighting the urge to go fetal and hang out under my desk where it's cozy for a hot minute, so I think that's all I have to give to the thread, but

Y'all

I'm disabled.

And that's the first time I've been able to say that without feeling weird about it.

I can talk about my disabilities, but I've always felt like I didn't have a right to call myself disabled

But I've been pouring out trauma for two hours now from trying to make myself fit a mold for three decades that I wasn't ever built to fit

And hating myself for not fitting

My brain, which I love, doesn't work. Not the way y'all's does (adhd company excluded).

I'm on a not insubstantial dose of speed to be able to exist in the world y'all made

Without it, I'm just surviving.

AND FUCK ME, Y'ALL, I'VE GOT IT RELATIVELY EASY.

I'm bad at being a person.

But fuck that's fine Ruth is bad at being a person and I love her just like she is so goddamn much it hurts so maybe y'all can love me as I am and maybe I'm worthy of that.

Or, put in the way that gut-punched me last year:

The commonly known symptoms of #ADHD - disruptiveness, inability to focus, hyperactivity - are not, in fact, the symptoms of ADHD as experienced.

They're just the things that annoy parents and teachers. https://twitter.com/Chowderskin/status/1220215813388398592