Hello! Congrats on the dishwasher and good luck on your quest to become the “you” that you want to be! It’s funny how honesty is essentially a superpower. It doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want, but it’s the thing you can always fall back on and push forward with.

Hello friend!

The more we know about ourselves the stronger we are. If you better understand your difficulties and accept that they require work to accommodate instead of trying to suppress them you'll have a better life.

Knowing about how shitty my memory is has led me to adopt aides (like task lists structured for my brain) and ask friends for help in ways that aren't overly burdensome for them but are extremely empowering for me.

The understanding also really helped me with shame after losing my father - I just don't think of stuff like others do so my grief was minimal during his memorial service and instead pops up when I think of an activity I'd like to share with him.

We're built different (and, IMO, ADHD and ASD are way over broad so even among our community there's a lot of differences). Figure out what the diagnosis means to you and use that understanding to build a better and more stable life.

Oh, and to address one way too common theme... just because you might be excellent or an overachiever in some metrics doesn't deny you the right to ask for help.

When you need it, ask for help. Everyone needs help at some point.