How many of us grow up without context? For you, it might have been not knowing you were adopted, and only finding out later.
Context matters. I grew up thinking something was wrong with me. Knowing may not have changed my life completely, but school would have been easier to navigate, because I would have had help. I would have understood why even the basics seemed out of reach. At the time, things just felt harder, and I didn’t know why.
School, focus, emotions, energy, and social situations all felt more difficult than they seemed to be for everyone else. Nobody explained why, but looking back now, what made it harder was growing up without context. I didn’t know there was a reason for what I was experiencing. I only knew how it felt.
I didn’t have any answers. I just knew I was struggling – and always behind in school, even when I was trying. Without context, I started to blame myself. It felt like a personal failure rather than something I didn’t yet understand. It was the reason why I tore my school reports up, because I couldn't bear to read what my teachers were saying about my abilities in school.
I was constantly hiding. I learned how to pretend I was fine, how to push through emotional pain without drawing attention to myself. I learned to stay quiet. I became the awkward one, the sensitive one, and the difficult one. Not because I wanted to, but because I was struggling with something I didn't know I had and with no emotional support, I didn’t have the context to see it clearly myself. Being called 'lazy' was common place.
For most of my life, I believed the problem was me. Growing up without context meant I had no framework to understand my struggles, my difficulties. Instead of recognising that something deeper was affecting me, I carried the blame, without realising I was.
And even though I was trying hard, it simply wasn't enough.
When I finally learned I had a disability, it didn’t feel like bad news. It was numbing, but it wasn't bad news. It was a relief, because it had taken decades to uncover. It was a truth that had remained out of reach, which made the moment when it eventually came, bittersweet. It was an answer to a question I had lived with for years. But for the first time, I had context. Everything that had once felt like personal failure wasn't my failure at all.
Suddenly, things that never made sense began to settle into place. That was the time I learned I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t failing. I had been doing life on hard mode without being told why.
That realisation has changed how I see myself. It makes me sad for the younger version of me who struggled needlessly without understanding why. It makes me angry that I didn’t have the support or the explanations from those who knew and should have known better. But it also makes me more accepting of myself. I survived something I shouldn’t have had to face alone, without the emotional support I needed.
Everyone has a right to know what they have, what they deal with and decades later I’m still learning about me. Still unlearning what I thought I knew. Still figuring out who I am, now that I can see myself without the blame. None of this was ever about me. Growing up without context shaped how I saw myself, but finding that context has allowed me to begin seeing myself differently – with understanding instead of thinking it was me.
