An ongoing #AskADHD thread for the aptly named @AskADHD on late diagnosis. Part 1/????????

First things first: who am I? I am:

* Almost 40
* White
* Pass as a cis woman (I'm DFAB nonbinary but it's tl;dr to get into here)
* Bisexual
* middle-class
* college educated
* multiply disabled (ADHD and multiple mental illnesses it exacerbated and/or created) 2/?

* Christopagan (and therefore a double religious minority i in LDS/Mormon Utah)
* My ADHD is the inattentive type and affected me only marginally during my teen years because of OCD.
* Probably other things I'm just spacing on right now lol. 3/?

CW suicide: my experience with late diagnosis will be shaped by these and other factors (including having a parent who was diagnosed with ADHD and who died by suicide). Like every human being, every experience with late dx is individual. 4/?

Okay! Now that we've preambled, let's begin!

My family has mental illness on both sides. My mother has undiagnosed (but obvious) major depression, GAD, and probably OCD. My father had OCD, Major depression, and ADHD and tbh was probably autistic. 5/

CW: suicide

My father also died by suicide when I was a teen. This is, sadly, a part of my late-dx story that I can't elide; it's inextricably tied to it. I'll warn for suicide during posts that mention it, but if suicide is a trigger for you, this thread may not be helpful. 6/

I'm truly sorry that is the case, but unfortunately you won't get the full story unless I discuss it.

Moving on... 7/

I'm a child of the 80s and of a state that was transitioning from rural to urban during that decade. It was also very socially conservative. meaning: kids didn't have mental illnesses unless they were too obvious to ignore and girls certainly did NOT have ADHD! 8/