Ascending with ADHD (Alexis)

In the beginning we didn’t know Mum was really sick. So, we didn’t think it was going to be a long-term thing, just a couple of weeks.

Alexis, 2021

I’m Alexis, I’m 20 and I’m a bar manager living in Brisbane. I have intense ADHD, so my hobbies change every day.

What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome in your life?

Having an absent Mum my whole life. It’s hard to talk about Mum because she was absent for so long, and when she was there, I built a ridiculous dependence on her. Separation anxiety, attachment disorder, that kind of stuff which came across as disorganized attachment disorder due to the long periods of time without her and the long periods of time with her. This developed into bad attachment disorders in my adulthood.

The greatest challenge, in this specific situation, would be, being a six-year-old with no Mum, a full-time working father and a younger brother to raise. My brother was three, and I had been struggling with an anxiety disorder, since infancy. It manifested itself in many different ways. Once Mum was sick and away, and we weren’t able to see her, that anxiety manifested even worse. It got to the point where it was just me and my brother.

I walked him to school every day, walked him home, made us breakfast. Our Nan came to help eventually, but she was very abusive. It wasn’t the safest place. She didn’t like me. She loved my brother but not me, so it was very much raising myself. Trying to work around a Nan who hates you and neglects you, doesn’t feed you and locks you in closets just for fun. Nan did the washing and all of the basic housework, like sorting through your room so when you come home everything is different. But she didn’t do anything emotionally. It was all reliant on me.

How did you initially react to this challenge?

Something kind of weird but also kind of funny. My brother always complained about not having an older brother or any friends. So, I ended up creating this persona that I would act out. His name was Tyler, after a close family member of ours who was very important. Growing up playing this male persona who was a lot older for my brother, because he wanted a boy to play with, was probably one of the weirdest coping strategies we had. Definitely, one that worked. Although it did introduce some very interesting parts of my personality later on in life.

Having a brother who had all of these needs and being very emotionally in touch, I was very aware of his emotions all the time. He was emotionally screaming for something, for someone, that I couldn’t give to him as myself, it was the easiest way for me to adapt to the situation. I would dress up in his clothes, put my hair up in a hat and play basketball with him. Alexis would go to dance practice (I don’t know how to dance at all), and Tyler would visit him for an hour once a week.

That was one of the things that my brother and I hold really dear. He didn’t know for years too. This played out for three years, the whole time my Mum was sick. It wasn’t until my Dad remarried and we had step-siblings introduced to the family did he find out that it was me. Which was funny but you can understand, for a traumatized soul, this beautiful baby boy, Tyler was his imaginary friend.

Did your reaction change toward the challenge?

In the beginning, we didn’t know Mum was really sick. So, we didn’t think it was going to be a long-term thing, just a couple of weeks. We thought we would just stay with Dad a little longer. We knew, in the beginning, it was going to be hard but then it just got harder. There was a time when we wouldn’t see Mum for months. In our child-brains sometimes it was as if she was not alive. We switched it on and off, remembering she was alive and then thinking she wasn’t—Mum’s alive, Mum is not alive. I didn’t feel like I got to do the ‘play childhood’ thing. I was Mum for my brother pretty much immediately. A six-year-old girl playing Mum for her brother.  

What did you ultimately learn? Good or bad?

I learnt to not rely on anyone else. It’s obviously caused issues most of my life but it’s one of the parts of myself that I do really like. It’s a struggle having to push through not trusting or relying on people. But I know that I always have myself, and I always will. When I do feel like I can open up and rely on someone, it’s really special. This experience pushed me to be strong enough to look after myself as well as other people. It taught me that I could “life”. If a six-year-old could raise a three-year-old and deal with daily abuse, 20-year-old me can go to work and deal with friends.

Do you often tell people about this challenge? Why or why not?

Not really. It doesn’t really come up. I haven’t even told my partner. It’s one of those things, that just is. I try not to think about it, because it’s painful, not something I want to bring up and think about.

Would you go through it again for the same outcome?

Absolutely not. But there were some good outcomes. One of them is this unbreakable, beautiful relationship I have with my brother. I don’t think I’ve met anyone in this world who have a relationship like we do. It’s not a mother/son relationship at all, we are like best friends.

Even now, me an adult, he a teenager, it’s still this unbreakable relationship. We have lived in different houses, lived different lives, but we always come back together every single time. He’s the person that comes to me when he has an issue, I go to him too. I wouldn’t want to change this special relationship. It was a hard time for us but there is nothing that we haven’t been through together.