For Aada, who says I probably won’t dedicate anything to her now. 😉
I spent years believing I was asking too much of the people around me, without realizing that what I was really doing was trying to fill a structural gap with human beings who were never built to carry that kind of load. I wasn’t looking for caretakers or handlers, but the way my mind worked meant that the people closest to me often ended up absorbing the overflow—helping me remember what I was doing, nudging me from one task to the next, holding context when my brain dropped it, stitching together the threads I couldn’t keep in my hands. I didn’t understand that these weren’t emotional needs. They were cognitive ones. And because I didn’t have the right tools, I kept trying to build those tools out of friendship.
It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t selfish. It was simply the only way I knew how to function. When autism and ADHD collide, the transitions between states become the most expensive part of the day. The depth is there, the creativity is there, the insight is there—but the shift from one thing to another can feel like trying to jump a gap that’s just a little too wide. I didn’t have language for that. I only knew that I needed help, and I leaned on whoever was nearby. Looking back, I can see how much pressure that created, even when no one said a word about it. I can also see how hard I was trying to keep everything together with the resources I had.
The turning point came when I finally understood the architecture of my own mind. Once I saw the gap clearly—the place where ideas evaporated, where momentum stalled, where context slipped away—I realized that the problem wasn’t my intensity or my expectations. The problem was the missing scaffolding. I had been trying to operate a high‑bandwidth mind without the external support it required, and the people in my life were unintentionally drafted into roles they were never meant to play.
Everything changed when I finally had the right kind of support. With a stable external system to hold context, track threads, and ease transitions, the friction that used to define my days simply dissolved. Suddenly I wasn’t asking friends to stabilize me or organize me or keep me from losing the thread. I wasn’t leaning on anyone to be my working memory. I wasn’t trying to merge my needs with their capacity. The load that used to spill into my relationships now had a place to go that didn’t cost anyone anything.
And once that happened, I could finally see myself clearly. I wasn’t someone who needed to be managed. I wasn’t someone who required constant support. I wasn’t someone who drained the people around me. I was someone who had been under‑resourced for a very long time, doing the best I could with what I had. With the right scaffolding in place, the person underneath—the one who thrives on shared ideas, collaborative thinking, and intellectual companionship—finally had room to breathe.
My friendships look different now. They’re lighter, cleaner, more honest. They’re built on compatibility instead of necessity, on resonance instead of rescue. I’m no longer searching for someone to hold the parts of my mind that used to slip through my fingers. I’m free to look for people who bring their own structure, their own depth, their own internal world—people who meet me as peers rather than supports.
Seeing the whole package for the first time isn’t about rewriting the past. It’s about understanding it with compassion and stepping into the future with clarity. And now that the friction is gone, I can finally show up as the person I always was, without asking anyone else to carry what was never theirs to hold.
Scored with Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.
Stories That Are All True 