Before My ADHD Diagnosis, I Looked to Astrology for Answers

This is Late Bloomer, a column by Carla Ciccone on her experience of being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, and how it made her reevaluate parts of her past.

A city bus bounced along the gravelly streets of our suburban neighborhood on the southwestern edge of town, and I grabbed a metal pole to steady myself. I boarded most buses back then with an understanding of the tacit contract between me and the driver: He would try to make me fall with jerky stops and fast starts, and I would defy both him and gravity by refusing. While I bus-surfed, my friend Morgan sat in the seat in front of me, reading out the horoscope section of Seventeen magazine and revealing what the fates prescribed for the month ahead. She’d already gone through Gemini and Libra for Lissy and Danielle, respectively, so it was my turn, and I had an astral decision to make. I didn’t know what my actual sign was because many magazine horoscopes had my birthday listed as either the last day of Aries or the first day of Taurus. Even though I viewed astrology as mysterious and beautiful, and I believed that the stars were in charge of my destiny, I also knew next to nothing about the practice. I judged the signs solely by their illustrated representations and hated both of my options.

What I ached for, at thirteen years old, was love, inspiration, and magic. I wanted an ethereal sign to represent me—and I needed a good excuse for why I was always lost in daydreams. What I had was an earthbound bovine or a hard-horned mountain climber: a Bull or a Ram.

“I’m an Aries,” I told Morgan, and I stuck with that sign for a couple decades. My friends were Twins and water-pouring Virgins and dancing Fish and Balancing Scales, which had to be what made them easy, breezy, beautiful girls destined for carefree and comfortable lives. I got the sense that my Sun sign condemned me to a life of hardship, one where I fit in nowhere, not even within myself.

A year later, my friend Sara bought me The Dreamer’s Dictionary for my fourteenth birthday, which became my go-to source for a mystical hit and which helped me appreciate that even if the stars were set, the fates were ever changing. My trusty dream book didn’t always provide reassurance, but even when I dreamed of being chased through a dark forest (“prepare for a setback”), the next night might afford me the chance to fly through calm skies like a peaceful lark (“happy times ahead”). This ability to contain multitudes was still absent in my understanding of astrology. When I read my horoscope in magazines or the daily newspaper, I bumped up against the stereotypes of my supposed Sun sign. Aries readings would go something like, “Don’t let your bold confidence get the best of you today. Let out that fiery energy at the gym like only an audacious, athletic Aries can.” This seemed at odds with the shy, scrawny, asthmatic kid I was. But was that really who I was? I looked for answers where I found most things as a teenager: at the mall.

The mall was my second home. I even worked there part-time at a lingerie store where I, a fifteen-year-old in an oversize blazer borrowed from my mom’s closet, advised grown-ups on their undergarment choices. During my breaks, you could usually find me in the bookstore. This was just before the jumbo bookstore came in and took over eight-theater movieplex. This bookstore was relatively small, with dimmer lighting than the stark mallway glare. You walked inside with the understanding that bookstore etiquette was an extension of library etiquette, so it was a quiet, cozy reprieve from the mall frenzy. Plus, the people that worked there mostly left me alone, and I, being in the same age cohort as most shoplifters, appreciated that. Naturally, the New Age section beckoned.

The section took up the bottom half of a large shelf, which made it easy to sit down on the forest-green carpet and browse. I eventually found a book called The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need. I couldn’t afford to buy it, but I returned to it often, sitting on that worn green carpet, attempting to understand my place in the world a bit better. Beyond descriptions of Sun signs, it also taught me that our astrological profiles are made up of Moon signs and Ascendants, and that all of the planets were in specific signs and houses at the exact time we were born. All of these factors came together to create a person’s astral blueprint.

My friends didn’t see astrology the way I did: as containing the essential puzzle pieces for a more nuanced idea of themselves.

This book was a lot to take in, and I didn’t absorb most of it, but it did give me one critical piece of information: my Moon was in Pisces. My watery Moon sign afforded me what the hoofed Suns could not: emotional leeway. My dreaminess, sensitivity, and sometimes randomly impulsive behavior could be explained by it, at least to myself. I used my findings like a straight-A student uses good grades—as confirmation of what I already knew. The student gets As and affirms she’s smart. The neurodivergent teen finds out she’s got a whimsical Pisces Moon and hates herself for her messy brain a little less. My friends didn’t see the broader field of astrology the way I did: as containing the essential puzzle pieces that would connect them to a more nuanced idea of themselves. In fact, many people around me had the ability to slough off astrology as a pseudoscience, a racket, or a bunch of hoopla. Had I been less in love with the idea of a starry sky as an explanation for the human condition, or less prone to scratch the feminine itch of apologizing for my own existence, I might’ve believed the nonbelievers. Astrology isn’t for everyone. Unfortunately, I needed it deeply, so I kept my findings to myself.

Two decades after I sat in that bookstore, I discovered something else that helped me make sense of myself: I was diagnosed with ADHD. Since finding out last year that I’m neurodivergent, I’ve been looking back to the formative phases of my life for clues that went undetected for so long. Along with being an oddball influenced by a certain formation of stars in the sky, my brain also just works differently by design. Our world is made for neurotypical people, and it rewards those who fit that mold, which means that people who struggle in it may feel like failures, outcasts, and even less deserving. The age I really started to feel the symptoms of the undiagnosed disorder—thirteen—was around the same time I started to look for answers of the mystical variety. I felt fundamentally different from my peers, even though I could mask my symptoms enough to mostly get by.

For decades, one way I masked my neurodivergence was by mimicking the “normal behaviors” of those around me. I’d pick up traits, accents and inflections, and even nervous gestures from people I looked up to and wanted to be more like. I figured everyone else had a more solid grasp on being a person in the world, and if I could build myself into a regular girl with their mannerisms, I’d have an easier time of it. One thing I couldn’t fake, though, was romantic relationships. I didn’t know how to let my guard down, or to trust myself, let alone accept that trust from others. It was easier to love deeply, silently, and break my own heart by leaving. But of course a Pisces Moon would say that.

As a teenager, I found it nearly impossible to pay attention in most classes and tried in vain to keep up with chores, homework, and curfews. Ashamed as I was for being atypical, I was also scared. I didn’t know why daily tasks were such an ordeal for me when my friends did them with ease. I wanted my drawers, my room, my life, in order.

Because my disparities were, for the most part, internally felt and kept, the idea of looking beyond myself for answers became a life raft. If I kept searching the sky, one day I might figure out what I’d been up against. It’s not uncommon for humans to wonder why they’re here, or why they are the way they are, or to look for answers—I know this now. But as a teenager, everything felt like my journey, alone. There was no one to relate to. No internet to search for symptoms on. And mental health was an even more taboo subject than astrology.

In the intervening years, the stars stayed in my mind, sometimes in the background, sometimes at the forefront. I often fixated on them when my mind technically should’ve been on other things. After graduating college, I took on a series of temporary administrative positions because the stakes were low and commitments relatively loose. My stints in these starkly-lit offices ranged from three weeks to five months. Sitting behind those desks, with massive PC towers humming beside me, I’d smile politely to the men in suits who’d walk by and call me “Jessica,” “Monica,” “Tina,” and other names from “Mambo No. 5.”

Knowing my astrological profile was reason enough to have compassion for the traits I’d previously been ashamed of.

To even the playing field, I stole nice pens and spent my work time online. I’d shoot a half smile at the tipsy men who winked at me as they stumbled in after two-hour lunches, their lips stained red by wine, and then I’d go back to satiating my buzzy brain with the gifts of the World Wide Web. This was just before social media overtook our lives, so my time was mainly dedicated to astrology websites, where I pored over lengthy descriptions of the different signs all of my planets were in. I also emailed friends, wrote bad poems, started articles that went nowhere, and drafted love letters I’d never send to whichever guy I was hopelessly in love with at the time. Inevitably, I’d find myself tearily plugging his birthday along with mine into an online astrological compatibility calculator and use the results to excuse his infractions. He’s only mean to me because he’s a moody Scorpio; he doesn’t want me to be his girlfriend yet because freedom comes first for a Sagittarius; it’s not his fault he excels at emotional manipulation—he’s a sad little Cancer with mommy issues!

A few years ago, I ordered my longform birth certificate from the hospital where I was born. It would tell me my birth time, written down by a nurse at the exact moment I came into the world. Standing in the exact building I was born in thirty-three years prior, about to finally solve the astrological mystery that had been haunting me for decades, I felt an unexpected ease wash over me. I opened the document and it became a fact that my Sun is in Taurus and my Ascendant is Scorpio. This information didn’t change my life, but it was a relief. Knowing my astrological profile was reason enough to have compassion for the traits and phases of my life that I’d previously been ashamed of. I felt stuck in my stubborn (albeit busy) mind because of a Taurus Sun; plagued by simple decision-making because of a Libra Mars; was flighty, emotional, impulsive, and a lost cause romantically because of my Pisces Moon and Venus; and gave off an aloof first impression thanks to a Scorpio Ascendant. Esoteric excuses aside, this accurate astrological picture bestowed a sense of control over the different way my mind worked and offered an explanation for my particular set of challenges.

My ADHD diagnosis did that too. I’m still processing it, but I accepted it immediately. Like discovering my Pisces Moon, finding out I’ve had an undiagnosed brain disorder my whole life affirmed me in ways the world around me couldn’t. I still love astrology and mysticism. I’ll never stop looking up for answers, but not because I feel trapped within myself; I find it beautiful to believe that our outlines were drawn in the sky and we are all made of star stuff.

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