I signed up for a HIIT class because it was a requirement for those seeking a position as coach at this location. And who doesn’t love the opportunity to take another coaches class?!

The team was friendly, very welcoming. The schedule described “assault bikes and plyometrics,” and I thought, “Cool, I love a little light cardio and Greek mythology.” Turns out the assault bike is less Pegasus and more dragon—fire-breathing, wing-flapping, and absolutely committed to exposing my overconfidence in front of strangers.

Scene One: HIIT, Humility, and a Very Loud Fan

The room was cheerful in the way only a place full of rubber flooring and shared suffering can be. Our coach—who smiled with all the ethical menace of a dentist—set the clock for intervals: One Minute on, 10 seconds active rest, rotating.

The assault bike whooshed to life, its giant fan blade announcing my fitness level as loudly as a town crier with a megaphone.

Round one: I sprinted like a hero in the first five minutes of a movie.

Round two: I discovered that air has weight, and it was all sitting on my chest.

Round three: My soul tried to leave through my shoelaces.

Between bouts on the bike, we did plyometrics: box jumps, skater hops, and the dreaded burpees. The instructions were simple: “Explode!” Mine were more like “politely lift off and apologize to gravity.” At some point, my sweat formed an oddly specific puddle that looked like a poorly drawn map of South America. I took that as a sign the universe wanted me to hydrate.

Humility arrived somewhere around the fifteenth burpee, when I realized the woman next to me was landing silently—like a ninja on a library carpet—while I sounded like a sack of cutlery dropped from a low shelf. She gave me a small nod and a thumbs-up, and I learned that kindness in a HIIT class doesn’t require words. Sometimes it’s a nod, a shared grimace, or a passing of the disinfectant wipes like a beacon of mercy.

“Soft land, softer ego,” our coach said to all of us. And I felt my shoulders drop an inch, my breath steady, my effort become—dare I say—less dramatic and more honest. Focused. In a state of flow.

One beautiful realization about my life is that I am able to find this same feeling now at any time. I know what activities bring on this state for me, or rather that my brain has been able to focus in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to before.

Scene Two: Pearls, Patience, and the Softest Pressure

Later that afternoon, hands still buzzing from handlebars, I sat at my table with a small tray of pearls. Star-shaped, tiny rounds like moon drops, odd oblong ones that looked like commas taking a nap. They came in gentle colors: buttery yellow, champagne with a wink, off-white with a quiet glow, and a few bright oranges like tiny sunset fragments.

I had a fine drill, a steady light, and a determination that, earlier, had not served me well on the assault bike. I learned quickly: you don’t force a hole through a pearl. You find the path the pearl is willing to take. If you shove, it cracks. If you lean in with patience and pressure that’s more suggestion than command, it yields. The drill hummed like a distant hive. The nacre dust was barely there, a shimmering whisper.

A star-shaped pearl tried to make an escape, pinging across the table like a tiny meteor. I caught it with the reflexes of someone who, two hours earlier, had betrayed zero plyometric promise. I took a breath. Thread, needles, tiny knots—two forward, one back—little pauses to admire the glow. Some pearls were perfectly round, the kind that make jewelers sigh. Others were lopsided. A few were pockmarked, which (I decided) made them interesting. I arranged them in gradient: off-white to champagne to yellow to orange, the way a morning sky learns to be afternoon.

Somewhere between the third and fourth knot, I realized I was smiling. The necklace began to feel like a conversation between exactness and acceptance.

The Thread That Pulls Both Worlds Together

In the HIIT class, I learned that power isn’t theatrical; it’s rhythmic. The assault bike doesn’t want your tantrum; it wants your cadence. Plyometrics don’t want your drama; they want your hush—land quiet, absorb, go again. In the pearls, I learned that beauty doesn’t come from dominating the material; it comes from coaxing it. A cracked pearl is a lesson in force. A finished strand is a lesson in patience.

Humility is the shared backbone. The bike humbles your lungs; the pearls humble your hands. You can’t muscle your way into a peaceful heart rate, just like you can’t bully luster out of nacre. You meet both where they are: one breath, one stroke, one gentle turn of the drill.

Kindness, too, weaves through both. At the gym, it’s letting someone hop in on the bike, offering a supportive glance, sharing the chalk, not measuring your worth against a stranger’s rep count. At the table, it’s accepting a pearl’s odd shape, placing it proudly between two perfect rounds, recognizing that the strand is more beautiful for the variation. I think of the class as a necklace of people—star-shaped personalities, round and steady souls, oblong oddballs who keep it interesting—strung together by the thin, strong thread of shared effort.

What the Necklace Taught the Bike (And Me)

When I finally tied the last knot and tested the drape, the necklace settled against my collarbone with a quiet confidence.

An hour later, back at the gym for a cool-down walk because I am, apparently, a new person now, I felt the same steadying ease in my stride. It wasn’t about being the fastest cyclist or the fanciest jeweler. It was about attention, care, and the willingness to show up—to feel a little foolish while you learn.

Here’s the life lesson that wrapped itself around both the handlebars and the silk thread:

Strength isn’t how hard you push—it’s how well you listen.

Form matters more than frenzy.

Consistency beats intensity when the goal is a life you actually like.

And the best kind of shine comes from gentleness applied over time.

Or, if you prefer it on a tiny charm: Be the thread, not the hammer. 🧵

So if you see me on an assault bike, legs churning and ego in a comfy seat somewhere behind me, know that I’m thinking about pearls—how they ask to be handled with care, how they reward patience with glow. And if you spot me stringing a necklace, know that somewhere in the rhythm of breath and knots is the same kindness we offer each other on the gym floor: a nod, a smile, and the quiet faith that we’re all just trying to land a little softer. ✨

1 year in 3 Days

From Projection to Protection: My ADHD + Autism Diagnosis, One Year After Heartbreak

Content note: relationships, invalidation, gaslighting, meltdown, self-worth, neurodivergence. This is written from personal experience, this is not medical advice.

I didn’t just “get diagnosed.” I reclaimed myself.

A year ago, I thought I’d found a mirror—someone who would understand my sensitivities, my intensity, my patterns. Instead, I learned how easily projection can masquerade as intimacy, how my low self-esteem and lack of boundaries confused chaos for chemistry, and how cruelty can hide inside “care” when you’re starved for acceptance.

This is the story of being ADHD and Autistic, of being kept a secret and called “too much,” of being compared to someone I’m not—and then, finally, of seeing myself clearly. After trauma treatment and proper evaluation, my understanding of my brain shifted: what I’d blamed on character flaws was actually neurodivergence layered with survival strategies. Naming it didn’t fix everything, but it gave me language, tools, and permission to stop apologizing for existing.

The Relationship That Clarified Everything

I wanted to believe love meant safety. What I got was secrecy, tests, and whiplash.

Last Oct, I had met a man I admittingly put on a pedestal. I really was amazed by who I thought this man was. Intelligent, charming, and very much like myself. Neurodivergent, deeply wounded from his past, and dedicated to healing with a partner. I deep down felt that he was it. I still believed in “The ONE” at this point in my life. I believed in connection. I believed in fate. I believed that even the WAY we met was exactly the way I wanted to meet my person.

But I was struggling with grief, which I was transparent about. A Depression that started shortly after we started dating after being hit with a contest that fell apart due to coaching issues and losing my medical shortly after, to which they replied “it’s going to be alright. You’ll figure it out”. I felt so invisible in that bed with him as I was losing the ability to be seen by my drs steadily.

I thought I had met a person I could be vulnerable with and discuss deeper parts of my life that didn’t include them, But when those darker parts were judged, and made about them anyways, it triggered my biggest trigger….. not being believed when I was being honest and forthcoming, vulnerable with information I was ashamed about. My depression….. my thoughts that I would be better off unalived so to speak. It’s hard to explain when you don’t want to die but you don’t want to feel that way anymore, which after being diagnosed with Autism, discovered that this is actually a very COMMON experience with people that have Autism. Suicide is the leading risk of death. When discussing this with my partner at the time, the cruelty came out in always and never statements. “Well, I’ve never felt this way.” Well, Im happy you’ve never experienced depression to that magnitude before but I’m also sorry you haven’t experienced empathy for someone else’s experience either because the words “if you feel this way because of me, I would have to leave” should have spoken the volume of their self importance over actual concern of a human. Asking a person to stay and talk should never feel like begging, and when you notice it does and they spin the narrative to play more of a helping role than they ever did help during that time, that should have been a tell tale sign that gaslighting was going to be more prevalent. The labels they desperately didn’t want at the beginning became the titles and traits clasped to at the very end.

I was kept a secret from his parents, which was part of the mask worn at the beginning. The “I’m a private person but don’t believe in secrets” mask.

Friends that knew about the divorce were all of a sudden “just being told about it”, friends who encouraged him to join radiate “a few months ago” but he had been a member for a year already…..

I don’t know why I never called out of questioned these bends in truth. I think it’s because I wanted to believe him. Even when I started to dissociate for self protection. My friend time I brought this up, it was to be open with him about something I was struggling to remember. Not a wrong doing on his part but I was really upset because I was struggling to remember something important to me and when I brought up this fact, I was met with defense and a threat to breakup instead. And the only way we were able to continue was if I agreed to disagree about the setting of events, which never sat right with me. And was my first hurt within our situation ship. What started out as asking someone I trusted to tell me the truth by their memory turned into them feeling attacked and me feeling like I was making a mistake by admitting an issue I was struggling with.

I cried in front of him while he stared at his phone. Once, he answered a call from his mom during my tears and said, “I hope she didn’t hear that!” like my pain was a background noise he needed to hide.

The first I love you I said to him was meant to be that of sincere joy over meeting someone you respect. Someone who you feel gets you as a person. But instead, I got panic and disgust. And a message that that feeling was happening too fast. It was so hurtful to talk about how it’s our duty to be love and when I expressed such a feeling, I was shamed for my feelings.

He invited me over—and then his wife showed up while he was no where to be found at his house. A meeting that felt like an absolute setup. He was still doing marriage counseling with her while starting a relationship with me I had found out months into us dating.

When he was sad, the conversation turned into what he wanted to eat, what he wanted to do to feel better. My feelings were often props; his were the plot. We were never allowed to be equals, as I felt we were.

He “tested” me with little questions: “How do you feel about affirmations? Tarot?” If I said I liked them, he’d dismiss or mock them—then later buy something related as if he’d liked it all along. It kept me off-balance. Make fun of me for pulling tarot cards for guidance in life but then buy a pillow the shape of his Astro sign.

When I asked reasonable questions, I got accused of wrongdoing. Hypocrisy sat in the center of everything. This wasn’t just his doing but my fault as well.

I was called by his wife’s name and compared to her repeatedly. For someone who hated labels, He tried to tell me I had a condition I didn’t have—CPTSD. I don’t have CPTSD, and being compared told me he wasn’t seeing me at all.

When I had a meltdown and opened up about my feelings, I was told I was a burden. Too much.

I gave the benefit of the doubt until there was nothing left of my doubt to give.

I had wanted to remain friends at the end—I really did. I had truly believed that the ending of our relationship hadn’t been so bad that we lost all respect created during our months together But when he said we never even got the chance to be friends, he was right in a way he didn’t intend: he truly had never been my friend.

• I stood by him when he feared losing his job.
• I stood by him when he worried about deportation during his “divorce”.
• I stood by him even though I had admitted I was scared putting my health at risk, And I paid for that abuse.
• I even stood by him when he floated the idea of not wanting a monogamous relationship.

That last part became a pattern: The pattern where the feeling of safety eventually vanished. every time I named a boundary or confronted disrespect….. he sounded like he heard me until the next day after I raised an issue, his mood shifted and all of a sudden, it was MY turn to be the bad guy. Any problems discussed now all of a sudden felt swept under the rug and it became all of my fault. Something I said bothered him and the apology was undone, taken aback, like it never happened in the first place. He tossed out non-monogamy, then pivoted to breaking up. Suddenly, other people looked better. It wasn’t about partnership; it was about having his cake and eating it too.

And let’s be real: why else would someone only buy sex furniture as “gifts”? Why would someone go out of their way to talk about the gifts they WANTED to get me “I thought about getting you a Costco membership for Christmas” and give nothing instead. Go on a sky trip, give others gifts and hand me a keychain and say “I got this for you” as an after thought. It’s not a gift for your partner if you’re stockpiling it for others. The timing of the final breakup—right before a big trip—said everything about priorities. The people who warned me were right. It was on him. He never had the desire to make it work.

What I mistook for complexity was inconsistency. What I tolerated as “miscommunication” was erasure. I normalized the ache because my nervous system was trained to survive on crumbs.

Diagnosis, Boundaries, and Coming Home to Myself

Getting evaluated didn’t rewrite my past, but it reframed it:

• My meltdowns weren’t moral failures; they were nervous system overloads.
• My hyperfocus wasn’t obsession; it was how I love and learn.
• My difficulty with “let it go” wasn’t stubbornness; it was justice-seeking wired into me.

Treating trauma and understanding my ADHD and Autism didn’t make me smaller; it made me steadier. I stopped begging to be believed. I started believing myself.

Every brain is unique, but gendered expectations shape how traits are noticed and labeled. Here’s what resonated with me and many women:

Masking and camouflaging:

Women and AFAB folks are often socialized to perform “okay.” We script, observe, mimic, and people-please to survive. It hides autism traits until burnout or crisis.

Many of us become “the capable one,” which conceals executive dysfunction.

Special interests and routines:

Interests may look socially acceptable (beauty, wellness, animals, books), so they’re not flagged as “intense,” even when they’re just as deep and regulating.

Routines can be framed as “healthy habits,” when they’re actually essential scaffolding.

ADHD expression:

Hyperactivity often turns inward: racing thoughts, restlessness, anxiety, overtalking in safe spaces—but perfectionism and quietness in public.

Inattentive features (distractibility, time blindness, forgetfulness) may get labeled “flaky” or “emotional,” rather than ADHD.

Social dynamics:

Many of us become emotional managers—tracking tone, smoothing conflict, absorbing pressure. That “skill” can hide autistic processing differences and exhaust us.

Sensory sensitivities (clothes, lights, sound, smells) are dismissed as “picky” or “dramatic,” not neurological.

Misdiagnoses and missed diagnoses:

Depression, anxiety, or CPTSD may be diagnosed first. Treating trauma can reveal what’s left—often ADHD and autism that were always there beneath the alarm bells.

These aren’t rules; they’re patterns. If this resonates, it’s okay to seek evaluation—or simply more self-knowledge

What I’m Taking With Me

• If someone can’t be your friend, they can’t be your partner.
• “Options” isn’t the same as “freedom”—not when your needs are treated like inconveniences.
• Gifts meant for a fantasy aren’t gifts for a person.
• Boundaries are love for the self that keeps showing up, even when others don’t.

One year later: what changed when the labels were right

After trauma work and proper evaluation:

My ADHD shifted from severe combined type to inattentive ADHD. The hyperactive storm eased as the trauma quieted; what remained was attention, initiation, and working memory—now manageable with supports.

I’m learning to work with autism, not against it. I build sensory-friendly environments, use scripts for hard conversations, and honor my need for predictability.

I separate signal from noise:

Autistic needs: sensory breaks, clear plans, fewer transitions, generous buffer time.

ADHD needs: externalize everything (lists, timers, visual cues), body-doubling, single-tasking in short sprints, novelty in safe doses.

I live by boundaries:

No secrecy. No double lives. No “tests.”

If you mock what I love, you don’t get a second audition.

If I leave a conversation feeling smaller every time, I leave for good.

What I Wished I Had known Sooner

Consistency is love’s native language. If actions and words don’t match, believe the actions.

Questions aren’t accusations. If someone treats your curiosity as an attack, they’re protecting a story, not a truth.

Masks crack under pressure. If someone only “likes” your interests when they control them, that’s manipulation, not compatibility.

“Too much” usually means “too much for them.” I am not universally excessive; I was specifically under-cherished.

Diagnosis is not a destiny—it’s a map. Trauma treatment didn’t erase me; it revealed me. ADHD and autism didn’t break me; misunderstanding did. And it hurt more from someone who also claimed to be neurodivergent themselves. Even more so I think.

I had wanted to keep a friendship, but a friendship requires care, consistency, and respect. He was right: we never had the chance to be friends—because he never chose to be one. And somewhere along this journey, I knew I couldn’t choose what didnt and doesnt choose me back.

I didn’t just “get diagnosed.” I came home to my brain, my body, and my boundaries. That’s the real ending—and the beginning.

The last word is this: I am ADHD and Autistic. I am not a secret. I am not an experiment. I am not a rebound. I am not a burden.

After a year of telling the truth—to professionals, to friends, to myself—my life is different. My ADHD is inattentive and manageable. Without medication. My autism is a way of being I can honor, whether I’m disliked for being me or not. My boundaries are firm, my voice is steady, and the person I love most in this world is the one I always needed: myself. 💛

If you’re in the thick of it, here’s the gentlest reminder I can offer: you are not “too much.” You were asking too little from people who gave you less.

“Five Songs From the Front”

Back row, where the bass first finds my ribs,
I inhale deep, a breath of neon anticipation.

In my palm, a comet on a leash—
lighted flowwhip, river of photons,
I let it orbit my shoulders,
a soft galaxy sluicing down my arms.

My flowwhip is a river of sparks,
cursive light uncoiling from my wrist—
and my bodysuit blooms like a second dawn,
color on color, skin of kaleidoscopes.

With Eyes closed, I map the room by intuition.

I Feel the snares like a zipper of stars,
bass notes dissolving old winters past chills in my bones.

The kick drum knits my scattered edges;
my cartilage learns the word yes.

The crowd is a breathing organism,
hundreds of hearts sharing one battery.
I slip between bodies like silk through ringed fingers,
flowwhip sketching halos—
cerulean, magenta, ultraviolet vows.
Someone laughs, someone howls,
and I grin in the dark because I can hear colors here, taste the tremble of a sub in the back of my throat.

Then the floor tilts— Energy shifts:
a mosh pit opens like a weather system.
We are storm and shelter both,
bumping, ricocheting, rebounding into joy. Release.
I am lifted by strangers who know my name only as rhythm,
we spring, we shed gravity in loops,
jumping all feral and free,
our platforms scuffing fire from the night’s moves.

Still eyes closed, I thread the living labyrinth,
light whipping rainbows in soft parabolas,
breath syncing to four-on-the-floor prayers.
Past hurts loosen like knots in wet rope,
they slip away with the drop—
and the drop, god, it widens me;
I become hallway and hurricane,
a body that remembers to open.

From the back to the lip of the stage,
I arrive by pulse and trust and phosphor.
Subwoofers purr against my sternum—
now I’m face to face with the architect of the quake,
my favorite alchemist of wobble and warp.
I keep my eyes closed to see better.

A year ago I was a shattered mirror—
every piece reflecting a different goodbye.
Tonight the beat gathers the shards and sets them singing,
soldered by sweat and breath,
I learn my worth one measure at a time.

Five songs left—
one for the hurt I once carried inside of me,
one for the hands that steadied me, and carried me
one for the voice inside that learned to sing when others wanted to silence her volume.
one for the child made of lightning, of loyalty, and for love, even if that love was returned to sender.
And lastly, one for the future I dance into.

The crowd is an ocean, the ocean is a mirror,
the mirror is a window, and through it I see:
the person I kept searching for in every drop,
every chorus, every outstretched hand—
was waiting under my own ribs.

I require nothing else when I am this whole—
not a promise, not a perfect ending,
just the honest voltage of becoming.
I accept myself, and the strangers glowing around me, each of us allowed to be exactly what we are.

The flowwhip writes our names on the stale smoke clinging in the venues last breathe of the night.
We jump until the gravity forgets us,
until every beat has flushed the dust from my lungs,
until the last chord lands like soft rain on hot stone.

Five songs from the front, I meet my favorite artist.
Five songs from the front, I meet my favorite self.
In a year, the world changed shape around me,
and the one I love the most—the one I always needed—

When the lights come up, I open my eyes,
and I am newly spelled—
color alive, body fluent,
the night still glowing where it touched me.

# Patching Together A Neurospicy Brain

Today my brain is a crowded group chat—  

a librarian shushing a marching band,  

a raccoon with glitter in its pockets  

high-fiving a spreadsheet that wants a hug. 

Autistic me builds cathedrals of pattern,  

file folders lined up like stars on duty.  

ADHD me arrives on a skateboard,  

throws confetti at the moon, and leaves behind the skateboard in all of the commotion. 

Together we’re a duet: hummingbird and grandfather clock—  

one blurring the edges, one tracing the lines.

People used to read me like a map with oceans missing,  tapping the “normal” button like it needed batteries.  

I handed out user manuals with the middle pages shuffled,  

sticky notes saying “some assembly required, bring snacks.”  

They’d squint at the legend; I’d point to the view.

Inside, it’s a tug-of-war on roller skates:  

hyperfocus latches on like a friendly octopus,  

while curiosity cartwheels through every doorway.  

One side loves the satisfying click of a perfect routine;  

the other keeps a suitcase of fireworks labeled “later.”

Sometimes the volume knob of the sun gets stuck on fourteen,  so I hire tiny bouncers to guard the velvet rope of my ears.  

Stimming is jazz hands for my nervous system—  

a drum solo that tells the storm, “I’ve got this.”

One side loves the satisfying click of a perfect routine;  the other keeps adding jazz solos to the to-do list.  

We don’t fight so much now—we jam.

I tried to camouflage in beige,  

but I’m really highlighter yellow with opinions,  

pinging like unsolicited software updates.  

Now I recycle other people’s expectations into paper cranes  

and let them fly off the edge of my comfort zone.

My calendar is a collage; my to-do list doodles back.

Dopamine is a fickle landlord;  

I pay rent in enthusiasm and weird facts.  

I don’t need translation, just room—  

a desk for my patterns, a trampoline for my sparks.

I am the push and the pull:  

a swing set under a meteor shower,  

the checklist’s crisp checkmark and  

the derailed thought train honking happily past geese and wildflowers.  

Authentic looks like this: glimmers of joy, pockets of texture,  no apology for the volume of my wonder.

Yes, I miss exits sometimes and invent shortcuts that are just longcuts,  

but I also find picnic spots no map remembers.  

Yes, I script my comfort and freestyle my joy,  

use timers to schedule an uncertain life and stim like wind chimes.  

Call it contradiction; I call it choreography.

On the horizon, a grandfather clock taps time kindly.  

The hummingbird winks and sips the minute.  

I laugh, I flap, I click into place.  

Misunderstood? Maybe. 

Unbothered? Absolutely.  

I plant a flag on my brain’s own island—  

peculiar weather, perfect forecast: 100% chance of me, with confetti.