Anyone who’s been late diagnosed with ADHD
knows that first high.
That moment of clarity
when the whole world tilts and suddenly it’s like
“Wait. I’m not broken?
My brain isn’t wrong?
The world just wasn’t built for me?”
You feel like a goddamn phoenix.
You start telling people.
Friends. Family.
You post.
You share.
You cry.
You spiral.
You dive headfirst into the dopamine swamp
with hyperfocus as your sword.
You binge every ADHD podcast.
Start a new Notion template at 3am.
Buy the weighted blanket.
Delete the shame playlist.
And then
somewhere in that beautiful,
chaotic, all-consuming freedom…
you start to feel something else.
A twitch.
A cringe.
A heat behind your teeth when you read someone else’s post
and they call it “ADD.”
Or say “high-functioning.”
Or mask a little too well.
Or cry a little too loud.
Or don’t quite “get it” the way you do now.
The High-Functioning Spiral (Uncut)
It happened just this week.
Someone I’ve worked with for years
they’ve known I’m ADHD for a decade.
But now we’re in deeper trenches together,
leaning hard on each other to deliver.
They compliment me.
Not just the work.
But the way I navigate my ADHD.
How open I am.
How unshamed I sound.
And then it drops:
“You’re the first person that made me understand what high-functioning ADHD means.”
Later that same day:
“Damn, you really are high-functioning, huh?”
I smiled.
Nodded.
Said “fuck yeah I am.”
Took the win. Took the compliment.
But inside?
Wait. Did he just say that?
Is he gonna say that to someone else?
Is he gonna use that as a teaching moment?
Like “hey, my ADHD friend is high-functioning, you could be too…”
Shit. Am I supposed to say something?
But what do I say?
He meant it as a compliment.
His intentions are good.
And fuck—maybe we need more good intentions in ADHD land.
Do I just let it go?
But then… fuck.
Now I’m pacing.
I know I can’t let it go.
But I don’t wanna sound like the ADHD police.
The grammar cop. The vibe killer.
That moment?
That’s what cracked this post open.
Not the comment.
Not the compliment.
The way I almost swallowed it.
The way I almost let it go because
“he meant well” and “it’s not that deep.”
The way I almost masked again
just to make the moment easier for him.
Confession Time: My Petty Crimes
And yeah, before I found this softness,
I did my share of burn-book bullshit.
I’ve screenshotted people’s reels.
Sent them in DMs like, “can you believe she still says ADD?”
I’ve rolled my eyes at “undiagnosed” influencers
talking about dopamine
like it was a fucking aesthetic.
I’ve corrected people mid-sentence.
I’ve dismissed people who weren’t “deep enough” in the work.
I’ve performed purity.
Not to protect the community.
To prove I belonged in it.
Mask Off ≠ Mouth Off
I didn’t dunk on him.
Didn’t snap back with shame disguised as education.
But I did circle back later.
Told him the phrase hits weird.
That it can feel like saying
“wow, you’re not like the other broken ones.”
That maybe a better compliment is
“You know yourself well enough to thrive in a world not built for you.”
He took it.
He took notes.
Said he wanted to explain it better to his kids.
Because their friends have ADHD too.
That’s what inspired this post.
Not the moment I felt proud.
But the moment I hated myself for judging first
before choosing to educate with kindness.
We’re Not Saints. We’re Spirals.
And look
I’m not saying we need to be saints.
Or soft all the time.
Sometimes ADHD is funny as hell
and it’s okay to laugh at the chaos.
I’ve tripped over nothing four times walking into my house.
My daughter’s still in the car like
“there you go again, dad.”
We both laugh.
There’s room for that too.
Not perfection. Not correction.
Just perspective.
Because life as a neurodivergent person
in a neurotypical world
is already a fucking sitcom.
The punchline is survival.
This isn’t a manifesto.
It’s a fucking mirror.
For every creator, coach, or clinician
who posts about radical acceptance
but can’t scroll past a misused term
without sneering.
For every newly diagnosed spiral soldier
who’s just trying to make sense of the chaos
and finds community that looks more like a burn book
than a lifeline.
For the ones like me.
Who’ve done the work.
Built the rituals.
Learned the language.
And still sometimes forget
that gentleness is what saved us.
Not the facts.
Not the DSM.
The moment someone said,
“You’re not broken. You’re just wired differently.”
and meant it.
So here’s the truth that gutted me:
Unmasking feels like going backwards
because maybe we are.
Maybe this roller coaster wasn’t built for us at all.
But if we become what we hated while we were masked—
we’ll never move forward again.