How a mid-life diagnosis turned my awkward moments into revelations.
Bo Burnham said it best: A little bit of everything, all of the time.
Getting diagnosed with ADHD at 37 is like getting handed the script of a movie you’ve been acting in your whole life but never fully understood. Suddenly, a lot of those awkward scenes make way more sense. Like that time in school when your math homework looked more like avant-garde art, or that meeting last week when you pitched an idea about flying staplers that no one else seemed to get excited about.
I’ve always felt a bit like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, or more accurately, a hyperactive, distractible peg trying to hopscotch through a chaotic, round obstacle course. Growing up, I’d walk into rooms and forget why I was there. Heck, I still do. I mean, how many times can a person lose their keys in the fridge before it becomes a sitcom trope? Chewing on this newfound understanding of myself, I now see that my life has been a perpetual game of “Where’s Waldo?” — only the goal was to find my attention span.
My brain is like a browser with way too many open tabs. At any given moment, I’m thinking about deadlines, dinner plans, that funny joke I heard, that one song I keep humming and random facts about cats. Sometimes, whole days feel like the opening sequence of an over-caffeinated action movie — fast-paced, confusing, and in desperate need of some serious editing.
In social settings, my awkwardness used to feel like an uninvited guest, always nudging me into weird conversational cul-de-sacs. Imagine me at a party, navigating small talk. While someone mentions their target mortgage rates, I’m busy mentally debating the pros and cons of space travel for hamsters. Subtlety isn’t my strong suit, though enthusiasm certainly is.
Learning about my ADHD has been like unlocking a new level in a video game — eye-opening, yes, but challenging, too. There’s a strange comfort in joining the “ADHD at 37” club — like discovering a quirky support group where the members high-five over missed deadlines and half-read books. The validation is real, and the humor is essential.
Even now, with the diagnosis in my back pocket, I still stumble through moments that feel like an homage to awkwardness. Randomly blurting out bizarre thoughts during family gatherings or forgetting a colleague’s name seconds after they’ve told me — it’s all part of the package. But understanding why it happens? That’s half the battle, and it allows me to marvel at the absurdity rather than collapse under it.
So here I am, awkwardly navigating through life’s intricacies with a bit more self-awareness and a dash of humor. Because if there’s one thing ADHD (and 37 years of being me) has taught me, it’s this: Embrace the chaos, laugh at the awkwardness, and always keep looking for those metaphorical keys in the fridge.
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Late to the ADHD Party: Discovering My Quirky Brain at 37 was originally published in Mindful Mental Health on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.