So apparently I missed Invisible Illness Awareness week, but I thought I'd put this up here anyway. I have invisible disabilities instead of invisible illness, but I thought it was still appropriate. And hopefully helpful to you understanding me more. (If you already knew all of this, let me know. If there was anything that you DIDN'T know that was like "woah!", let me know that too. It's always helpful to know what people do and don't know so that when I'm telling people about it, I know what to talk about.)

(And why the icon? Because I feel like it! And because, honestly, it feels really AWESOME! to be creating awareness around these issues.)

1. The illness I live with is: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. I also live with chronic depression. I suspect I also have Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I'm not sure if I was ever formally diagnosed with it. Also, whatever undiagnosed mental disorder I have that makes me freak out, panic, or have depression so bad that I get self-abuse desires (physical and emotional). It may just be part of one of the other ones.

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: the ADHD was diagnosed in like 1990 or so. 2nd grade. The depression gets diagnosed and changed and rediagnosed off and on. I guess the first diagnosis was in high school. The Seasonal Affective Disorder may have been diagnosed last winter, but I'm not sure what they actually diagnosed me with that time.

3. But I had symptoms since: ADHD, all my life. Depression, pre-HS? SAD, uncertain. Definitely since HS.

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: knowing that there's just some things I can't do (or that aren't worth doing in the end). Accepting that there IS something different with my brain and it affects most parts of my life. And the biggest adjustment I *should* make and don't do all the time is that I am more susceptible to having other chemical imbalances affect me, like lack of sleep or lack of food. I can't just skip meals or stay up late (or pull all-nighters or stay up for days) or not get enough sleep and be "normal". It DOES affect my mood, very much. I should make the adjustment to make sure I always get meals when I need them and enough sleep. (But that's not "cool" in geek circles.)

5. Most people assume: With ADHD, that it's just "being hyper" or that it's not real because "you can focus on the things you want to do". There are times when I really REALLY want to do something and I just *can't*. Or that it just deals with learning… it really DOES affect most of my life (including my sex life), and it has side effects or smaller sub-symptoms that affect other parts. There are things that other people just DO that are HARD for me. (See: paying bills) There are things that other people just DO that are damn near impossible for me, and are certainly 99% impossible alone. (See: cleaning up a big mess) I didn't develop properly socially because of it as well. (I've gotten a lot better at that as an adult, but I still have social and behavioral issues sometimes.) Some people (and insurances!) also assume that you grow out of ADHD when you become an adult… the symptoms lessen a bit, but they're still there.

With the SAD, that it's just about light. It's NOT. Feeling cold or being in a cold, windy environment makes me depressed too, something that my last therapist (who has SAD herself) understood. (Hell, even the cold and/or dark and dreary areas of Azeroth in WoW make me depressed when I play them. There's a reason I'm not crazy about Dun Morogh or Darkwood or that fucking swamp area.)

6. The hardest part about mornings are: Getting moving and doing what needs to get done and getting out the door w/o my medication having kicked in yet.

7. My favorite medical TV show is: SCRUBS! (well, pre-them changing networks)

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: some kind of day planner or calendar, whether physical or digital/electronic. I used my homework assignment book CONSTANTLY in HS. When I have a PDA, I'm totally dependent on whatever program works with it that I can keep my schedule or my to-do list, both personal and work. Right now it's the iPod Touch and iCal, but it's also been a Palm and Microsoft Outlook.

9. The hardest part about nights are: 2 different things. 1.) the fact that most awesome things happen at night, but I'm off my meds then (I wish people would have play parties in the middle of the day when I could be on my Adderall) and 2.) the fact that my depression is the worst during the night time and that nights can be VERY rough for me, self-abuse wise. I physically hurt myself the most at night, and the emotional abuse is REAL bad then and I'm real susceptible to it. Also, I seem to fight the most with my lovers late at night.

10. Each day I take __ pills & vitamins: If I'm on a regular schedule, Adderall 2x a day. If I'm on a depression medication, then whatever its schedule is.

11. Regarding alternative treatments I: strongly prefer Western medicine. Yoga, meditation, and the like can have some benefits, but I don't believe in it for a cure. I'm very reality based when it comes to these things and don't like the woo-woo stuff much at all.

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: Neither, obviously. But I think I'd go visible so that people would think it's REAL and take me serious for it.

13. Regarding working and career: It's really rough. I've lost quite a few jobs to depression now, but can't prove it. The depression can make focus really difficult as well, so it's a double whammy with the ADHD. I've had to change fields from corporate tech to non-corporate tech to sexual educator. I'm earning FAR under my earning potential and taking jobs far under my skill set because of my disabilities, and it really kinda pisses me off. Hopefully this will change with the sexual educator thing. But there are days I don't want to work on the sex ed thing, and being self-employed means you have to have that umph, that fire in the belly, to keep striving for more work. Which is something that I just do not have, for the most part. I'm HORRIBLE at that part.

14. People would be surprised to know: the ADHD really DOES affect my sex life. For the most part, if you're not interacting with my mind at the same time you're interacting with my body, I'm bored as hell. I can get bored during the middle of intercourse, if it's not good for me. It can be real hard to be present during sex because of it. (Not to mention most of the time you have sex is when I have to be off my meds.)

Some people would be surprised to know that I even DO suffer from depression. I have a reputation in some circles as only hyper, almost manic. (It's because when I'm out with a large group of people I feel comfortable with, it invigorates me. I really AM a social creature, an extrovert.)

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: there's not really a "new" reality for me. I've been living with these things so long that it's just how it's always been for me. Which is really kinda sad when you think about it.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: be content. Not just happy, but CONTENT.

17. The commercials about my illness: act like only kids have it (ADHD) or make it sound like that all you have to do to get rid of depression is take a drug and it's gone. (I've tried most SSRIs and none of them ever did anything for me. I tried a tricyclic but got pulled off it because of heart issues. But it was the only thing that ever made me not depressed.)

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: n/a.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: the thought that I'll ever be just like everyone else. I'll never be 110% fully functional. I'll ALWAYS have some struggle. I can get functional, and I can get close, but it will never be easy, like it is for most people. There are things that other people just DO and I REALLY struggle with, like keeping house.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: there really isn't anything. I mean, I know more about mental disorders now, but that was just the normal learning process to learn how to deal with it that just happened because I grew up with the ADHD.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: do whatever it would take to make that day the rest of my life. 1 day is not enough to do what I REALLY want to do. I want to be able to be happy and succeed in the long run. I can do it for short periods of time already, but it always falls apart.

22. My illness has taught me: I don't know if it's taught me one thing, but I know that, at least to me, I feel like my life has this cross to bear in it, and that learning from it is what happens. It's certainly taught me that people make assumptions. Or that some people just don't UNDERSTAND you can't always get around an illness/disability. Sometimes there's some things you just can't DO.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: "Have you tried..." (well, this is when it comes up casually with people. If I'm sitting down specifically for advice, that's different.) or "My __________ has it and he can/can't ________ so you should do/not do __________." (We are all NOT the same, thanks. I know best, after years of dealing with it, what works for me. Especially when it comes to [random!] people telling me how to take my medication.)

Also "ADHD isn't real… it's that society isn't shaped right to work with people with ADHD." Well, I'll agree with the last part, but that doesn't make ADHD any less real. I actually had this talk with some crunchy granola types once and I ended up convincing them, through my actual real life examples, that, no, it really IS real, and we really DO struggle, even when we're outside of society's influence.

24. But I love it when people: roll with it. Roll with the punches with me, emotionally. Don't treat me like a spaz.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: "It will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end." (This is what the person I copied the quiz from put, and it's actually the one I use too. :-) )

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: It's better to know than not know, but don't think that now you know everything's going to magically get better. This is the START of the journey, not the end.

(If it's a kid diagnosed with ADHD [esp. if they're going to take meds], I'd like to tell them "You and only you get to decide who you are. You and only you get to decide which you [the one on the meds or the one off the meds] is the REAL you. And really, they're both you." and "You should be the only one who gets to decide, in the end, if you take medication or not. Inform yourself, and if you want to, great. If you try it and you don't like it, it's also your choice.")

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: How people STILL really DON'T treat mental illness as equal to a physical illness. (It's better than it was, at least in the US. [Canada's way behind, surprisingly enough.]) They still think you should be able to just "get around it", or "push through it", or "try harder". Some even think you're faking it.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: Stood by my side (figuratively) and didn't freak out or run away (figuratively). Stayed up with me through the long, crappy night, talking to me for HOURS, trying to talk me out of the emotional self-abuse I was putting myself through, never tiring, never fatiguing (or at least not showing it), being willing to go through hell and back with me. (And this is why morningboon is, indeed, my Angel of the Morning. He must have dealt with a hundred freak outs by now, and he still hasn't run or left me or got anywhere near leaving me over it. That's a BIG FUCKING DEAL to me.)

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: it's important to hear our real stories (and it's especially important to tell them to the psychiatric profession… our real life stories and struggles are more important in treating us than what you learned in med school and what the DSM & the various studies say) and realize that the people you pass on the street that look "normal" may, in fact, have an illness or disability you don't know about.

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: glad you care. I don't feel like I gave a full picture of what life is to me, but I did hit upon a few key parts, maybe a bit more than I should have (in that it got a bit activisty and ranty).