Being queer, having ADHD, and finally fitting in

Jocks. Theater kids. Math nerds. It seems like every teen movie and TV show has a scene where we’re introduced to the subgroups that make up the school ecosystem.

I went to a high school where the groups were a little less division-by-stereotype. But whatever divisions there were — similar senses of humor, similar tastes in music, similar interests in animal husbandry — I never really found a place to fit. I was in several groups. But I was also in none of them.

Growing up, I floated around the cafeteria and break area. I found people to sit with, bonding over one thing or another. And I would almost begin to think that I’d finally found my people.

But I would soon start to feel out of place. Like I wasn’t wanted or welcomed.

In my mind, I was always one step away from doing or saying something that would make them reject me, so I would move on. I would reject them first.

I didn’t know at the time that I had ADHD. I was decades away from having a doctor tell me that people with ADHD, especially unknown and undiagnosed ADHD, tend to struggle with anxiety — because we can feel there’s something different about us, but we don’t know what that something is.

I hadn’t yet learned about sensitivity to rejection. Or the vicious cycle where that sensitivity is fed by the many times that people with ADHD experience rejection at work or in relationships.

I didn’t know any of this back then. I was simply a “weirdo,” internalizing all of those feelings. I was feeding alienation with more alienation. And I was deeply lonely.

Roughly halfway through high school, I started to battle with another difference. I realized that, while I certainly liked boys, I also liked girls.

It gnawed at me from the inside. I had grown up in a rural Texas town of about a thousand people. I had been raised and “saved” in multiple Baptist churches. I had spent years in Girl Scouts with a troop leader who led us in prayer before every meal and thought people who read fantasy books about magic were setting themselves up for fire and brimstone. Bisexuality didn’t fit into that world. And even more than before, neither did I.

I kept the closet doors mostly shuttered.

I had a girlfriend briefly, but she lived several towns over. I told a friend I was bisexual, thinking I could trust him. I listened from the bathroom while he told everyone else in our group.

The silver linings glimmered, though. In finding (and ultimately accepting) that piece of me, I found a shard of identity I could rely on. Unlike my fleeting hobbies and interests, it was unshakeable. Even as I half-hid, I fell in with the few openly queer kids I knew. In them, I had friends for years.

After high school, college was a new world. I helped restart the school’s Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Alliance. Within that group, I felt a sense of deep belonging for the first time in my life. I still felt weird and different, but I never felt like I might be rejected for it within that circle.

College also gave me the opportunity to make friends with other neuroatypicals, though I had no idea why I felt so secure with them at the time.

Ultimately, being queer and neuroatypical would land me in fandom spaces. Hyperfixating on pieces of media as I did, it was a natural progression to seek out others who were just as obsessed. I found networks of queer people who just wanted to see themselves in the things they loved. A lot of them were women. A lot of them had autism and/or ADHD.

In a way, I can credit online communities for helping me learn about ADHD in a way that finally got my attention. I’d never been exposed to it through the lens of people who actually had it. It flipped a switch and allowed me to start the process of getting diagnosed and treated.

It’s funny, in a way. Two big parts of me that once made me feel so alienated ultimately led me to communities where I feel I belong. A lot of times in life, I still feel I have to tuck pieces of myself away, but I do it knowing there are also places where I can tear the shades down.

I do it knowing that no matter how often I have to put on masks, I accept and love who I am beneath them.