Where Do I Fit? Functioning, Mothering, and Not Abandoning

Content note: mental health, possible neurodivergence, family abuse, and intergenerational trauma. This is a personal essay, not a diagnosis or medical advice.

I have been thinking about how I function. Or maybe, more honestly, how I don’t.

I do not know exactly where I fit. I do not know if I fall under the autism spectrum, and if I do, what that actually means for me. I know I have traits. I have difficulty with communication. I have anxiety. I am prone to depression. I have OCD symptoms. I also have ADHD, and sometimes I wonder whether one thing is causing another thing, or whether everything is sitting in one messy group chat inside my brain.

When I have tried to say even half of this to parent figures, the response has sometimes been, “What do you not have?”

And I hate how much that sentence lands.

It makes me wonder whether I am collecting labels. Whether I am self-diagnosing too much. Whether I am making a normal human life sound like a medical chart. Whether this is some kind of Munchausen thing. But the proper term now is factitious disorder imposed on self, and that involves falsifying, creating, exaggerating, or inducing symptoms with deception. That is not what I am doing. I am not trying to pretend I have something. I am trying to understand why certain ordinary things feel so impossibly hard.

I am not looking for a medal in the suffering Olympics. I am looking for the user manual.

Every once in a while, I discover something small about myself and it explains a little corner of my life. Recently, I realized just how much I am affected by a change in plans. Not in a “my plans are set in stone and everyone must obey me” way. It is more like I build an expectation in my head, and when reality suddenly deviates from it, I have to recalibrate my entire inner system. And that recalibration is painful.

One time, we went to watch Sindhu Vee. We had front-row seats. Because of a misunderstanding, we went to the wrong venue first and arrived late to the actual one. The staff seated us somewhere else.

Objectively, nothing terrible happened. We were still there. She was still there in flesh. It was still her show. We were only a few rows away.

But inside me, something broke from the original plan and would not repair itself. The fact that I was not sitting where I was supposed to sit hovered over me like a dark cloud. I could not enjoy the show properly. I could not console myself. I could tell myself all the rational things — this is fine, you are still here, the show is still happening — and my brain basically said, thank you for your input, rejected.

I do not know if that is an autism thing for me. I am not diagnosing myself based on one ruined comedy show. But autism diagnostic descriptions do include things like insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, difficulty with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, and distress at small changes. So at least I know this reaction is not a completely alien phenomenon. There is a language for this kind of difficulty. Whether that exact language belongs to me clinically is another question.

The strange part is that I see a version of this in my son too. If I wipe his face before he is done rinsing, even if that has never officially been “the rule,” he can become deeply upset because in that moment, he had a sequence in his head. He was going to rinse first, then wipe. I interrupted the inner order. And to him, that interruption is not small.

When I saw that in him, it made me think of myself sitting in the wrong seat at the comedy show, unable to climb out of the feeling. And then the guilt starts.

How am I supposed to properly support and nurture my child when I do not even fully understand myself?

But maybe that is also the wrong question. Maybe understanding myself is part of how I support him.

I am not exactly like my son. His needs are his own. My needs are mine. But sometimes, recognizing the shape of a feeling in myself helps me take his feelings more seriously. It helps me remember that what looks small from the outside may not be small on the inside.

That does not mean every feeling gets to run the whole house. It means the feeling deserves to be understood before it is corrected.

I also struggle with uncertainty in bigger ways. Work, for example. The traditional job market, with all its unpredictability, expectations, social rules, interruptions, and unclear demands, can feel unbearable to me. And then I feel guilty for not functioning the way I think I “should.” I feel bad when I am not earning money in the way I expected myself to. I feel like I should be able to do more, be more, handle more.

At the same time, I think I am doing good work as a mother. I am trying to be understanding. I am trying to use every resource I can. I am trying to give my child what he needs instead of what the world thinks should be easy. My therapist has helped me put some of this into perspective, and she has reassured me that focusing on my child and my mental health is not a failure. It is still work. It is still important.

Still, I doubt myself all the time.

One of my biggest struggles is consistency. I am trying to maintain daily stretching and daily writing. Most days, it is hard. But pushing myself to keep the streak going matters to me because consistency is not easy for me. Some people can decide, “I will lift weights,” and then they lift the weights. I look at the same situation and think, sure, theoretically I can build muscle, but first I need to convince myself to do one rep, and apparently that requires a constitutional amendment.

The annoying thing is that I can sometimes maintain a streak once it exists. But starting, restarting, or returning after an interruption is hard. The problem is not always doing the thing; sometimes the problem is coming back to the thing after life interrupts it.

This is where ADHD and OCD become confusing for me. Adult ADHD can involve difficulty staying organized, completing tasks, remembering daily tasks, managing time, following through, and staying on track. OCD can involve unwanted intrusive thoughts and compulsions such as repeated checking, including checking whether a door is locked or an oven is off.

So when I forget whether I locked the door, is that ADHD? When I check it three or four times to calm the anxiety, is that OCD? Did the ADHD create the uncertainty and the OCD build a ritual around it? Or are they both there, taking turns making one ordinary door emotionally expensive?

I do not know.

The same goes for things like cracks on the floor. Is stepping on or avoiding cracks an OCD thing? It could be, if it is driven by intrusive fear, urgency, distress, or a sense that something bad will happen unless I do it “right.” But it could also be a habit, a sensory preference, a pattern-making brain, a superstition, or just one of those small private rules people carry around. The difference is usually not the behaviour alone. It is the function of the behaviour: why I do it, what happens if I resist it, and how much it interferes with my life.

That is the kind of thing I am learning in therapy. Not every pattern needs panic. Not every symptom needs a dramatic label. But also, not every struggle should be dismissed as “everyone does that.”

There is a middle ground.

I have done CBT. I have done CPT. I have done CBT for OCD. I am still learning. For OCD, NICE includes CBT with exposure and response prevention as a recommended psychological treatment option, depending on severity and need. CPT, on the other hand, is a trauma-focused therapy for PTSD that helps people examine and change upsetting thoughts about trauma and how it affects their view of themselves, others, and the world.

And yes, I am managing better. Not cured. Not transformed into a peaceful mountain monk. But better.

I still forget things. I still get stuck. I still spiral sometimes. I still feel like my brain is a group project where nobody read the instructions. But I am starting to understand the moving parts. I am starting to recognize when something is ADHD-flavoured, when it feels OCD-flavoured, when anxiety is driving the car, when trauma has entered the room, and when I simply need more rest, less noise, and fewer demands.

I also know that autism, ADHD, OCD, anxiety, and depression can overlap in real life. Research on autistic adults shows elevated rates of anxiety and depression, though estimates vary across studies. One systematic review and meta-analysis estimated current anxiety disorder prevalence in autistic adults at 27% and current depressive disorder prevalence at 23%, with lifetime rates higher.

So maybe the question is not, “Which one thing explains everything?”

Maybe the better question is, “What pattern am I seeing, and what support does that pattern need?”

Because I may not have a neat answer. I may never have one perfect label that makes every part of me click into place. Maybe I am ADHD plus OCD. Maybe I have autistic traits. Maybe I am autistic and undiagnosed. Maybe trauma and anxiety amplify everything. Maybe all of these things overlap in ways that are not easy to separate.

But I know this: my experience is real, even before it is perfectly named.

And naming something is not the same as excusing everything. Understanding myself does not mean I stop trying. It means I stop using shame as my only tool.

Shame has not made me more functional. It has only made me more afraid.

Understanding gives me something else. It gives me clues. It tells me that if change is hard, I may need transition time. If uncertainty is hard, I may need written plans or backup plans. If memory is unreliable, I may need checklists instead of self-hatred. If compulsions are taking over, I need to use the tools I learned in therapy instead of feeding the loop. If I cannot restart a routine after interruption, I need a return plan, not another speech about discipline.

And as a mother, this matters.

Because the way I treat myself becomes part of the emotional weather my son grows up in. If I treat every difficulty in myself as laziness, drama, or failure, I may accidentally teach him to do the same to himself. But if I can say, this is hard, let’s understand why and build support around it, then maybe I give both of us something better.

There is another layer to this too. I am not only trying to navigate being a mother to my son. I am also trying to be some kind of parent figure, guide, older-sibling-anchor, emotional roadside assistance person to my brother.

He is a new parent too. He is trying to figure out how to be a father without becoming overprotective to the point of suffocation. At the same time, he is also my son’s uncle, and that role matters too. He has to learn how to show up for his own child without failing mine. How to protect one child without pushing the other one aside. How to be present in both relationships without making either child feel like they are competing for his care.

And somehow, I find myself trying to help him navigate that while I am still learning how to navigate it myself.

It is such a delicate balance. I do not want to be the overprotective mother who makes everything around my son rigid, fearful, and controlled. But I also know my son needs support. He needs adults around him who understand him, not adults who love him only when he is easy. And I want my brother to understand that too — that being a good father and being a good uncle are not opposing roles. One child does not need to be emotionally sacrificed for another child to feel loved.

The hard part is that neither of us really had a good model.

My mother has always operated in deeply narcissistic ways. Everything about us becomes her business. Our achievements become hers to announce. Our needs barely register unless they inconvenience her. If she is absent, we are expected to substitute for her. If we do not do it properly, she is right there with the first blow of criticism — and sometimes, not just metaphorically.

So we did not grow up learning gentle guidance. We learned performance. We learned criticism. We learned that love could be made into a public announcement, but care was not always available in private. We learned that children could become extensions of a parent’s ego rather than people with their own needs.

And now here we are, trying to parent actual children. Trying to become the kind of adults we did not consistently have.

I am trying to teach my brother something I am still learning myself: that protection is not the same as control. That love is not ownership. That being needed by a child is not the same as making the child responsible for your emotional worth. That a child should not have to become smaller, quieter, more convenient, or less themselves to keep an adult regulated.

But I also know this is complicated by gender and culture and all the old nonsense sitting inside family systems. I am his sister. I am a woman. Socially, I am allowed to be “soft,” emotional, nurturing — all the things that get dismissed as less serious until suddenly everyone needs someone to do the emotional work. I do not always know whether he hears me as someone worth learning from, especially when the world still teaches men that being guided by a woman is somehow weakness.

That hurts too.

Because there is no ideal father figure standing there for him to copy. No emotionally healthy male model in the family saying, “Here, this is how you protect without controlling. This is how you love without dominating. This is how you show up for children without making them carry your wounds.”

So I am trying to say it. Imperfectly. From my side. With my own wounds still open in places.

And maybe that is part of why this whole question of where I fit feels so big. I am not only trying to understand my own brain. I am trying to mother my son, support my brother, protect both children from old family patterns, and not become so overcorrective that I create a different kind of pressure.

I am trying to break a cycle while still learning what a healthy cycle even looks like.

No wonder I am tired. So where do I fit? I have no idea. I really don’t.

I do not know exactly what I am. I do not know which parts are ADHD, which parts are OCD, which parts are anxiety, which parts are trauma, which parts are possibly autism, and which parts are just me trying to survive with a brain that has always been a little too loud, too rigid, too forgetful, too sensitive, too much, and somehow still not enough for the world around me.

I am still figuring it out.

I am figuring out how to understand myself without turning every struggle into either a diagnosis or a character flaw. I am figuring out how to be there for my son as his mother and his support. I am figuring out how to guide my brother without becoming another controlling voice in his life. I am figuring out how to help both children be loved well, protected well, and not crushed under the weight of adult wounds they did not create.

I do not always know if I am doing any of this right. Most of the time I am guessing with love, anxiety, memory, trauma, therapy language, and Google Calendar all holding hands in the corner.

But I am trying.

I am trying to learn my son. I am trying to support my brother. I am trying to notice old patterns before they become new injuries. And somewhere in all of that, I am also trying to learn myself.

Maybe that is the part I did not expect.

That parenting my son, and trying to help my brother parent his child, would make me look back at myself and ask: who was supposed to help me with this? Who was supposed to notice that I struggled? Who was supposed to be patient with me? Who was supposed to explain, guide, nurture, soften the world a little instead of making me feel defective for not fitting smoothly into it?

I do not have good answers to those questions, but I am trying not to abandon myself just because other people did.

Just because no one bothered to be kind to me in the ways I needed does not mean I have to continue that tradition. Just because no one properly nurtured me does not mean I cannot learn to nurture myself now. Awkwardly. Imperfectly. Late. With therapy homework, phone notes, daily writing streaks, stretching, and occasionally crying over a change of plans that “should not” matter but does.

Maybe I do not know where I fit yet.

Maybe I am still standing somewhere between labels, memories, symptoms, coping mechanisms, family roles, motherhood, sisterhood, and plain old survival.

But I am here. I am paying attention now.

And maybe that is where I start: by being curious instead of cruel. By being there for my son, trying to guide my brother with whatever wisdom I have scraped together, and slowly learning how to be there for myself too.