Silverknife - Writing and Productivity: I Have a Mental Illness. Part 1: Coming Out.

This is a post I've agonised about writing. Mostly, it's been out of fear. Fear that I would be pre-judged, fear that my friends would treat me differently, most of all fear of the questioning it would bring, of being put on the defensive, having to justify my statement, because this is a difficult and controversial subject. But ultimately, I feel it's something that's worth saying. A coming out of the closet, making something real by naming it. And for me, even if it may not seem like it at first, it's an expression of joy.

And, of course, what better time to share a new discovery about yourself than on a brand new blog?

I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD.

Those of you who know me personally are probably breathing a sigh of relief, having expected worse. And now you're wondering if it's really true, because you've heard a lot of things about this condition, both arguing for and against its existence, and you've got doubts. I had a lot of doubts too. I still do, about labeling and medicalising and stigma. I may post about some of that here, in time, and I'll welcome debate - just leave a comment at the bottom of the post. I have quite a few posts in mind, which I'll intersperse here with all sorts of other subjects.

For now, I want to write about discovering you are different. It'll take a couple of posts.

I've spent most of my life in a state of confusion. From an early age I was extremely bright - I read the Lord of the Rings in a couple of months when I was six, and about the same time I started learning to program our Acorn Electron computer. By the time I was seven I read eight library books every week, as well as rereading at least a couple from my own growing collection. By age eight I had run out of children's books in the town library, and moved on to adult fiction.

I was home-schooled, but my parents put me in school for a year to make sure it wouldn't be a better choice for me, and I found I was more than a year ahead of my peers. I took my first GCSE (for American readers: A UK qualification usually taken between the ages of 15 and 16) at age 13, and got a B.

But I couldn't work. I couldn't organise myself, I couldn't stick with a task. I was a daydreamer, always had my head in the clouds, and many everyday activities bored me rigid within half an hour; a boredom so intense it made me almost frenzied. I could never sit still for two minutes, any period of time in one seat producing increasingly inventive new sitting positions up to and including upside-down with head on the floor.

I could never remember where I put things, or what I'd been told to do - I drove my mum half-crazy because she could give me a simple task and five minutes later I'd forgotten about it entirely. It wasn't that I didn't care, things just fell out of my head. "You remember well enough when it's something that interests you" was her frequent, exasperated comment. And I couldn't argue, because the things that gripped me - reading, computers, other worlds - occupied my mind entirely, to the exclusion of everything. They never fell out. I couldn't forget them if I tried. I could, and would, sit programming BASIC for six hours straight if I was allowed.

I talked to my brother about this, and he reminded me of something I'd either completely forgotten or didn't really understand at the time - although he's two years younger than me, I wasn't allowed out of the house on my own until the same year as he was. My parents were afraid I'd unthinkingly wander in front of a bus.

To be continued in Part Two.