adhd – Alice in Welshland

Maybe this blog needs a new name?

I’ve been misleading you all since starting this blog again at the start of year. The blog is called ‘Alice in Welshland’ but I’m not in Wales anymore. I moved to Scotland nearly 2 years ago now so maybe it should just be ‘Alice in Scotland’ now but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

I think moving up here was the catalyst for me uncovering that I might actually be autistic, the ADHD I have suspected for years now but the Autism was always “No, I mean yeah that sounds like me and I do that too, but no. I’m not Autistic.” Sound familiar to anyone? You see, moving 250 miles away from home is hard for anyone but it seemed harder than it should have been, I felt like I should have been settled much sooner than I was. To be honest, I still don’t know how settled I am. I love it here, it’s a great place to live but I haven’t really found my place here yet or found my people and quite honestly, I’m lonely.

The truth is, it’s absolutely no-ones fault but my own because I have met some of the kindest, most friendly and warm-hearted people I have ever met but thanks to these innate qualities I have, friendships have never stuck, quite frankly they haven’t even really began.

I suppose when I first moved up here I didn’t really know myself, to know where to fit in and with whom I wanted to spend my time besides my boyfriend (now fiancee) and as much as I love him and spending time with him it’s not healthy for either of us for me to not have friends and people to talk to up here besides him. Now, however, I think I know who I am a bit more and I know the sort of people I want to surround myself with. The only problem now is finding them.

You are not alone.

Growing up I loved the film, Matilda. It was my absolute favourite and was always my go to watch on a sick day from school. It was definitely my OG feel good binge and recently I got curious and started to wonder why that might be.

Matilda was different, she was misunderstood, and she wanted more from life and her family than she was getting. I have spent my whole life feeling all these things. I have always been misunderstood by pretty much everyone in my life, most of all family. Don’t get me wrong I felt loved and cared for but always a little misunderstood. My parents never understood that my “tantrums” were not things I could control. I didn’t know why I was feeling angry or frustrated, I didn’t know what to do with the anger and frustration. I couldn’t express my thoughts and feelings and even in moments when I could find words to do so, they were almost always lost in translation. Similarly, in my relationships with my siblings, my older sibling I would say is definitely more neurotypical and therefore didn’t question that I may be feeling any different or that I was experiencing the world any differently or processing things differently because he simply didn’t know. My younger sibling however I would say is more similar to me and understands the difference in mindset more but has never felt the need to change or be anything different to fit in to society, she has never masked like I have and therefore does experience the world differently too.

Matilda loved to read, that was her escape from the world and to an extent I did too. I never considered myself an avid reader but I did love reading, more than I give myself credit for. I read all the Harry Potter books as they came out, I read every Jacqueline Wilson book, I loved the Sheltie series of books. I loved Roald Dahl, obviously. In my teens, you would have definitely caught me reading the Twilight books too. But as life and technology has progressed, my escape from the world has been TV and film. I cannot count the amount of times I have watched Gilmore Girls, Friends, One Tree Hill, Full House and countless others in their entirety. British classics too like dinnerladies, Vicar of Dibley, Miranda, Downton Abbey, the list goes on.

Matilda was also very smart and switched on, not dumb by any means but the world treated her as so. Which is something I can relate to in terms of neurodivergence and as stated above being misunderstood. I process things differently and may do things differently but it doesn’t mean I am stupid or wrong. I can see that look in someone’s eye when I do something differently or maybe a little bit backwards and it always hurts a little because if the look was words, it would be “are you stupid?”.

And finally, I loved Miss Honey and loved Lavender and all the friends Matilda found because they represented acceptance. They were nothing but loving and accepting, everything that her family and Miss Trunchbull weren’t. It gave me hope even at a young age when I had no idea what I was dealing with that someone, somewhere would accept and love me for who I am.

Is there someone watching me?

One aspect of Autism/ ADHD is a fear of being perceived. This is a bit of a two-edged sword for me. In most circumstances, I HATE being perceived. Yet, at other times when I’m alone and there isn’t anyone watching me, I imagine that certain people are. I could be driving along and just imagining that someone I knew 10 years ago could somehow see me and wonder what they’d be thinking about me. Weird I know, makes no sense.

One of the biggest challenges for me that I can remember happening throughout school is people watching me do schoolwork. If the teacher’s attention is elsewhere, I can just go for it and there’s nothing stopping me from completing whatever task is in front of me. That’s not always the case in the classroom though, is it? The teachers like to wander and check up on people as they’re getting on with whatever task. This is when I would feel so self-conscious and simply stopped. Every time. I could be mid-flow but the second I could feel their presence over my shoulder all thoughts and knowledge seemed to allude me in an instant.

It wasn’t just the schoolwork that proved to be problematic in this respect, it happened for homework too. Particularly anything that required access to the computer. Up until my late teens this meant using the family computer. The family computer, however, was my Dad’s pride and joy. Outside of work, sleep, eating and something good on the telly, he was always on the computer. So, when I had to go on it and cut into that time for him, he wouldn’t venture far or for long and eventually without fail he would be stood behind me with his hand on the chair eager to get back. It would enrage me. A teacher I couldn’t say anything to but Dad I would, but that would always be met with “you wouldn’t say that to your teacher, would you?”

Another thing probably not many people know about me is I love to sing. The reason I say nobody will know this is because I can’t let anyone listen. I will only ever sing, properly sing, in an empty house. Even then I am on edge about people coming and going so meticulously plan when I can do it. I also had piano lessons for 4 years and struggle to perform in front of anybody and usually only play now when no-one is in the house.

The long and short of it is, if someone is watching me do something I will not be able to do it. Not properly, not to the best of my ability and certainly not the same way I would do things when nobody was watching. If it’s something that requires me to use my hands and fine motor skills, I am all fingers and thumbs! It’s a disaster. I think that’s probably why I want people to be watching when I’m alone, they’ll get to see the REAL me?

New Year, Neuro-divergent Me

A New Year, a new me. As cliché as it may sound, I am hoping this year brings some big changes to my life. I really can’t go on as I have any more and want to live the kind of life I want, need and deserve. I have known all my life that there was something different about me, I was the weird kid. I was the one people played with because they had to but wouldn’t otherwise bother with.

Primary school, in particular, was hellish. This is where I was still me but learning and testing the limits, working out all the unspoken social boundaries that everyone else already seemed to have a pretty good grasp of. I was bullied a lot, was singled out a lot, embarrassed myself far more than anyone else because of simple misunderstandings because my brain wasn’t processing the world around me the same way that most other people were.

By secondary school I was beginning to get a good grasp on things, but I was still always a little behind everyone else, it was like I was constantly lagging. I could never get right up to speed. But socially I muddled through and made a solid group of friends and had fun.

Academically, I had always excelled, there was no cause for concern in that department because I was intelligent and let’s face it a bit of a goody two shoes, so I was always working hard and on my game. The only time this wavered was later in my school career, particularly in Sixth Form where in preparation for university, everything is a little more relaxed and puts more onus on the student to lead the way and take control rather than the teacher. And then university …. Been there, done that, and dropped out …twice!

Somehow, up until this point I have muddled my way through adulthood not entirely unscathed. I have had various jobs that I have left or got behind in due to my differences in handling and dealing with things. I have defaulted on a credit card and have never had much in the way of savings. I was single most of my twenties. As mentioned above, I dropped out of university twice so have no qualifications to my name. So that’s a general overview of my story thus far but now I have realised through other people’s stories of their lived experiences with neurodivergence and many online tests and questionnaires that maybe I wasn’t weird, stupid, unlovable, lazy or useless after all, I was just and am still, neurodivergent.