In this warm and gloriously candid memoir about ADHD, queerness, love, and everything nobody thought to explain, CJ DeBarra – Irish journalist, non-binary West Cork exile, and lifelong owner of a brain that refused to behave – asks whether reaching their mid-thirties might finally be enough time to understand themselves.
Diagnosed with ADHD at eleven in a small West Cork village, CJ was given a label but never an explanation. Why did friendships keep breaking down? Why did relationships burn out? Why did their body and heart never seem to want the same things at the same time? Careening from art college to recession-era Dublin to Nottingham – falling hard, loving deeply, and only recently beginning to join the dots – CJ arrives, two decades later, at the question that should have been answered long ago: why hadn't anyone told them?
Part memoir, part guide, NeuroQueer fearlessly explores the raw realities of heartbreak, desire and queer identity, while shedding light on the alarmingly low diagnosis rates for women, transgender, and non-binary individuals. CJ draws on academic research, medical studies and the lived experience of other queer ADHD people to ask what might have been different if someone had told them sooner – and demands better for everyone still waiting to be told.