tl;dr - I'm 51 and I finally got frustrated enough with the miscommunication, pretending I was something other than me, and not knowing why, that I turned my problem solving mind on itself. Through my research and interacting with other people online and talking to the people in my life, it finally clicked. I thought I had just had ADHD. But I have Autism. How could I not know something one day and the next day know it's true beyond the shadow of a doubt?

After a lifetime of weird communications issues, problems starting, struggling with the very idea of meaning and fighting with all my strength to force my mind to conform to the shape of the world, I finally got so frustrated that I tried to figure out why.

At first, I thought I was just looking for a better productivity system. I knew my ADHD well but without knowing I had Autism I've been struggling with only one part of a bigger picture. While I was trying to setup Obisidian for this new productivity system I got super annoyed with it because I just keep running into friction with it. Why is this so hard? Why can't I just take notes?

So I took a step back. I've been researching AI lately to figure out how it fits into my workflow. I use it all the time and it's become second nature (I have a lot to share on that later) so I was wondering if I could use it for notes somehow. That's when I came up with my Fragments Engine for notes and started moving down that path to make it a fully functional app. It's coming along nicely! For those asking about that I'll post some updates on that soon. I'm making great progress there.

While working on Fragments I started researching cognitive related topics focused on the way people think. I didn't realize how important that is for things like interface design. Not just literal ones but the interface that lets you use Obsidian. Mental ones too. I was trying to understand the static feedback and friction I get from a lot of tasks that should be easy. And seem to be for most people. I know opening a folder to store a note is a little annoyance for everyone. And I know how to fix that in terms of software now. But it reavled how I think.

During this process I started talking with friends and people I knew about what I was working on and while doing it, I got very excited. Like everyone would when sharing something new and have a strong urge to share with others. But a lot of these interactions felt a little bit off for me. It has nothing to do with the other people, nobody "did" anything to me or slighted me, or that kind of thing. And I wasn't upset at anyone. I was just confused. Why do I keep having trouble and thinking that something is off when I deal with people?

How Could I Not Know? How Come Nobody Told Me?

It's not like it was all the time either, so that made it worse. It felt random and I couldn't control it. But this added to my frustration and at 51 years old, it finally clicked. How could I not know? How come nobody told me?

I already knew I had ADHD. I've been diagnosed three different times. During my research, ADHD came up in terms of cognitive issues and their is a growing movement to put ADHD officially in the Austism Spectrum Disorder category. That made sense to me but I didn't give it much thought beyond that because I didn't think it had anything to do with me, with what I was working on.

I was working through all my research and applying my knowledge while building the app. Some conversations came up while I was talking to various people and I noticed what I call The Schism. To me, it's when someone says something and the other person says "me too" - this is perfectly normal. It's a bid for connection and that's not the problem. With my specific cognitive configuration, meaning is something that matters a lot to me. Like, it's everything.

So when I say "I have ADHD" and someone says "Me too, I forget stuff all the time", that hurts me. It's like I said "I'm wet" and you said "Me too, I just got out of the pool!" and I was saying "I'm stuck at the bottom of the ocean". This is not a fault thing either, it's just what it is. For me, meaning is about degrees. When people say that, they are not wrong. It's the meaning and intent of what we are saying. And sometimes people don't have the words to express something that means a lot to them in a way that other people can relate to. That's The Schism. It's the gradient of meaning.

I was trying to explain this to my wife, why stuff like that bothered me and I felt like she wasn't quite getting it either. She was saying "me too" too, in her own way. We've talked a lot about this stuff over the last few weeks and this whole ADHD thing was bugging me and I was frantically trying to find a way to explain it to myself and to those I care about.

It finally clicked at the grocery store. We went to get our weekly food and supplies and while I was walking around the puzzle piece finally clicked into place. Literally, I was thinking about the puzzle piece logo of Autism for some reason. Did I see it on some product somewhere? Or was it just floating in my mind with all the other research I've been doing. But as my mind touched the idea I finally considered it applying to me.

People have always joked that I might be Autistic. Even I did. Like, intellectually it made a lot of sense. But I realize now I never really considered it. This time was different. As soon as I truly let me self say "what if I was Autistic? What would that mean in all this? Does it explain anything? Does it change anything?". The he answers didn't matter at that moment because just asking them turned my outward facing intellect inward and laser focused it.

And when I did that, my body said "Yes, that's it." and the puzzle piece clicked into place. I felt it when it happened too. For me, stuff like this is physical. I felt it in a way I've never felt anything in my entire life. I started crying on the spot. Not hard, not sad. But I was afraid. Not of Autism, but of what it meant for me. What changes now? Anything? Is this information useful or is it just another label that I can't do anything with?

As I finished up with groceries, waves of lagging updates started hitting me. Moments of my life came into focus in new ways. Recontextualized with this new information and everything started making sense. Not just made sense, but changed my relationship with what I thought I knew about myself.

For someone like me, who's obsessed with meaning, narrative, sense of self and that stuff, this broke me for while. I was untethered. I felt betrayed by the whole world. How could I be left behind like this? But that quickly faded and was replaced with "How could I not know?" and if I didn't know this about myself, what else have I been wrong about? Everything?

I'm moving past the how could I not know phase but that is still lingering. It's not that I don't understand how. I understand the mechanisms. But from an internal, I am me, how can I not know myself kind of way it still boggles my mind.

I've had so many emotions about this and I'm still trying to process it. I'm already planning to talk to my family doctor and start the process of official diagnoses. I don't care about that but I've seen the response to other people online and how people treat them. I can imagine how this sounds or looks from anyone who hasn't lived my life. But if you are truly close to me, this will be more of a "yeah, that makes sense" kind of truth. That's perfectly fine, too. That just means you know me very well and that's beautiful to me.

I've always tried to share a part of my experience with people that I never understood. I'm a happy person generally. I love life, I love exploring and being with family and friends. I have preferences about that stuff but I'm just a happy person. But also, I've felt a profound sense of sadness, some type of misery that I just never could explain well enough to convey just how much I felt it. It was ever present in my life and I had no idea where it came from.

That moment in the grocery store, when it finally clicked into place, that deep well of sadness started to ease. I've always known I was different and being a kid born in the 70s, we simply didn't know as much about this back then as we do now. And people told me I was lazy, I just needed to focus, that my daydreaming was useless and I need to just knock it off whatever it was.

With this new perspective I finally understood why I felt so different and why no matter how hard I tried I couldn't make my way of thinking conform to the way the world expects it to. My work on Fragments lead me to a new way of exploring my own thoughts through writing that I've never tried before and all this wrapped together and made me realize, I'm done trying to hide who I really am. I'm done trying to force my mind to fit in this world. I'm tired of feeling bad that excitement and interests being intense makes other people uncomfortable. I'm exhausted from trying to hide that my entire life to make you comfortable.

This doesn't mean I don't understand the need for social norms. My specific mix of things, those social rituals and contracts, I get it. I understand why they make sense. And most of the time, I already know what to do. But when my emotions are high, I'm tired, excited, stuff like that, I don't have access to parts of my cognitive system because it doesn't have enough bandwidth in those moments to run all systems on full. So my ability to mask fails me and a glimpse of my excited, interested, intense real self peaks out and people think I'm trying to prove how smart I am when all I'm trying to say is "Me too, I'm excited to talk about this with you" but my internal clock is off and I can't wait till the end of your thought.

For me, it's removed all doubt about why I think the way I do and the incorrect notion that my thinking was somehow wrong. That somehow my intellect and reasoning skills were in question. Not by others, but by me. I'm still integrating this and trying to come to an understanding of what this means for me and it'll take a while. I'm not sure what's next. I have no idea what this changes in the big picture. Probably nothing. Probably everything.

The most important change has already happened though. I know I'm not crazy. I can stop fighting my nature and change my strategy to work with how I think instead of trying to fight against how I think and fail again.

While I explore this new reality for me and figure out how to proceed I just ask for a little patience from those closest to me. It probably won't change much for you but for me, this changed everything. I still have a lot to process and understand but I feel such a massive relief that it's hard to put into words. Especially for someone like me who's thing is meaning. I do know one thing though, it means everything to me.

Thank you to everyone in the ADHD and other communities that have been reaching out and engaging. It's really been nice to see some of my experiences echoed back to me, making them real outside of my own experience. I have so much to say on the complex topics involved that I'll share over time as I can. I've already written so much since I figured this out.

I've been reading a lot of other people's first hands accounts who went through this at a late stage and my experiences are so similar. I'm glad I didn't read about Autism or their experiences before this because I worry that it would have made me doubt my own version of how this went. I would wonder if they had primed me and that's why it felt that way. But I've been journaling this as it happened and as the layers revealed themselves. And I knew it the moment it happened.

I'm relieved, confused, sometimes angry and all the things. But most of all, I am relieved. I can stop looking for the answer now and work on accepting, integrating this with my sense of self, and moving forward instead of being stuck. I'm still figuring out what it all means for me and I'll share my story along the way.

I want to say thank you to Erin who's helped me hold space for myself through all this and been there through it all. She's my emotional support person. And Erin, if you read this, I'm sorry I talked so much I made you throw up. I love you.

For those out there struggling, I hope you find your answers.