Recent AuDHD Diagnosis: Changing My Perspective on the Holidays

I've been being so precious about writing, which drives me nuts about myself, because it puts me in a cycle of wanting to write, then not writing, then trying to write but not liking what I write. Brains! They really complicate things.

It's Thanksgiving today, and I enjoy the feeling thankful part, but it also feels like all of our holidays are steeped in colonialism and capitalism and I do not enjoy that. I don't know that I've ever heard someone say "I love Thanksgiving!" I would love it if it didn't feel so, demanding. Like, here is this day, now you must enjoy it. It feels performative, and less like gathering to feel connected and more like a stress ball of cooking and cleaning and dealing with family dynamics. Plus don't forget to shop til you drop the day after. Barf.

What would my ideal Thanksgiving be like? Well, I like the name, so it can stay. Then I think it would be nice to make the Thanksgiving holiday a time when we connect to nature. Giving thanks to the Earth, to the people in our lives who matter to us. It would be a potluck so the people who love to pull out all the stops can make complicated food and then other people can bring store bought if they want- but everybody brings something. It would be cool if our neighborhoods were actually small communities and each neighborhood had a place where people could gather for things so Thanksgiving could be like a drop by event. And you could stay as long as you wanted, leave and come back, or not come at all.

I guess for me it's the pressure of it. And the noise. And the stress. That just does not feel very holiday-ish to me. Are holidays actually even fun?!? Or is it something we all love because it means we're off work? It's like how everyone loves summer, but the reason everyone loves summer is because we didn't have to go to school. And then, we're off work, but we spend the time cooking and traveling and trying to regulate ourselves while we overeat and overspend. Holidays are wild.

I waited tables most of my life and the holidays are the busiest time so they never felt festive, instead they were exhausting. I don't know that I've ever had a holiday season I've enjoyed! That's interesting to think about. I did take deliberate days off around the holidays this year so I'll see how that goes. I gave myself tomorrow and Saturday with no plans, which feels like the ultimate holiday to me. I often wonder what it would be like to have a whole month or three with no plans like I imagine it was a few hundred years ago.

I got tired just thinking about if someone from a few hundred years ago time traveled to Thanksgiving today. They would probably be like holy shit, y'all never stop do you? It's so loud and bright and bustle-y. I was just thinking about how my recent AuDHD diagnosis has changed the way I think about the holidays this year, which seems like it's probably the subject of this post in a roundabout way maybe. It's still kind of hard for me to write about, it feels new and unknown while also like something that has been me always I just have a name for it now.

I don't know how to write about it really. Neurodivergence is having a moment right now, it reminds me of when I quit drinking and then sobriety became more mainstream. It makes me both mad and glad- glad that awareness is increasing and more and more people can be helped and supported, and mad because things that are different are so stigmatized until the right people/sources start saying it's cool to be these things now.

It's impossible not to think about how my life would be different if I had been diagnosed with AuDHD decades earlier. Would I still have spent 27 years as a blackout drunk? Did I drink like that because of my AuDHD? Most of all I just wonder how we can stop seeing difference as a pathology.

I usually like to have a way to kind of pull things all together to end things I'm writing, but I don't think there is one here for me today. Really, the point of this post is for me to post something. To just start the journey of writing about my experience being AuDHD like I started writing about being sober almost 12 (!!) years ago. I remember how much it helped me to read things written by other people like me, and how much it helped me to write about it. So, ta da! Lol. Here it is. Thanks for reading. :)