Laundry list

So most of my followers (especially the ones who regularly interact with me on an IM client or, god help them, know me in real life) are aware I am disabled. I have never made any attempt to hide this, since I grew up aware of the matter, since I was in late elementary school. While it gave my mother grief that she didn’t have a normal child, she at least was better about it than my Dad, who can’t understand something he himself never experienced. He’s the one who has screwed up the most out of the two parents, and while he loves us, he grew up in a conservative household and really doesn’t realize, even now, how some of the things he has said or did have affected us. I’d like to emphasize that parents can be abusive while still loving you and yelling is just as much of an abuse as hitting is. While I’m very lucky in that my Dad learned and stopped (though we bicker and get angry at each other and he’s still an idiot), not everyone is that self-aware.

Anyway, this post is a list of my own problems, how I’m dealing, and how they interact with well, the others. More under the cut.

ADHD - Okay, so yes, I have one of the more common LDs and spent high school not taking ADHD meds, enough that my counselor at the time (and during most of my college career) choked when it dawned on her that I wasn’t taking medicine for it and put me on some, which had a dramatic effect on me. I do try to take it regularly, but since it’s a controlled substance, I can’t get refills and it makes it a bit harder to go get a new dose. It’s mild enough that I don’t see an obvious effect if I forget to take it, but apparent enough that certain events can make it visible if I forget to take my medication. But when I take it, I’m generally fine.

Other Learning Disabilities - My working memory is absolutely shitty, along with my attention span when it comes to sound. I have a hard time remembering numbers given to me even if you are only giving me two or three, and it means if you spell something aloud for me, I need you to take it very slowly even before remembering that oh, I can’t sound things out. More on that in a few, but simply put, I need to take my time and tell people to repeat and slow down. But once I get it, it isn’t so bad.

I can’t translate words into sound or vice versa without prior knowledge of the word, simply because there’s a disconnect there. I stumble and mispronounce words without practice, making me one hell of an eloquent mushmouth, but because of it, I try to find other ways to say a word, which can be helpful.

Along with that fun disconnect with words, I have a processing issue with handwriting things. I have to focus to handwrite things, to make an effort to write every little letter. Makes normal notetaking a pain in the ass, as I have to dumb down my language to keep up, and it’s still hard to read, looking like a five-year-old’s handwriting. On the bright side, once I got introduced to keyboarding and took a class in sixth grade, I fell in love with typing, enough that I am very good at keeping up in a class and I am allowed to take essay exams on a keyboard. I’m done in half the time as everyone else, usually, and if I’m not done before people, I usually have a lot more words on the paper.

This was the set of disabilities that were first discovered, similar to my older siblings, who share a suite of ADHD, OCD, and Tourette’s, with all of us having deviations and wacky medical bullshit that goes along with them. I got into a special education program in 6th grade, and it helped a lot, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized I consider myself disabled… and consider it perfectly normal, which makes for an interesting experience when you’re dealing with other people with similar backgrounds.

OCD - While my brothers got the brunt of this one, I ended up with having the occasional thoughtlock, being trapped in obsessive thought patterns that I have an extremely hard time shaking myself out, and damn can it be unpleasant and affect things. The most recent one was failing one of my required classes this last quarter because I had obsessed and devoted my energies to a lab report due the same day as the final for the other required class, and that energy had included a screaming, crying breakdown all the day before because I couldn’t work though some simple calculations. I had to get a TA and my lab partner to help me work though that part of it, and even then, I was exhausted and miserable at the final. I wasn’t surprised when I got a D there. I take anti-anxiety medication to help with it, but still, it doesn’t help when it wears off in the evenings and I can’t take it then, because I get insomnia. And with my usual habit of 8 am classes and riding a Vespa, I can’t afford that.

It doesn’t help that thoughtlock is also a piece of why I’m so damn easily startled, but more on that later, in hybrid issues.

Tourette’s - If people don’t notice the agitation first, this, this is the first thing people will notice about me because my most common tic is high pitched rapidfire sneezes. They are cute, squeaky, and not a sign of allergies, and I started having them in sixth grade. By now, people laugh the first few weeks, then teachers just either shrug, wait and keep going, or they keep track. One awesome kid during summer session a few years ago not only kept track of when I sneezed, but how many times and figured out the average standard deviation. In high school, I used to also throw my head back, hard, but now that only really happens in a car, when I’m in a seat, so it isn’t nearly as bad as say… slamming my head against a wall during an exam. Beyond that, it’s a lot of clearing my throat and again, the whole easily startled thing.

I’m also prone to decompression noises, sounds and sighs that help me unwind. They can be really weird, but they make me feel better and my friends and family tend to use them as a barometer for if I need to get away or not. (One could also see them as stimming, as an aside! But I prefer decompression noises due to personal accuracy.)

PCOS - Welcome to the bullshit of my body. I don’t mind my equipment, but it’s malfunctioning like everything else in this thing, and it was really bad in high school. Now it’s just irregular periods, moodiness when they come, likely endometriosis too (thanks Mom), and me taking metformin, which does also help with my family’s history of diabetes. I don’t have a lot of body hair, beyond one or two dark hairs that grow on my chest and a few stiff hairs that grow on my chin that I pluck because I hate the disconnection in between smooth and suddenly coarseness, so I feel better if I get a pair of tweezers. So I don’t take birth control since I forget my meds too often, and I take something that works for another problem my family has history of.

Teeth Problems - For some reason, while my oldest brother had strange physical issues like a bone infection, constant ear infections as a little kid due to too small ear canals, necrotic tissue forming on his legs that turned out to not be a disease that would have killed him by forty and then vanished mysteriously and my middle brother’s host of mental problems that all pile up into him being unable to go to college or work (he’s on SSI now), my weirdness came in the form of my teeth, where I’ve had a gum transplant by third grade, I had a tooth coming in sideways that had to be removed with the rest of my wisdom teeth, and a bone graft in my jaw. I really try to brush my teeth but god I suck at remembering. x_x

Hybrid Issues - Now, for the real fun. There’s one big issue here, that three of my other disabilities play into.

I’m very easily and violently startled. When I mean violently, I scream bloody murder and flinch and start running away from people on bad days. On good days, it’s just cringing and letting out involuntary noises. It’s why I dislike crowds, because things like accidental touching sets me off (consumer service people are really bad at this too), same with sudden noises, and because I hate being startled, I’m constantly scanning and looking about, preferring to be on the fringes, and often I tend to carry something I can touch and fidget with (okay, which explains why I like scarves so much now).

According to my psychiatrist and my counselor, it appears as if I have PTSD without having any source of trauma to cause such an issue. No, not even my dad, though he sets me off sometimes without realizing it until I start screaming and gasping. He does apologize and try not to, but it’s just… he lacks tact.

My Mom’s theory on the whole thing is that due to my thoughtlock and my ADHD, any time I even wobble out of my thought processes, I tend to panic and can’t help screaming (which would be the Tourette’s), which means I’m diagnosed with anxiety as well, even if the only one of the three based there is my OCD. I have to work around it by being careful and watching everything, and finding boltholes and places to be safe. Thankfully, my labs have been extremely understanding, and the only concern about me sitting on the floor is if someone dropped something like glass.

So I just try to take it one day at a time. (And god, I suck at conclusions.)

Edit: All of this sort of makes me read strangely to people, but tl;dr version is I can be described as an autistic cousin. I operate somewhat differently, but I generally can empathize with some stuff? Either way, I still stink at conclusions.