It's unfortunate you didn't understand your cognitive differences early on. I was lucky in that I was tested in third grade and identified as ADD. This was pretty rare in the early 1970s. I was unlucky in that I was immediately separated, had to ride a literal "short bus" to another elementary school where I went to a special classroom off on its own in a temporary building that was helpfully labeled on the door "Educationally Handicapped". Good that there was a smaller class size and a teacher with some special training but bad that I was socially ostracized and, having been so clearly labeled by the system, ended up tacitly internally labeling myself too.

But I was different than my classmates in the special classroom. I could tell and they could tell too. I couldn't pay attention but I could figure things out on my own and I didn't have the behavioral problems they did. What saved me was a state-mandated standardized test that every student (even the handicapped ones) had to take in eighth grade. It was the first time since being separated in third grade that I'd taken an objective standardized test. I remember a few weeks after the test, the principal came to the special classroom, got me and took me back to his office where he had me take the test again. The next day he came back and took from the educationally handicapped classroom to the special classroom for "mentally gifted minors". It was great because I excelled in some subjects. But it sucked because in a few subjects I wasn't even close to cutting it.

That was when it slowly started dawning on me that I didn't fit any of the typical models for assessing intelligence. I had some genuine superpowers but I also had some serious deficits in other areas. And this has remained true throughout my entire life and career. I had periods of abject failure and I also had periods where I reached the absolute pinnacles of career, professional and financial success. Over time I learned the key difference between the two was when I took active steps to mitigate my many deficits and maximize the returns from superpower. Denial definitely didn't work. Sometimes this looked weird from the outside, like when I quietly hired a friend from the finance group to moonlight and help me complete my departmental budget forecasts. I was the only VP at the global F500 tech company who couldn't do my own budget homework yet I was making >$1M/yr. I once told the CEO and he said he didn't care what help I needed as long as I kept delivering the stellar results. I was also the only senior exec with no college degree. This used to bother me. For a while it was an ego issue. Other times I just thought it was a terribly embarrassing, dark secret about me. Then I finally broke through and accepted that I'm just different. If I work it right, my downsides from my extreme deficits average out against the benefits of my superpowers. The net result is significantly on the positive side.

The moral of the story: It sucks that in third grade I was labelled, segregated and made to feel like a stupid loser, but the silver-lining was that by being mistreated to an almost comical extent, I simply accepted that I was forever going to be different. I'd have to work harder than others, I'd need to find and learn special tools to help me and, as I aged, I'd need to continually work on finding a combo of meds that kept my worst deficits manageable with sufficient effort. And, the best part is, after a lot of failures and struggle figuring out patterns and tools that worked, this odd path ultimately resulted in a happy ending as I was able to retire early at the top of my chosen field.