Now I know: I’m not a failure, just a person with ADHD

In 2008, I graduated from high school as class valedictorian. In 2011, I failed out of college. It took almost 10 years for me to finally understand why.

Of course, as my mother likes to argue, you can’t really fail out of college. If college is your chosen path, there are always ways back. But I’d lost my honors scholarship in 2010, and I spent my last year of college falling into an even deeper hole. By the time I reached what should have been the end of my junior year, I was no longer eligible for financial aid.

I was also depressed, adrift, and absolutely furious with myself.

That line of self-directed fury, often crossing into the territory of self-loathing, would become a common thread in the years that followed.

To me, it seemed I’d been blessed with an amazing opportunity, and I’d thrown it all away. Even as I recognized that I’d struggled with intense anxiety and depression (both closely tied to my ADHD), I felt like I hadn’t done enough to hang on and grit my way through it.

Broken, I moved back home and got a job. I found I could only make it a few months before I spiraled out. Every attempt was the same. I’d quit jobs in a haze of emotions that left me feeling like an even bigger failure than before.

Outside of work, I tried to replace one broken dream with another. I’d gone to school wanting to be a music journalist. I tried to convince myself and the world around me that the reason I couldn’t finish my journalism degree was that journalism was too stifling for me, a creative writer at heart.

I wrote a novel. I couldn’t get myself to edit it. I sought advice that largely amounted to either going back in time to edit as I went or just buckling down and getting it done.

I couldn’t just buckle down. I tried. I stopped and started a hundred times using a hundred different methods. But every attempt to force it felt like scrubbing with sandpaper.

I wrote another novel, thinking the content itself was the problem. I didn’t edit that one either.

I wrote short stories and submitted them, but my submissions were few and far between. Every writer knows that after a few rejections, it’s best to give a story another look. I found the task of keeping on top of my various stories difficult. Plus, when you already feel like a failure and hate yourself for it, no amount of being told rejection is normal and impersonal can keep it from taking on a new kind of pain.

I kept researching the industry even as I felt I couldn't hack it. Some part of me thought I just needed the right advice and it would unlock everything like magic.

The right advice never came. It was all the same. Write every day. Submit, submit, submit again. I watched with sick envy as some of my peers on writing sites and forums talked about pitching their novels or getting acceptances for their shorter work.

I wasn’t jealous of them. I was mad at myself. I knew what it took to be exactly where they were. Why couldn’t I just do that?

Those same feelings tore at my soul bit by bit as the years went by and I felt I had little to show for them. Why was I so bad at just getting stuff done? Didn’t I want these things? If I wanted them, why wasn’t I trying to get them?

I started to internalize the view that I was a failure at my core, fundamentally broken. I resigned myself to a future where I’d never succeed at much or be a “real person” who could care for myself properly.

Then, after almost a decade, something changed.

I somehow drifted into the right stream of voices on the internet. More and more, I noticed personal ADHD experiences shared by friends and strangers on social media.

I’d heard of ADHD and knew some of the symptoms, but I knew them as a lot of people in society know them — from the outside and usually focused on one presentation: the hyperactive little boy with bad grades all through school.

That didn’t fit me, so I’d never thought…

It was different to see the manifestation of symptoms laid out by people (especially afab—assigned female at birth—people) who had lived with ADHD. Again and again, I found posts resonated.

Like dominos in slow-motion, things began to fall into place piece by piece. I started to re-examine all those things I couldn’t finish, those tasks that seemed insurmountable, those struggles to keep up with the level of organization and self-management that college and adult life both require.

I sought evaluation. I got diagnosed. ADHD, predominantly inattentive.

There it was.

When I’d been living in them, I often compared those years after college to being buried alive. Finding out I had ADHD felt like someone had handed me a shovel so I could finally start to dig my way out.

I was diagnosed in early 2020. Like most of society, I’ve struggled with some intense stress and emotions these past few years, but I’ve also started a journey of healing around my past. I’ve been able to forgive myself for so many years of perceived failures. I’ve been able to work on my day job and side projects from the angle of knowing I actually can achieve my goals.

I know now that through all those years, I was unaware, undiagnosed, and untreated — a neurodivergent square peg trying to force myself into neurotypical round holes.

Instead of focusing on where things went wrong, I can marvel at how much I learned and grew even in the darkness.