Living in a World Built for Neurotypicals

I used to think everyone else got a handbook for life and mine got lost in the mail.

They  (neurotypical minds) wake up, they show up, they pay bills, they answer emails before the red dots pile up. They can cook dinner without burning the pan because they forgot they even turned the stove on. They can keep a clean house, hold down a job, love someone without extreme dysfunctional traits.

Me? I was chaos. Always.
My brain was either driving 500 km/h with no brakes or lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, unable to move. A soul paralysis.

No middle. No balance. Just go or crash. 

The Mask I Perfected

I became good at performing. All things considered, I even studied at a Performing Arts College in Singapore right after finishing highschool, musical theater, acting, dance, performance. Never knew how much that diploma would help me in navigating through my maze of endless inner unrest.

I laughed about being “scatterbrained.” I hid my shame behind big ideas, big laughs, big nights out. If you knew me then, you might’ve thought I was confident, wild, fun.

But behind the act? I was crumbling.

I was the girl crying in the bathroom after holding it together in front of everyone else.
The woman ghosting friends because the shame of forgotten birthdays and unanswered texts was too heavy.
The one with the unopened mail piled so high that I’d just shove it into drawers and pray nothing was urgent. But they were.

The Spiral

When Satrina, my little vegan cafe and catering,  my dream, collapsed in 2020, it wasn’t just the business that died due to the pandemic, It felt like I died with it. And to be perfectly honest, I had another kind of virus, one that I had been carrying for as long as I can remember, the one that kept my soul restless and my brain on fire 24/7.

I had been ending another violent, toxic relationship at the same time. The kind that leaves bruises you can’t show and scars that never quite heal. The kind where you start doubting your own worth, your own instincts, your own sanity.

And when it was finally over, I didn’t feel free. I felt hollow.

So I did what I always did when the silence got too loud: I went looking for chaos.

Nights out, every night.
Bars, strangers, one-night stands with men whose names I can't remember.
Picking fights, sometimes with others, mostly with myself.
Drinking until I could finally sleep. Or just drinking up the whole world in one gulp.

It wasn’t about fun. It wasn’t even about wanting. It was about not feeling. Or maybe about feeling something, anything, that wasn’t emptiness.

By day, I hid. Closed the blinds. Ignored the calls. Watched my bank account drain to nothing. By night, I came alive, or at least I pretended to. Because without alcohol, the world was unbearable: too bright, too loud, too smelly, too much.

Every voice felt like it was shouting directly into my skull, every flickering light like a blade to my eyes, every whiff of human bodies or crowded spaces  another punch to my senses. But with a drink in my hand, it all softened.

The noise dulled, the sharp edges blurred, and for quite a few hours I could pass as someone who was having fun, someone who naturally enjoyed being around people and their small talk and emotional neediness.

Alcohol didn’t just take the edge off,  it dimmed the whole world down to a volume I could survive and pretend. Until I couldn't.

The Breaking Point (the very last one)

But depression is a nasty bitch. It’s not just sadness — it’s like falling down a rabbit hole that has no bottom. One minute you’re standing on the edge, thinking maybe you can claw your way out, and the next you’re tumbling, swallowed by a darkness you can’t argue with.

It strips the color from everything: food tastes like cardboard, music sounds flat, sunlight feels like an insult. Even brushing your teeth feels like preparing for battle. And when you’ve got ADHD on top of it, it’s a double prison. Your brain is still racing, firing off ideas, screaming at you to move — but your body won’t. You’re wired and paralyzed at the same time. It’s torture. It’s driving 500 km/h straight into a brick wall, over and over, and then hating yourself for not being able to climb out of the wreckage.

There was one day that arrived,  blurry like all the others, when I came home drunk, alone, and just sat on the floor. My face in my hands, whispering, begging. Literally.Not to anyone in particular, but to my spirit guides. To the universe. To something bigger than me: “Please. I can’t keep living like this. Help me. Show me something. I don’t know how to keep going.”

I wanted lightning. A miracle. Some kind of neon sign flashing this way out.

Instead, what came was quieter. A slow, painful realization that maybe — just maybe — I wasn’t broken. Maybe my brain wasn’t the enemy. Neither was my soul.

Maybe I had been trying to live in a world built for someone else’s wiring.
And maybe it was killing me. Or maybe I had just  not understood my own personal journey...yet. 

Why I’m Here

I wish I could say I fixed everything overnight. I didn’t. Sobriety didn’t show up like some gift‑wrapped miracle on my doorstep. ADHD didn’t suddenly become manageable, or polite, or quiet.

What did happen is this: four years of complete sobriety cracked me wide open. My inner channels, the parts of me I used to drown in alcohol, became sharper, louder, almost painfully alive. Now I feel everything. The blinding sting of fluorescent lights, the suffocating mix of human bodies and smells, the endless chatter that feels like a swarm of bees drilling into my skull. It’s overwhelming, relentless, and yes, bloody uncomfortable.

But here’s the difference: I’ve learned to live with it. I’ve learned to sit inside the discomfort instead of running from it. My boundaries now hum like electric fences wired at ten thousand volts. I don’t apologize for them. I don’t explain them away. I refuse to step back into places where chaos, addiction, or crowds eat people alive. Sobriety didn’t give me a prettier life. It gave me a real one. And in that reality, I’ve finally chosen myself.

But something shifted that night. I stopped trying to pass for “normal.” I started listening to myself, to the chaos and the brilliance and the crash cycles. And meeting Danny changed everything for me. For both of us, as he too was on a very similar journey when it came to self medicating pain and the world away. I will come to our love story at another time, in another blog. But for now, know that I, we,  choose to  successfully maintain our sobriety and manage our ADHD on an everyday basis. And the day begins with words of gratitude.

This blog, our business Neurodazzled, is our  attempt to tell the truth. Not the polished version. Not the sugarcoated “10 ways to thrive with ADHD.” Just the raw, human story of what it’s like to live in a world that doesn’t make space for us.

Because if you’ve ever woken up not remembering who you went home with, or stared at bills you can’t pay, or laughed the loudest while secretly drowning — I want you to know something:

You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
And maybe, like me, you’ll find that the fire in your brain isn’t a curse. It’s a different kind of wiring. One that deserves space. And one that deserves to find happiness.From deep within.

This isn’t the end of the story. It’s just where we start telling it out loud.

Neurodazzled blessings,

Natalie