I know I’ve made this point before, but it’s not getting through.
Surely everyone subscribes to the idea that most illnesses are suffered at some degree of badness.
Severity.
You get a cold.
Sometimes, it’s the scratchy throat and sniffly nose version.
Other times, it knocks you for Netflix ‘n’ chills for a week.
Sometimes, you can’t even decide if you’re sick- have you ever had this?!
Wake up in the morning, slightmaybeperhaps off feeling in the tonsil region…
“Perhaps I just slept with my mouth open.”
“I hope Chris didn’t see.”
Fight off a headache or two. Feel a little more weary than usual. Think, “Ergh, s’pose I’d better rest or this thing will envelop me.”
It passes and you move on with your life. (Or you ignore your own advice because you’re an insane workaholic and next minute you can’t pronounce words with “m” or “n” in them.)
Take a moment now to ponder the “was that a cold or just stress or maybe allergies I don’t even know” equivalent of a chronic illness.
They exist – why would they exist any less than their acute counterparts?
But for some reason we don’t acknowledge this exists-necessarily-by-the-laws-of-statistics phenomenon.
People either have a chronic condition or they don’t.
My entire life (because of course, this is about me)
I have loved books, but hated reading.
I have identified as a space cadet,
a forgetful ditz,
a hopelessly disorganised victim of, “my GOD for a smart girl you couldn’t manage time to save your life.”
Yes, those things are part of my personality and labels won’t do anything to change that.
But now, I have this really cool avalanche of information at my fingertips to explain why I love and buy and hold and flip through and smell and display in my home books that I can’t read
like a diabetic collector of sweets.
Why I desperately love law and English and history and literature and Shakespeare even though
I am a fraud.
Because I finally figured out the source of a life-long tickle in the throat.
A niggling… of ADHD.
Nothing that will ever stop me appearing as though I function as well as anyone.
Not quite enough for special consideration or to get extensions or appear to others as though I am disabled.
But I sit here and I listen to the lecture three times.
Four times.
I read the book and the audiobook because the more ways you cram it in the more likely it is something will get through.
I sit here at 4:30am because to reach my full potential I had to take so many stimulants yesterday I’m still dosed up to the eyeballs.
But I unlocked what I knew I was capable of all along.
For a smart girl I did manage time I actually kicked time right up the clacker because that assignment took everyone else six weeks and it took me fourteen hours but it took me six weeks just to attempt to get into the zone.
To try and read and read again,
read again,
read again…
Six weeks of tears and tantrums and frustration and torn hair because my GOD the information in my brain is a miner
trapped
miles below the surface through systems of intertwining tunnels and the only hope of retrieval is a complex and unlikely aligning of the planets:
The moons of soy mocha,
the rings of dexamphetamine,
the asteroid belt of good mental and physical health,
the Gods of extensions and understanding family and friends and just the god prayed and begged for hope that nothing else went on that morning that took my focus for a moment because it won’t come back…
and finally
it comes together.
It’s stressful and it’s unpredictable and it’s worth it because the miner brings the diamonds to the surface
created under the pressure it’s a high distinction.
And it’s worth it because that mine is good for nothing else its purpose and strength and love is to produce that diamond.
And it’s there perhaps that the metaphor becomes less glorious.
But just when you thought it couldn’t get any more melodramatic,
this isn’t the only tickle in my throat.
I was blessed with a myriad of niggles.
A little bit of a heart condition.
A mild pain disorder.
Some food intolerance.
A weakness here, a tendency there.
I am like the Jack of All Invisible Chronic Illnesses!
The master of absolutely none, which is great.
So it’s never enough to call in sick or complain to your colleagues,
just enough to make it that little bit of a struggle.
Which is not so bad for a week but day after day I do have to say it will give you the shits.
Not literally, I actually have the opposite problem.
My entire life is a week of ooh I’m a little queasy does my ear hurt I think I was just dizzy I’m a little tired just a mild headache it’s fine better take it easy lie down don’t do extra work that burning you get when you think you feel a UTI coming on and you quickly try to catch it with eight litres of cranberry juice.
I’m allergic to cranberry juice.
So I don’t know, do I have ADHD?
I like to say
I am
(a bit)
ADHD.
No, I don’t have trouble holding down a job.
I don’t shout inappropriate things uncontrollably (only by choice.)
I don’t struggle with impulse control to such an extent as to alienate everyone around me.
Even those who love me most.
But there exists a potential framework for understanding the quirks and intricacies of my brain
and it helps me understand that it’s not because I’m lazy
or crazy
or the procrastinator from hell.
I just want
you
(everyone)
to understand that too.
Invisible Squared 