Different OS

Who wasn’t I? What labels didn’t I pin on myself? Time came to check, to ask someone who knows better, someone who understands. And it came out. Jekyll and Hyde. Autism and ADHD. Two sides of a strange coin that instantly explains so much.

I’ll probably write a post about it on the blog—that forgotten, abandoned, reworked and revived corner with details, bells and whistles.

Now you know I’m not ignoring you. I don’t write holiday cards or birthday wishes because I simply don’t see you every day. And when I see your vacation post, I’m too ashamed to reach out.

You know well that I have hundreds of unfinished projects on the shelf, which I talked about with such passion and pride.

It annoyed you that I could talk for hours about everything and nothing.

Or that I couldn’t let go or change my mind.

I hate all of it in myself too. Except, understanding myself, I found the other side of the coin:

When I could dive so deep into a topic that I’d go from a chat on the street to debating in Parliament; turn frustration from a cycling situation into interviews with headline names for my own book; spend 7 years slowly changing the unchanging in an organization over 100 years old.

When I tinkered with those strange things, letters, symbols, making first websites, apps, games, when there was nothing to imitate. When everyone was a pioneer. Or creating an unpredictable career once or twice in a new country from scratch.

When after every failure, rejection, broken heart or pride, I’d throw a tantrum, shake off the dust and move on like nothing happened.

When I found someone who accepted me for who I am, I was ready to abandon a huge part of myself and break my routines, habits and passions and glue them into something new.

AuDHD was both curse and salvation. Something that got me into trouble more than once, made me a laughingstock. But it also helped me reach what seemed impossible.

Now I don’t guess whether it’s stupidity, sociopathy, bad upbringing or a quirk. Now I finally have documentation for my head and I understand it’s not a broken computer but a different operating system. I understand it’s not atypicality, but traits that need a new role in an atypical, everyday world.

If you think you’re deviating from the norm, don’t let yourself be hunted down. Don’t fear criticism or labels. Find a specialist, check, investigate, and be proud of what a unique person you were born to be.