Everything about cleaning is wrong
The mess is distressing. The cleaning is distressing. Nobody writes 'and here's what to do when both are the problem.'
Blog
The cotton wool days
For years I lay in bed waiting for a grey feeling to pass. It wasn't depression. It was my brain at the bottom of its stimulation range.
The grace they won't give you
Everybody else gets to have a bad day. When I finally have one, it gets logged as evidence.
How I learned to be still
I spent years training my hands to stop so I looked like I was paying attention. Turns out I was paying less attention.
Yesterday was fine
My sensory tolerance was shot before I'd done anything. No reason I could point to. Just the day, already wrong.
I wish I was built for this
Eight months in, every time, the version of me who loves the new job quietly leaves. I've stopped being surprised by her exit.
I find out I'm upset later
By the time I know how I feel, the conversation ended three days ago.
The people who leave space
Some people talk and you shrink. Other people talk and you find you have quite a lot to say.
The version of me that goes to therapy
Fifty minutes, and I delivered coherent observations about my own patterns. Then I sat in the car for a while and wondered where the struggling version of me had gone.
I see it in all of them now
You get the name. Then you start doing the math backwards on everyone you come from.
Not applying yourself
The diagnosis explained my life to me. It did not go back and update everyone else's verdict.
The nausea was never just nausea
Reading what AuDHD women say about pregnancy, I keep hitting the same sentence: I don't know why this is so hard. Women do this all the time.
I keep finding the surface
My whole life I have wanted to talk about the actual thing. Most people are fine without going there.
Relief, then dread
Late discovery brings relief. Then you look at the life ahead, and the relief wears off into something heavier.
By the time I get home
I work not even full time. By five in the afternoon there is nothing left. For a long time I thought this was a discipline problem.
The feeling just before I start
There is a moment, just before I start, when everything is still possible. I have been chasing that feeling for most of my adult life.
I know I know this
The answer is in there. You can feel its shape. But the moment attention lands on it, it scatters.
What actually shuts my brain off
For years I treated the noise as a fixed feature. Then I found out other people had figured out how to get quiet, and I started taking notes.
The long way out of burnout
A year of unemployment and nothing getting better. The honest answers about what AuDHD burnout recovery actually takes.
The person they fell in love with
Post-diagnosis, I kept running through every relationship I'd ever had. And hitting the same thought, over and over.
When the mask doesn't come off at home
If you have to perform for your partner, you don't have a safe space. You just have a different audience.
The three-day aftermath
My nervous system processes rejection the same way whether it comes from someone I love or someone I'll never think about again.
The thing I can't go back to
There's a specific kind of loss when someone gets into your special interest and leaves something permanent behind.
Seven identical sweaters
Shopping is overwhelming. The lights, the choices, the fabrics my skin won't accept. So I buy the same baggy sweater over and over and call it a system.
Why the starting is so much harder than the doing
The new thing is always easier to start. The feature that actually needs shipping sits there while I learn another framework. Then the deadline hits and I work until I break.
We should hang out sometime
Everyone else learned what 'we should hang out soon' means, and nobody told me.
You're being defensive
When you correct a mischaracterization and get called defensive for it, the trap closes whether you push back or stay quiet.
When my coping mechanisms failed
You built your coping systems over decades. They worked until around 40, when they started failing. It might not be burnout. It might be your hormones.
The graveyard of projects
My brain generates more wanting than I have time or energy for. That's not a complaint. It's a structural problem.
The performance of recovery
AuDHD burnout has a version where you get very good at performing recovery while still completely inside it.
Hot and cold at the same time
Perimenopause is uncomfortable. Perimenopause when your nervous system was already maxed out is something else entirely.
What looks like managing
You delivered. You adapted. You never visibly broke. Nobody checked on you — because you never looked like you needed it.
The disappearing act
When the person who loves you can't understand that your silence isn't rejection. It's survival.
The song that makes me want to quit
There's a playlist at work that makes me want to walk out and never come back. Not the music. My nervous system has decided this sound is an emergency.
Waiting for permission
Put me in charge and I'll talk to anyone. Leave me without a role and I'll sit there for an hour. I've been waiting for permission nobody is going to give.
The checklist and the toothbrush
I colour-coded a packing list. Left two hours early. Forgot my medication and to lock the front door.
You just want connection
They say autistic people don't want connection. They are wrong about that. They are wrong about a lot of things.
Forty-Seven
I was forty-seven years old the first time my life made sense. Not in an inspiring way. In a sitting-on-the-bathroom-floor way.
The tug-of-war: why this blog exists
You want routine. You also want to blow up your entire life every six weeks. You are not broken. You are AuDHD, running two operating systems at once.