Thread by @AlexPetrovnia

This may be an unexpected perspective, but I genuinely love having ADHD. I love the connections it allows me to see. I love the deep emotional connections it allows me to have. I love the energy it gives me, and the passion.

The majority of the time I spend struggling with ADHD isn't struggling with ADHD itself -- but struggling with living in a world that treats the way my brain works as being "wrong" instead of simply different.

The more I carve out my own space in the world, and the more I make intentional space for my neurodivergence, the more I love it and can learn to love myself, with my ADHD being an inseparable part of my person.

Briefly after being diagnosed, I heard something that changed my life. It was this: ADHD isn't named for its worst symptoms, or even its most prominent features. It's named for what annoys neurotypical people the most.

Realizing this was immensely freeing. I don't think of my ADHD as a disorder, but a different way of being. It's only "disordered" when perceived from a system that insists on standardization, which is fundamentally antithetical to human nature.

ADHD as a term is a terrible description of what it's like to experience this type of neurodiversity, and I wonder a lot about how much harm that label alone has done. That term doesn't represent either my struggles or my strengths.

My attention is often MORE than what many neurotypical people experience, not less. My hyperactivity is not negative for me. I have learned to parse the difference between what is perceived as "abnormal" versus what is actually harmful to me, because conflating those was misery.

I don't wish I was neurotypical. Instead, I wish I lived in a society that was more flexible, and more willing to accept diverse strengths and weaknesses.
And I wish I'd understood sooner than I wasn't *wrong* just because I was different.