Featured poem

I’m Aud

Thirty-six years

of not quite knowing

why the labels never fit,

but the feelings always did.

“She's so funny”.

“She's really quiet”.

Same girl,

different room.

Never feeling enough.

Sometimes feeling too much.

The volume's always wrong––

too loud, too low,

never just right.

Younger years spent

anxious in a crowd

of people I was trying

so hard to be.

Depressed and not quite sure

why nothing ever fit—

not the friendships,

not the jobs,

not even me.

Lost some friends along the way

because I couldn't keep in touch.

Not for lack of love—

just lack of knowing how.

A smaller circle now.

Turns out that's okay.

Quality over quantity—

took me long enough to say.

Hobbies hobbies hobbies—

the wool, the journals,

the guitar in the corner.

Full of beginnings.

Needing the routine

but breaking the rules too.

Early or late,

never just on time.

Deep in my own head.

If you could see me

without the mask—

a people pleaser

who's often not pleasing.

I see you before you've said a word. 

Observant, you see.

It’s one of the symptoms,

they say.

Still somehow say the wrong thing.

But then a song comes on.

It always comes on.

And something in me

exhales.

Music finding the part of me

words never could.

Carrying me through

every version of myself

I've ever been.

Some days I feel like I'm failing—

at work,

at being a mum—

my mind already three steps ahead

into something else entirely.

The guilt of the distracted love.

The love that's real

even when it wanders.

She's so funny.

She's really quiet.

She's a lot.

She's hard to reach.

Same girl.

Just finally

with a name for it.

And I grieved her,

that little girl who never knew.

I understand her now.

I wish she knew that she was okay.

Does the diagnosis change me?

Or does it just say—

hey, you were never broken,

just built a different way.

Some people will say

we're all a little like that.

And maybe that's true.

But there's a difference

between a headache

and living your whole life

with a migraine.

You wouldn't know

unless you knew.

Thirty-six years

of being a little weird

and wondering why.

I'm calling it.

I'm AuD(HD).

And I'm okay.