Everyone says they want reliability. Then they buy a 20-year-old truck with 180,000 miles on it. That gap between what you say and what you do is the whole story.

Somewhere along the way, the performance became the person. Or at least, that’s what I thought. The scariest part of the AuDHD diagnosis wasn’t what it explained, it was what it revealed about how thoroughly I’d hidden the evidence, even from myself.

Nobody actually believes the shoes are the secret. But we talk about the shoes anyway, and maybe that’s not as shallow as it sounds.