Mad as a box of frogs? Late diagnosis of ADHD.

I am just a couple of weeks away from being 55 years young. And only now do I have a brief idea of who I am. Isn't that sad? Over half a century has passed, I've had three divorces, God knows how many businesses and business ideas, a whole lot of confusion and pain and upset.... and now? Now I am just finding out who I am. Well, that just seems a little mad to me, perhaps as mad as a box of frogs.

Buckle up and I will explain. 

In December 2019 I moved to the seaside, to the South West (UK) Devon, the English Riviera to be exact. 2019 had been a rough year. Seven years in the pub trade, long hours, and I mean LONG hours. But no matter how hard I worked the business hit one disaster after another. I had got together with the absolute love of my life in 2011 and after a few twists and turns, we found ourselves managing pubs and eventually getting not one but TWO pubs of our own. A Cotswold country pub and a Gin Bar in a nearby town. We battled with crisis after crisis. My Mother was taken ill in 2017. One of the strongest women I know. Career-led, she was a woman who ran businesses for other people. Extremely well. But ended up crippled in bed after a spinal infection, unable to walk, and now 7 years on, bed-bound with no chance of improvement. My soul mate was taken ill in 2019. He helped with running the pubs but after a minor stroke and some pretty bizarre surgery, I decided enough was enough and we needed a better quality of life. So we moved to the seaside.

We had no money. A ton of debt and it was down to me to get a job, with somewhere to live. I took a job running a holiday park complex and I ran two bars, a kitchen and restaurant,  two swimming pools and a shop. I was working eighty-plus hours a week but with no financial worries, well not really. Certainly none of the financial strains of self-employment. Then Covid struck. I found myself on furlough, stuck at home, in a beautiful part of the country, and I think, like many others, I had a long hard look at my life realising things needed to change.  I didn't want to work stupidly long hours or serve ungrateful and drunk idiots. I had served people for many years but inevitably found myself growing weary of the need to serve, and I felt it was time for a change. I wanted, no, I needed, to get a job where my true skills were recognised and where I could get some real job satisfaction. We survived Covid in 2020 and I continued at the holiday park until mid-2021. My husband and I were offered the chance to run a 16th-century hotel which we accepted. Fortunately, it fell through at the last minute leaving us both jobless and homeless. The angels looked after us and two days before we left the holiday park we happened across somewhere to live and I managed to market myself into a job at a local tourist attraction. Working part-time hours with little to no stress. Giving my brain the chance to slow down and start making plans. 

During Covid, I slid into the Menopause. Initially, I just had night sweats and some pretty vicious migraines, but I also noticed the chatter in my head was getting worse. Drowning out my standard thought patterns. I became .... complicated, I don't know how else to explain it. I wanted things a certain way, my food, my clothes, my routines. I was less tolerant about, well, pretty much everything. But the chatter in my head was ridiculous. When I could sleep the thoughts would be running around in my head until I drifted off in the early hours, only to wake up to the same thoughts the following morning. It was exhausting.

After working at the tourist attraction I found a new vocation, a job helping people to get back into work. There was a lot to learn. I did not anticipate any major problems as I had always learned things quickly. Growing up my Father would play two games of chess at the same time, one with me and one with Mom, and Mom was very clever. She had a photographic memory and worked day and night, always handling business affairs with great ease, so I had good genes. I had set up several businesses previously and felt this new role of helping people back to work would be relatively easy. Oh how wrong I was!

I was signed up for an Apprenticeship in Employability and confidently stated to my tutor I would aim for a distinction. I was about a month or two into the course. Working and studying was harder than I expected. We were overworked, handling caseloads that were far greater than we were contracted to manage, and we had to handle multiple projects at the same time. My Apprenticeship Tutor approached me and asked me to undertake a Cognassist assessment.  No problem, I didn't think it would hurt to find out my learning styles. The results came back highlighting my Executive Function Skills as a problem. Verbal skills, communication, and problem-solving were all off the chart, way above normal, but the Executive Functioning hovered fairly low, quite a bit below normal. This was stupid! I had run multiple businesses previously, coordinating huge projects overseas and within the UK. I sourced high-performing executives for roles around the country. I was a chef, host, cellar person, trainer, bookkeeper, waitress, bouncer, events manager.... you name it I had done it. This just did not make sense to me. I admitted that the menopause had affected me. I was not able to process the information the same but I wasn't sleeping so this was bound to have an effect. My tutor wanted to discuss the results with me so we arranged a meeting.

I was asked what I thought about the results. I immediately laughed and said they were not accurate. I reeled off my past skills and achievements.  I was asked if all my past projects had been put to one side once I got bored with them. Hmmm? Well, maybe. Then I was asked how I got on at school. I had passed the 11+ but seemed to struggle. I could never motivate myself to do homework, daydreamed in class, got into trouble for highlighting mistakes that teachers had made, and got myself expelled. I did OK with exams, although I wasn't sure how, as I hardly ever revised for them. My tutor went on to ask about my personal life. I had married swiftly, three times, and got divorced just as quickly, I fell in and out of love at the drop of a hat. I was in love each time but I wore rose-tinted glasses, initially ignoring the faults of my new husbands, I was there to help them and heal them, I was a stray dog kind of girl. I joked that I loved planning the weddings but literally four years into each of the marriages things would become difficult and the rose-tinted glasses would fall off. I was very unforgiving, ending marriages swiftly, and ripping off those plasters quickly to save any unnecessary pain to either party. I was a wild card in between relationships, frightened of nothing. I put myself in danger so many times. When I partied I would party hard, thinking nothing of drinking a whole bottle of Jack Daniels in one sitting.

My tutor just kept nodding her head. Then she came out with it; she was pretty certain I could have ADHD. I laughed. She didn't. I sat there, for a while. Letting it sink in. My hubby has ADHD and everybody knows it. But me? No? Surely not? My tutor agreed to send me some website links for resources and we booked another appointment to discuss it again. I don't know if I was in shock, disbelief or what. Hubby collected me from work and when I got in the car I blurted out everything at a million miles an hour, explaining what had been said to me, saying how ridiculous the whole idea was. Hubby looked puzzled. 

"What? Didn't you know you were?" he said.

"Erm, I'm sorry, what?" I replied, "Of course I'm not". 

"Oh you so are", he confidently said, "you so are."

I sat looking out of the car window. Dumbfounded by his words. Within half an hour of getting home, I was scouring the Internet, going into what I now know as hyperfocus. Five hours later I had reviewed the majority of my past life, and everything started to make sense. This was a tough reality for me, let me tell you. I went through what I believe to be the standard stages of grief. I went through denial. No, it can't be true. I went through anger. Ranting at all the difficulties I had growing up, why had no one realised and got me help? Then loss. The realisation that I had lost out on a lot of things because of this ADHD! I cried. I ranted. And I cried some more.

My mind went back a few years, to a lad who I was quite fond of at the time. I tried every charm in the book to get him to ask me out on a date but he said to me, "Vikki, I can't date you, I just can't. You're as mad as a box of frogs". This upset me greatly. I knew I was a bit wild but didn't think I warranted that phrase. I never really understood that statement, until now, so here I am. Mad as a box of frogs. But happier.  Of course, I have good and bad days but I have a better understanding of myself, and my past, and two years on I am supporting and coaching Autistic and ADHD individuals to get them into work. My life is busy, and a little chaotic. Some could say a little mad. But I am happy. I find, and accept, a little bit more every day. These revelations I hope to share with you all in this blog. Be patient with me, the blog posts may be long-winded, and chaotic. A little scattered in format. But I will be an open book and I sincerely hope you enjoy the read.