Hiding in plain sight - AuDHD with multiple identities

Catherine Bates

I am late diagnosed AuDHD, over 45, working-class, Gemini with Scorpio-rising, year of the tiger, a carer, a widow and quite a few other things. No wonder I’m tired.

On the surface, I’m a 51-year-old, perimenopausal, over-weight, over-medicated AuDHD woman. In my head I’m 19, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and why my joints hurt so much.

When I was 3 years old, my teacher told my mum I was a genius. No pressure then. I’ve heard other AuDHDers talk about being identified as gifted and talented at school. It makes us feel like we’ve let everyone down when we inevitably don’t live up to our perceived potential. Well, that’s me. I sailed through GCSEs without breaking a sweat, learned 7 different languages at secondary school. Started A-levels and was one of 3 people in my year invited to the Oxbridge exam meetings. And it was pretty much downhill from there.

I got bored of studying and I was left unsupervised. I picked some A levels because they sounded ok and one of them promised a field trip abroad (which never happened), but sixth-form was so much harder than school. There were also a lot more distractions. I discovered “boys” and “going out.” I scraped enough points at A level to go to university and move out of my parents’ house. I lasted a year in Derby, got screwed over by a housemate and moved back to Manchester the following year.

I somehow persevered through the next 2 years of my degree course. I always leave work to the last minute but will work through the night to meet a deadline rather than ask for an extension. Then I decided to move to London because the chance came up and I wanted to. My friend asked if I’d take over her lease, so I thought why not? I did some temp work, watched a lot of Wimbledon on tv and tried to figure out what was next. I came home that Christmas and met someone who proposed to me 3 days after he’d met me. I said yes and we were married for 25 years.

It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster really, or maybe more of a runaway train. I certainly wasn’t driving it.

I’m not sure how my socio-economic background has impacted my experience, because I don’t know what the alternative would’ve been. Do I value honesty because of my upbringing or my autism? Am I hard-working because of the people who raised and influenced me or is it ADHD? Maybe that’s why it took so long to get diagnosed. I was hiding in plain sight.