25/08/2026
I thought I would write this to get it out in the open — to put it into words that might help me understand myself a little better, and possibly help someone else who sees a bit of themselves in my story.
This is an acceptance post.
Acceptance of who I am, after spending most of my life wondering what the hell was wrong with me.
I’m 56 years old. That’s 56 years of quietly believing that, somehow, I was broken.
Growing up, I was always the “difficult” one. The one who couldn’t quite get it together. I had a speech impediment, but there was more going on than that. At school I was fidgety, talked too much, interrupted, got distracted and could be disruptive. I didn’t do particularly well academically, even though I apparently had the ability.
Every school report seemed to say much the same thing:
“Could do better.”
I was also a bit… well, strange. I didn’t fit in particularly well and didn’t have a huge circle of friends.
At home I was the naughty kid. I argued with my parents, fought with my siblings and broke things.
Lots of things.
Not always deliberately, either. I was endlessly curious about how things worked, so transistor radios, RC toys, binoculars and anything else I could pull apart often ended up scattered across the floor and completely beyond repair.
And, being a child of the 70s, my backside was regularly reminded of the consequences!
As I got older, the problems changed.
Relationships became difficult because I had a habit of bottling everything up. Something would hurt or frustrate me and instead of dealing with it properly, I would shove it down.
Then shove the next thing down.
And the next.
But bottling things up doesn’t make them disappear.
Eventually the genie comes out of the bottle and Pandora’s Box flies open.
For me that could mean anger — sometimes enormous, uncontrollable anger after months or even years of frustration had been pushed down.
It wasn’t pretty.
In fact, it was bloody messy.
And it’s a pretty effective way of destroying relationships.
Past relationships suffered and collapsed, while I stood amongst the wreckage wondering:
Why am I like this?
For a long time I felt like I couldn’t do anything right.
I felt like I had failed miserably at life.
And the more things went wrong, the worse my opinion of myself became.
I knew deep down that I wasn’t a bad person, but I couldn’t understand why I kept repeating the same patterns. Eventually that turns into some pretty horrible self-talk:
Who could love me when I’m this fu**ed up?
About ten years ago I entered a relationship with someone who, looking back now, I recognise as displaying some extremely manipulative and narcissistic behaviours.
And I was easy prey.
When you already think very little of yourself, it doesn’t take much for somebody else to convince you that you are worthless.
That relationship drove me into some incredibly dark places. At my lowest, I came frighteningly close to deciding I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Eventually, thankfully, I got out.
After that relationship ended I found myself flatting with a woman who was kind, patient and understanding.
She knew I had issues. She could see I was carrying damage from what had happened, and she was willing simply to be my friend while I tried to put some of the pieces back together.
I needed somewhere safe.
Sarila became that safe place.
We were flatmates for a while… and then life decided to change direction.
For that, I am incredibly grateful.
Sarila is kind, generous and one of the hardest-working people I know. She supported me, and I supported her where I could. Over time we built a relationship and a life together.
But that dark cloud I had carried for so many years didn’t magically disappear.
And that brings me to the first really important point of this whole spiel:
I am aware of it now.
I am working on it.
I am trying to understand myself, improve myself and heal some of the damage that has accumulated over the years.
Because I do not want my past patterns to destroy the best thing that has happened to me.
Over the last five years, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out just what the heck has been going on inside my head.
I’ve read. I’ve researched. I’ve taken various screening tests. I’ve looked back over my childhood, school reports, relationships, work habits and behaviour.
And I have become increasingly convinced that ADHD explains a huge amount of my life.
The signs were always there.
I just never recognised them.
Back in the 80s and 90s, when I first heard about ADHD, I thought it was something hyperactive kids had and eventually grew out of.
I now understand it very differently.
For many people, it follows them right through adulthood. It simply changes the way it presents itself.
And suddenly so many pieces of my own puzzle started fitting together.
The procrastination.
The time blindness.
The fidgeting.
The impulsiveness.
The sensory overload.
The addictive tendencies.
Starting a thousand things and finishing half of them.
The emotional intensity.
The hyperfocus, where something that interests me can completely consume my attention.
And, for me, one of the hardest things of all is learning to manage anger and emotional overload before they reach boiling point. I have got a long way to go on that path! This brings me to the second point of this post, to apoligise for my meltdowns and to commit to do better at controlling my emotions.
There are good sides too.
Hyperfocus can be an incredible thing when pointed in the right direction. Creativity, curiosity, energy and the ability to become completely absorbed in something I love have helped shape the person I am as well. My photography is a testament to that.
For years, though, I became pretty good at masking the other parts.
But the mask is coming off.
I’m done spending my life believing I’m simply broken.
Understanding ADHD doesn’t excuse the mistakes I’ve made. It doesn’t magically undo hurt caused in the past, and it certainly doesn’t mean I can shrug my shoulders and say, “That’s just how I am.”
Quite the opposite.
Understanding why my brain behaves the way it does gives me a chance to take responsibility for what I do next.
So this is where I am now.
Still learning.
Still stuffing things up occasionally.
Still trying to understand a brain I’ve been living with for 56 years.
But finally, instead of fighting against who I am, I’m beginning to understand who I am.
I’m owning my ADHD.
I intend to work bloody hard on the parts of it that can hurt me and the people I love, while embracing the creativity, curiosity, passion and intensity that are also part of me.
Maybe I was never broken.
Maybe I simply spent 56 years trying to operate a brain without ever being given the instruction manual.
Well… I’m finally starting to read it.
(everything written here is of my own heart, no AI was used in writing. AI was only used in tidying it up, grammar and spacing only)
