8 years on, in January of 2023, crammed in amongst the array of musical instruments and my latest makeshift recording booth, I sat at my laptop, watching the minutes click by in the corner of the screen.

 

I was 2 years into living in the downstairs room of my parents’ house, after moving home to save up for a flat deposit. Every inch of the space was optimised in the little rectangular room to factor in all of my different hobbies of the time. Typewriters balanced beside countless notepads and stacks of paper. Various trinkets from charity shops, houseplants, crystals, rocks, and shells, all arranged so that there wasn’t a single bit of surface area that was clear.

 

Including my dusty electric piano.

 

There was always some kind of new system in place to try and keep organised. One stack of paper would usually be songs that I’d half-started or finished already, another, random ideas that I’d had, as well as one topped with a reel of bullet points from the latest rounds of amends for the music producers that I’d been working with most recently.

 

I caught sight of one of the bullet points and my stomach lurched a little.

 

‘ - Drums – still too loud.’

 

‘I’m just really sensitive to drums!’ I remember saying, in what had felt like some kind of strange confession to the way that I experience music. ‘I’ve never understood why they always have to be quite so loud.’

 

This had not been the first time that my approaches and preferences with music production had come across as strange to people that I had sought to collaborate with.

 

My first proper voyage into a partnership music project had come about just three years earlier, in the height of the pandemic, whilst working on a music podcast with my housemate.

 

One of the other hosts had similar preferences to the albums that we had been reviewing, as well as complimentary skills, so I had jumped at the opportunity to work together remotely.

 

It had been a long time since I’d shared my music in a meaningful way with anyone new. Following my fleeting run at the open mic circuit in London 8 years before, I’d decided to mostly stop playing my own songs live.

 

Sticking instead to performing my renditions of covers whenever I was invited to play at work parties or friends’ weddings, it felt safer somehow to hide behind other people’s words.

 

I also realised on the journey of being invited to perform more often that there were very few songs that I’d written that were appropriate for the happy events that I was being asked to play at.

 

And over the years, it was actually thanks to my inability to write songs whilst in the romantic relationships that I’d been in, that had made me recognise when I’d been with the wrong people.  

 

I surprised even myself therefore when I started to get an influx of more consistent and in some cases, even uplifting inspiration just after my last break-up in 2019.

 

Whether influenced by years of playing famous crowd favourites or simply because I was starting to prioritise my mental health in new ways, I didn’t know. But all that mattered was that I’d found my flow again, and this time, I was determined to learn to capture it somehow.

 

Setting up a home studio in the spare room of my house-share, I built my first makeshift recording booth out of an old mattress and some pillows.

 

All that I needed to do was get in the booth and record my guitar and vocals. How hard could it be, right?

 

It’s amazing what happens when you’re incubated with your own systems away from the rest of the world. Much like my naivety towards my audition process when I was younger, I’d really hoped that being able to write and play my own songs might be enough.

 

And yet, I wasn’t used to playing with a metronome, or splitting out my guitar and vocals, or singing without hearing the usual, natural reverberance on my voice.

 

Despite my enthusiasm, it seemed like every part of the recording process was now a new level that I had to master just to be able to have my music exist out in the world.

 

I was so out of my comfort zone and entirely willing. But as the months beat on, with all of the collaborative projects that I started, I found myself becoming less connected to my songs any time that they involved digital production.

 

2 minutes to go.

 

It wasn’t only issues with the technical side though. Having always had challenges in my school and work life with time management, as well as being a notorious, professional procrastinator, I had started to feel the crunch of these less favourable traits now also seeping their way into my creative projects.

 

I was so used to staying up late the night before a deadline after leaving things until the last minute. But before now, with school and university and all of the roles that I’d bounced between since, it had sort of made sense that I hadn’t always had the willingness to get things done ahead of time.

 

After all, sometimes there are just more exciting parts of the job that you want to do first! Or some days it feels easier to get things done when it’s late and there are no other distractions left, with only the burn of the deadline to power you through. It had just become so normal to me.

 

But when it started to happen with my music, on every project that I started, something felt off. This was supposed to be fun. Why was I now dreading the process of recording so much, and why was I finding myself almost always putting things off?

 

I felt like I was constantly making excuses for not finishing things. And despite wanting to believe that it was something outside of myself that was causing all of the challenges that I’d had over the years, I’d come to realise that I had to face the facts.

 

That amongst every experience I’d had with my music and the multiple jobs since uni, that in all of the struggles and exceptions that seemed to have to be made, wherever I was, there had been one single, unavoidably clear, common denominator.

 

And that was, well, me!

 

The thing is, I’ve always really enjoyed looking at things from different perspectives. But between my zigzagging attention span and my fascination with pattern recognition, I’ve never been very good at following other people’s instructions. Because somewhere deep within me, I’ve always believed that there must be a more efficient way to get to the same destination.

 

Or, at least, one that might work better for my brain.

 

Efficiency, I’ve come to realise since, truly is subjective to each individual’s ways of being and experiencing the world. There isn’t ever just one way of doing something. And if you can’t manage the system that’s in front of you, it might not be because you’re ‘bad’ at it. It could just be that you need to consider an alternative route.

 

I felt like I’d spent my life taking the scenic route, which might sound lovely. But the issue was, I’d been pretty hard on myself most of the way.  Bouncing between the darker parts of my psyche, that would dwell on all of my weaknesses, and then back to the near constant state of anxiety that came about from how they directly affected my day-to-day life.

 

1 minute to go.

 

Until recently, I’d thought that maybe this was just how I would always feel, because it was how I’d always felt.

 

I was only just keeping my head above water in my day job, and I still couldn’t seem to make my music work in any way outside of the four walls of my bedroom.

 

I’d never even considered that the challenges that I’d had most of my life could have anything to do with the neurological functioning of my brain.

 

But I was about to find out.

 

 

Brains are so weird, right? We all have one, and yet the number of us who understand what is actually going on up there is so low considering how many humans there are just wandering around, being controlled by them.

 

And there’s still so much that we are yet to learn about them.

 

Neurodiversity, for example, the idea that there is a natural diversity in human neurological expression, only got its name in the late 1990’s.

 

This term that refers to the process of continuing to explore the variations observed in brain functioning, and acknowledge how they directly contribute towards certain behavioural traits, is still so new.

 

It’s reasonable therefore for us to approach it all with a degree of both curiosity and care. To not only explore what can be learnt to expand our understanding and help create more structure and support for different types of brains, but to do so without othering.

 

Personally, I think that there is something kind of cool and meta about the fact that we are all learning so much more about this now. And also, so exciting.

 

That after millions of years of human evolution and development, among all the other physical alterations that we’ve observed in genetics, with endless papers and studies to delve into how we’ve all changed over time in the rest our bodies, that it’s only really more recently that we’ve started to better understand how the human brain could have changed too.

 

That maybe part of our evolution journey is now. The bit where we really give credit to just how many wonderfully diverse ways that our individual brains can operate. Making so many of us know that we are all physically a part of the same species, but feel at times, so different on the inside.

 

And that perhaps, the ways in which our brains have shifted and changed, creating differences in how we each see and experience the world, might actually be directly correlated to what it is that each of us could be doing more of whilst we’re here?

 

That maybe our perceived ‘weaknesses’ could actually lead us to our strengths. And that if we were all to better understand our own brain’s makeup, and accept one another for our different traits, we could support each other through these differences and benefit more from our broad range of complementary skills.

 

When looking at my genetics, I was gifted with hypermobile limbs, short legs, wide feet, and terrible eyesight. And a Roman nose. But I do have a bloodhound sense of smell, so for all that the world of Hollywood has tried to do to shame me into hating it, that’s one part that I like to celebrate now.

 

I mean, imagine me as a cave person and how easy it would be to focus on my weaknesses. I’d have likely never left the cave and probably would have been given old animal carcasses to sniff to tell the rest of the tribe if they were still edible or not.

 

I like to think that I’d have been useful in my own way, and that I would have been kept around for my talents, rather than killed off for my weaknesses, letting my unique combination of genetics die off entirely.

 

But I’m not a cave woman. I’m living in the 21st century and because of human development, we now have contact lenses and yoga and wide fitting shoes.

 

Humans are amazing in the ways that we innovate to enable. And as we’ve seen time and time again, when we design for those who have a weakness in one area, so often it is something that others can benefit from too.

 

Like putting in an accessibility ramp for somebody who uses a wheelchair, which will inevitably also be used as an alternative experience by those who are not wheelchair-bound.

 

Or the special vegetable peeler that was created for people with arthritis that sits in the hand more comfortably and is therefore generally also an easier experience for those with more or full mobility in their hands.

 

Or, the swivel topped painting easel that was designed to assist artists with cerebral palsy to paint with more freedom, but has been considered something that could benefit all artists for how much flexibility it provides.

 

When we create with limitations in mind, we almost always end up with something that not only helps the people that it was originally designed for, but others too.

 

And I believe that this pursuit towards understanding divergences in human neurological functioning is the same. If we could just look at the traits that affect people and help one another understand each other more, maybe the things that we could create as a response to supporting those traits could be helpful for even those who experience them at a lower level, or not at all.

 

 

I was in a surf-house in Portugal when I was first asked if I knew that I had ADHD. And at the time, I remember being so offended that anybody who knew so little about me could label me so quickly with something, with such confidence.

 

I didn’t appreciate then the power of understanding shared traits. That her comment had not been a criticism or a judgement, but instead, a recognition, a sharing of her personal liberation that had been found through the exploration and deeper understanding of the workings of her own brain.

 

I’d always had issues with keeping to one task at a time, getting bored quickly, and often talking over people in conversations for fear of forgetting what I wanted to say.

 

The thought that so many of my challenges throughout life could actually somehow be related to my brain producing less dopamine, one of the key hormones related to a human’s reward system, felt like such a strange thing to reconcile.

 

And yet, the more I delved into understanding what it all meant, the more I started to recognise what she had seen in my behaviour and I finally booked an appointment with the local ADHD specialist at my doctors’ surgery.

 

‘Laura,’ the friendly nurse said at the end of our initial consultation. ‘I am going to refer you for an ADHD appointment, but I also wanted to ask: you’ve not made eye contact with me for the entirety of this session. Is that quite normal for you?’

 

‘Erm. I didn’t even realise.’ I said, making a monumental effort to catch her eye and hold her gaze for a few seconds, before looking away again. Not really sure what she was getting at or why it mattered, but starting to feel anxious that I’d done something wrong.

 

‘It’s only that, a lot of the traits that you’ve described to me today do align with having ADHD. But you have also described many that align with being on the autistic spectrum.’

 

I wrinkled my brow. My brain starting to malfunction slightly, as it attempted to process this new piece of information that I hadn’t been expecting.

 

‘I have two sons who have ADHD.’ She continued warmly. ‘And one of them also has low support needs autism, which used to be commonly referred to as Asperger syndrome.’

 

‘The way that you have just described how you experience the world sounds almost identical to my son, who has both. Often known as AuDHD.’

 

She then went on to explain how the different conditions can often exist alongside of one another, but because of the differing traits, they can commonly camouflage each other.

 

And not only this, but because of having a heavier focus on boys and men in earlier medical studies, it has historically been much more common for girls and women to go undiagnosed for longer.

 

I knew hardly anything about what it meant to be on the autistic spectrum. And at first, I was just sat there clutching my piece of paper with my bullet point list of struggles and traits, entirely stunned.

 

As I walked out of the doctors, and into the chill of the cold November day, I battled with the different emotions that were rivalling to take precedence in my mind for the experience that I’d just had.

 

It should have been validating. It should have explained everything. But instead, I just felt sick to my stomach about the idea of having to now get some kind of formal confirmation on not one but two neurodivergent conditions. My initial excitement about going down the rabbit hole to get more answers on the workings of my brain, now fading fast into a new beast, that I’d known in many other forms.

 

Imposter syndrome.

 

The waiting lists for everything relating to neurodivergent diagnoses on the NHS in England were known to be in excess of years. If I took that route, how long might I have to wait to find out about either condition?

 

The idea of paying to have a private diagnosis felt so strange. I knew how many other people were also struggling and wanting answers. What made me more deserving of them just because I could afford it?

 

And most of all. What if she was wrong?

 

Both conditions were less researched in women. What if I was also unlucky and ended up getting a psychiatrist that was more experienced with men?

 

Over the weeks that followed, I found myself falling into one of the darkest holes of my life yet. My initial searches on the costs of getting both conditions reviewed privately seemed astronomical. And yet, I was drowning at work. Finding any days in the office so over stimulating that by the time I got home, I would often be unable to speak. My weekends and evenings became focused on catching up on work, or instead, needed for recovery time.

 

An exploratory music project that I’d started a few months before, in hopes of finally releasing some of my songs, had also begun to be impacted. I’d already been finding the process challenging and as my mood dipped more and more, I found myself making excuses to get out of having to show up for it.

 

Eventually – things hit a breaking point where something had to give.

 

I needed to trust that the nurse from my initial consultation had known what she was talking about and that whatever the outcome, I would make good of it. Whatever happened, I would move forward. That was all that mattered.

 

I read profile after profile of different psychiatrists online, hopeful to find one that would be able to look at the conditions holistically for me. But most of the cheaper online clinics only reviewed them independently.

 

Eventually, I found a psychiatrist that was a specialist in diagnosing the presentation of both conditions in adult women and I booked an hour long, ADHD assessment call, with an idea…

 

 

‘Hello Laura!’ a cordial voice rang out from my computer screen.

 

‘Hi!’ I said, looking down at my sheet of paper covered in my scripted notes to talk through.

 

‘Look, I know that this call is just to review ADHD.’ I babbled at her nervously, wasting no time to cut straight to the point.  

 

‘But I was wondering if there would be any way for you to give me an idea as to whether I might also be on the autistic spectrum? I was told to look into both, and I’ve just waited so long to find out about all of this stuff, and it’s so expensive. Given your background, I was hoping you might be able to help?’

 

I knew that I’d likely put her in a slightly awkward position. We only had an hour for the call for a start. But I didn’t know what else to do. I just couldn’t bear the idea of leaving with only half of the picture.

 

By the end of the call, I had a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD and a prescription for some stimulant medication to trial. She also then sent me a variation of free, industry standard tests for autism online. Whilst these only made up one part of an official assessment, I was determined by this point to take any help that wouldn’t involve more fees.

 

Over the next few weeks, I found myself becoming the most efficient and successful that I’d been at my day job yet. With my ADHD traits dampened by the medication and a greater ability to focus on tasks for longer periods of time, my pattern recognition that came in so handy with problem solving, seemed to flow more consciously to me.

 

And when I went to take the different tests that I’d been sent online, I couldn’t believe it, as time and time again, I showed as also being above the threshold on the autistic spectrum.

 

It was now up to me as to whether I wanted to pursue a formal diagnosis to have it confirmed for definite.

 

I’d come so far. Was it enough to just know without needing a second piece of paper to prove it? A second, very expensive piece of paper.

 

I’d sort of felt like I’d hacked the system, and yet I still wondered if it was enough.

 

Unfortunately, my initial excitement about finally having gotten a medication that helped with my ADHD traits had also started to fade. Alongside of the newfound productivity that they were now affording me in areas of my work, I was noticing more and more side effects showing up…

 

The bright lights and sounds and smells in my office were starting to bother me more than I’d ever noticed before. And I was finding myself zoning out halfway through the day, unable to form proper sentences, as though my brain had ‘checked-out’ after it’s ultra productive morning on the meds.

 

All of the traits that the nurse from my initial consultation had flagged as likely being indicators for the low support needs autism, seemed to be amplified. I was finding myself less likely to want to engage in any kind of small talk or social gatherings. Choosing to go straight to my room as soon as I got home, enforcing new kinds of strict routines on myself to manage how dysregulated I was starting to feel so much of the time.

 

My sensitivity to certain fabrics was causing clothes that I’d never previously had a problem with, make me want to scratch my skin off.

 

And I was finding it nearly impossible to listen to the songs that I had spent so many months tirelessly working on in my latest music project. Because everything now just sounded ‘too much’.

 

Was it possible that somehow, by taking the ADHD medication I was putting myself out of balance? That my autistic traits were now affecting me so much more because I didn’t have the ADHD ones to counter them in some way?

 

For so long the two had lived together and whilst they definitely hadn’t been cohabiting in the most harmonious of ways, now it felt like they were going through some kind of messy divorce, and I was the child stuck in the middle of it all…

 

I’d always hoped that getting more answers on the workings of my brain might have helped and yet somehow it was leaving me with even more questions than before.

 

The loudest of all of them being – what now?

 

 

‘Be there in five’ – an instant message from my boss pinged in the corner of my screen, making me jump. Below it, yet another chaser message from a member of our finance team asking me to fix the mistakes that I’d made in our forecasting document, (for about the tenth week running).

 

I’d spent nearly 15 years working my way up in the media industry to land the dream role that I was now in helping different charities. And despite excelling in certain parts of the job, even with the new medication, there were some duties that I was almost always falling behind in.

 

I was so determined to make it work, but I’d hit my limit with knowing how to keep on top of my different responsibilities and so now, I was sat in a meeting room in our London office, waiting for my boss to join me for our weekly catchup, wringing my hands under the desk…

 

‘I just wondered if there was any way that I could shift my role slightly?’ I said cautiously when he had sat down, and we’d covered our usual jovial morning catch up.

 

‘It’s only that I have so much more information about how my brain works now, and it’s made me realise why I struggle so much with certain parts of the job.’ I felt tears of embarrassment starting to prickle in my eyes.

 

I’d been in this situation so many times before, having to ask for the lines to be moved for me when I couldn’t keep up. Only this time, 2 months on from getting my AuDHD diagnosis, now I was at least able to better understand why it was that I was finding it so hard to be the all-rounder that my job had required of me.

 

My boss had been so supportive of my neurodivergency journey, often going above and beyond to ensure that my wellness had been prioritised throughout.  But I also knew that he had a job to do, and I hadn’t been hired to only do half of mine, so this wasn’t a conversation that I was expecting to go well.

 

And yet, somehow, I felt strangely resolute about it. Because for once, I wasn’t apologising for myself - I was asking.

 

And I wasn’t looking to be rescued - I was negotiating.

 

So, when he smiled at me, and with a genuine apologetic tone in his voice started to explain that there wasn’t budget for me to move roles right now, something inside of me stirred.

 

And it wasn’t the knot of fear or the hum of anxiety that I had become so used to.

 

It was relief.

 

The kind of relief that you feel when you flip a coin and it lands on the side that you wanted all along.

 

The kind of relief that comes from knowing that all of the roads are blocked, but one.

 

And the kind of relief that tumbles from the understanding that a decision has reached its final outcome.

 

As I walked back to my desk it felt like I was waking up from a dream that I’d been living in for the last 20+ years of my life. A dream where the main character had been so focused on the show that they were putting on for everyone else, that they’d forgotten that they were even performing.

 

And the reality was, after spending so much time and energy battling all of the different parts of myself that I was so determined to change, I was now finally realising that of all of my neurodivergent behaviours, there had only ever been one that had actually harmed me.

 

And that was the one that had made me feel like I needed to change in the first place.

 

The one that was so afraid of external rejection that it had prioritised pretending, over self-acceptance.

 

All that I’d ever wanted was to find my place in the world. To be able to contribute something and to feel of value. But how was I supposed to do that when I wasn’t even valuing myself enough to take the time to understand what it was that I could contribute?

 

I didn’t know what was ahead of me just yet. All that I knew was that I was tired and I couldn’t keep going in a life that had never been for me in the first place.

 

And of all of the things that I felt that I had to offer, of all of the abilities that I’d worked so hard on over the years to develop, there had only ever been one that had allowed me to always feel like my whole self.

 

So, two days later I quit my job. And when I finally finished my notice period, 3 months on, I took a travel guitar and a recording device to Glastonbury festival, with the plan to independently record my first live album.

 

Because if there was ever going to be a path to healing the wounds of a lifetime spent pretending and struggling, then it had to be one that was both real and fun.

 

And now – from my phone’s voice-memo archives, recorded a month after I handed in my notice from April 2023, ‘Playing Pretend’.