Oof, I’m so sorry. It’s so hard to work around people you deeply disagree with on a philosophical or moral level, and I won’t even pretend to understand your struggles as a trans person in this world. Good luck to you, and I hope you can find access to the medications or treatments you need.

I have ADHD. I can usually hold my shit together at work, and I work 16 hour shifts. Some days my coworkers will notice enough to ask me if I’ve taken my meds, but most days I appear pretty chill. I’ll bet if you asked the majority of my coworkers they’d tell you I’m not ADHD.

What they don’t see is me going home and sobbing on the floor from the sheer effort and desperation of trying holding my shit together and not fuck up in ways that I can’t fix. I’m terrified every fucking day that today will be the day I fuck up enough that I can’t hide how bad my brain actually is anymore and I’ll make a critical error and I’ll lose my job. I don’t have a backup plan or someone to catch me if I fail, I’ll just be homeless at the end of the month when I can’t make rent.

Thanks, it’s good to be heard. I am medicated, but that only gets me from completely nonfunctional to nail biting my way through life. Unfortunately I’m not able to use caffeine either, low amounts are ok, but anything more than a cup of tea leaves me extremely depressed, tired, and physically ill. After a lot of research (actually reading academic papers, not YouTube, lol) I’ve just started cautiously experimenting with micro dosing and it could very well be the placebo effect, but it seems to be working a little better than my meds. Of course it’s illegal as all hell where I am and if I get caught I can kiss my job goodbye forever.

Yes. I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was in my 30s. By then I had already spent my entire life hating myself for being an utter failure because I couldn’t figure out why just having a simple existence felt like trying to climb Mount fucking Everest every goddamn day and why my brain always feels like scrambled eggs. I’ve been passively suicidal most of my life because even as a kid the adults in my life openly compared me to my peers and found me sorely lacking, and as an adult I mourn the life I want and can’t seem to achieve. I feel like my entire existence has been me throwing myself at the bars of a giant cage labelled ADHD and I can’t get myself out or find the key and people come stand outside the door and watch me and say things like “everyone has focus issues” and “you just need to try harder” and my personal fucking favorite “nothing in your brain is impossible to fix if you’re willing to put in the effort, you just are unwilling to change”.

My ADHD has taken everything from me. I have no friends, not even online, I’ve dropped out of school multiple times, I struggle at work, I struggle to emotionally regulate, I’ve only ever had two relationships and I was dumped by text from the person I was married to and ghosted from the other.

I actually have an okay paying job now, but I fully expect I will die alone and broke because the chances of me ever being able to keep a career that pays well enough to stay ahead in this economy are slim to none. I have no idea how to make or keep friends, and I can’t bear the thought of getting attached to someone else only to get ghosted again.

I’d do anything to not have ADHD. Sure I’ll laugh and make ADHD jokes with everyone else, but my life would be so different if my brain would fucking work (or if I would have been diagnosed sooner and learned coping mechanisms and self love sooner).

Self hatred because if you were just better it wouldn’t take 6 hours to clean a one bedroom apartment that you live in alone and are never even home in and if you didn’t suck so much it wouldn’t ever get dirty and need cleaned beyond a quick vacuum in the first place.