The Never-Ending Internalised Shame

"Now, as I unmask, accommodate myself, and keep moving forward, I'm realising I no longer have the capacity to do everything I want to accomplish."

If you’re like me and you discovered your neurodivergence later in life, a wave of emotions hits. Relief over finally having the answers, sadness for your younger self being ostracised simply for existing, hope for what lies ahead, among many other thoughts and feelings.

However, there’s one emotion I wish I’d learned about sooner - shame. Because it’s a big one.

Skill regression seems to be fairly common in the neurodivergent community, yet it’s something less talked-about when you’re wondering whether or not you’re autistic or have ADHD. A Reddit post I found explains skill regression in autistic people very eloquently, I’d recommend giving it a read - link here.

Pre-diagnosis, I loved going to gigs and meeting up with friends for drinks regularly. I could work a full-time job fairly easily and had no issues with public transport. Sure, I got annoyed by delays and cancellations of buses and trains like any Londoner would be, but I’d do the usual huff, roll my eyes, figure out how to reroute my journey, and move on.

These days, I feel like a shadow of who I used to be, as I find all those things so much harder to cope with now.

Gigs? Now they’re unpredictable as hell; more so since gig etiquette seems to have been disregarded post-pandemic by many.

Meeting up with friends? As lovely as it is to see them, it’s usually in the evening and is always a massive sensory overload (crowds, loud volumes, lack of light) - I need a lot of time to recover afterwards.

Full-time job? Five days a week of working hard with only two to recover is no longer sustainable for me; I’m permanently exhausted from sitting at a desk.

Public transport? Even being a transport nerd doesn’t always help when it fails. If things go wrong, I’m overwhelmed by surrounding passengers’ frustration and my brain instantly trying to recalculate the next best route.

All of these used to be what I thought made me the person I am. If I’m finding all of them difficult to commit to these days, what’s left of me? Who am I?

The one about gigs particularly stings… there are elements of it I still adore, like the huge coming together of fans to enjoy an artist we all love, singing along with all we’ve got during the big songs. I’ve made gig friends who are some of the funniest and nicest people I know, and I love hanging out with them. And the rush of scoring a setlist, plectrum or drumstick at the end is so sweet.

But there’s so much more I have to think about now post-diagnosis. How early do I have to start queueing if I want to get to the barrier? If I miss that, where’s the next best place for me to get a good view? Will I be able to stand for long enough? I have to stay hydrated - thanks to my meds. Will the venue let me take in an empty Chilly’s bottle? Can I fit all I need into a bag no bigger than an A4 piece of paper? What if the crowd’s full of drunk wankers and ruins the vibe? What if there’s no vibe at all? How will the band react to that? How difficult will the journey home be?

All I want is to have a good time and I now have to take my wellbeing as an AuDHDer into account. I can’t just book the ticket (plus hotels and travel if needed), turn up, enjoy the show and go home anymore.

Everything that used to be easy now feels a hundred times harder. And I feel so ashamed.

Perhaps this is why I didn’t think I could be autistic in the first place when I was looking it up: I could do things well, I could function, I could live. It took adding all the little things up over the years to piece the puzzle together and how much effort all those little things needed. Now, as I unmask, accommodate myself, and keep moving forward, I'm realising I no longer have the capacity to do everything I want to accomplish.

My dream of following one of my favourite artists on a UK tour is fading. Going to multiple music festivals I’ve always wanted to go to is even more unlikely. A week of travelling around the UK entirely by train now seems unthinkable.

But this doesn’t mean hope is lost.

Gigs are still a thing for me as long as access accommodations are in place and I pace them out. It’s obvious I can no longer do the amount of far-away gigs in a short space of time I’d like to do. Maybe I can map my own UK tour of that favourite artist, still following the same route but not doing every gig. I know there are one or two cities I’d definitely avoid (sorry, Birmingham).

With the job, I’m trying to gather the courage to ask my boss to reduce my hours… which I’ve been saying for a while now, but my annual review is about to happen at the time of writing. So we’ll see.

I still message my friends when I can, and I’ll do a drink in the evening if the daytime doesn’t suit them. I let them know that’s my preference where I can because of my energy levels, thankfully my friends are pretty understanding.

As for public transport… well, that’s not in my control unfortunately; it depends on whether both myself and the transport services are keeping it together. All I can do is arm myself with the best possible knowledge I have of the various networks and systems there are. On my birthday this year, transport was so bad it threatened to upend everything. Thank goodness for my husband being there.

Whether or not I’ll be the same person down the line remains to be seen. I’ve never been someone who thinks ‘In five years’ time…’ anyway, now I have to keep it that way. Maybe I’ll find a job which suits my energy levels better. Perhaps my hobbies will be more indoor-based. By then, I could have done that UK tour, or given up gigging altogether.

Whatever happens, I need to be kinder to myself. I’m still undoing what almost thirty years of unknowingly masking two disabilities has done to me. That might end up being a never-ending task, in which case, self-kindness has never been more important.

There’s no shame in being neurodivergent.