A memoir in progress about late-diagnosed AuDHD, masking, burnout, and the slow work of learning how to human. First fragments will go to newsletter subscribers.
A memoir-in-progress about wondering why I never quite fit, being diagnosed with autism and ADHD in adulthood, and slowly realising I was not broken — I was exhausted, masked, and missing the right language.
Welcome. You’re early.
The memoir is still being built. Slowly, messily, and very much in public.
For as long as I can remember, I had the quiet, nagging suspicion that everyone else had been handed an instruction manual at birth, and my copy had been lost in the mail.
I spent decades wondering why the simple things never felt simple. Why fluorescent lights felt like physical attacks. Why my brain could latch onto something with burning intensity and then drop it without warning.
For thirty-something years, I didn’t have the right words for any of it.
So I reached for the explanation that seemed most obvious at the time:
This memoir will explore what happens when the labels finally arrive in adulthood. It is a record of late diagnosis, masking, burnout, grief, relationships, and the slow, uneven work of rebuilding a life from the ground up once you finally have the right language.
This is not a self-help book written by someone who has it all figured out. It is a memoir in progress: part diagnosis story, part burnout record, part pattern-spotting, and part unmasking in public.
The memoir will move through:
Years of forcing an organic, hyper-reactive nervous system into rigid shapes. Burnout is not being tired. It is what happens when the system has been running past capacity for too long.
The thousands of micro-decisions made every day to appear “normal”, and the extreme cognitive cost of holding that mask in place.
What it actually feels like to live in a loud, bright, over-stimulating world when you have no built-in filters to tone down the inputs.
Decades of being told it was depression, anxiety, BPD, or sensitivity — and the slow, complicated relief when the right language finally arrives.
Most of all, you’ll find the strange, sweet relief of finally realising:
OH. IT WASN’T JUST ME.
The memoir is not ready yet. But if you want to know when the first pieces arrive, join the newsletter and I’ll send them there first.