One day at work, I overheard two coworkers talking about ADHD.

They weren’t going through a list of symptoms. They were talking about growing up, the things they’d struggled with, and how differently they understood those years now.

I wasn’t part of the conversation. But I remember standing there thinking, Wait. That sounds like me.

For a long time, I assumed some of those experiences were mine alone. The emotional outbursts. The constant second-guessing. The feeling that everyone else had somehow been given instructions for life and I’d missed the day they handed them out.

I’d heard people explain ADHD before. This felt different. They were talking about their lives, and I recognized parts of mine.

I wasn’t relieved that they’d struggled. I wouldn’t wish those years of confusion on anybody. I was relieved because, for once, I didn’t have to work so hard to explain what I meant. They were already describing it.

That conversation stayed with me.

It’s also part of why I started ADHDefined. Writing about ADHD still makes me a little uncomfortable sometimes. I worry people will think I’m claiming to know everything about it.

I don’t.

I know what I’ve lived. I know what I’m still trying to figure out. When I write about something beyond my own experience, I want to check the evidence and be honest about what I find.

But I also remember what it was like to hear two people talking and realize I wasn’t the only one who had felt that way.

I can’t promise every reader will see themselves in my story. ADHD doesn’t look the same in every life. If one part sounds familiar, though, maybe it gives you a way to describe something you haven’t quite had words for yet.

That’s what that conversation gave me.