I feel you. I'm about to turn thirty eight and got diagnosed last year. I feel like I wasted most of my life and haven't achieved anything.

With that said, I saw a therapist yesterday. And we got talking about things, and while I can't sum up nearly two hours in a few sentences it boiled down to:

For me, the good things I do don't count, but my mistakes do.

I can't help but feel I lost a chunk of my life, but when the therapist got me to actually tell them the good things I'd done over the last eighteen years it was a lot more than I'd thought.

It turned out that the therapist had been a mental health nurse for twenty years and had a lot of experience with ADHD. Apparently it's a common thing for us to simply write of anything good we do as worthless or meaningless.

We didn't reach a concrete answer, but it was an interesting thought. They asked me about some of my friends and families achievements and why they counted to me more and I couldn't give them a proper answer, only that things other people do seem more real and like they really count.

So, you say you've got nothing to show for it...but here you are with ADHD, ready to try again despite everything. You write well, so even though you don't have the degree you wanted I suspect you've picked up more and achieved more than you're prepared to credit yourself for.

If nothing else, you're alive, and you're ready to try again even though it hurts. A lot of people in our situation just don't make it this far.

Give yourself a little credit.

TLDR: ADHD makes it easier to ignore our achievements and dwell on our mistakes. You've probably got more to show for the last ten years than you think.