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If You Knew Me Before My ADHD Diagnosis, No, You Didn’t

I’m Coming Out Again..?

Dylan M. Austin
10 min readNov 8, 2021
On a bright yellow background, a squiggly mess of black scribbles straightens out into a line leading into that same squiggly mess, this time rounded out into overlapping and neatly-arranged circles.

Have we met before? Even if the answer is yes, these days, I’d say, “No, not quite.”

You knew the version of me that overcompensated and overcommitted, would get nothing measurable done at work or in class and made up for it in the middle of the night, had imposter syndrome trying to learn and work the way everyone else does, dropped interests just as fast as he picked them up, had wild mood swings after hours or days or weeks of trying not to have wild mood swings, that turned to alcohol to subdue the feelings of overstimulation in social situations, and that consistently fit a lot of words into long, rambling sentences that meant a lot to me and almost nothing to anyone else. I am still very much the personification of a run-on sentence.

I am still very much the personification of a run-on sentence.

A neverending stream of TikToks and social media ads first inspired me to talk about ADHD with friends. As many tend to do, I downplayed these suspicions. All I could imagine was this vignette of a little boy misbehaving in class, whose frustrated parents said, take this Ritalin and shut the hell up. Also, Adderall (something I heard about more than I actually knew about) is a drug college…

Dylan M. Austin
Dylan M. Austin

Written by Dylan M. Austin

Copywriter and content strategist in Seattle. Run-on mixed metaphor. Gay, autistic dog dad with ADHD (and too many plants).

Responses (6)

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harder for her to come out as having ADHD than it was to come out as queer

I am/have experienced this as well. Queer - out and about no problem (well, that's an oversimplification) but ADHD and out -> Yikes. Scary! (...and a flock of judgement descends from the sky and swallows me)

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To show everyone I’m not useless, to achieve the high honor of strangers’ approval, and to do more than I was ever asked for in most work situations, I’d tie a brick to the gas pedal an...

I feel a little guilty for resonating with this whole article so damn much and not being gay myself. Our pre-diagnosis ADHD trajectories (and, tbh, post as well) seem to be incredibly similar.

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You knew the version of me that overcompensated and overcommitted, would get nothing measurable done at work or in class and made up for it in the middle of the night, had imposter synd...

Are we twins separated at birth? Methinks YES. Love this so far. XO

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