People tell me that I don’t seem like I have a disability. Disabilities come in all different forms, ones where you can tell and ones that you would only know if that person told you.

I have a learning disability.

I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) when I was in the second grade. In the many years since my diagnosis, I have learned how to manage my life around my ADD.

When meeting me for the first time, you will not be able to tell that I have ADD. After knowing me for awhile, I will start to feel more comfortable around you and you might start to wonder if there is something “wrong” with me. When I tell people that I have ADD I get a lot of mixed reactions from people.

“You make good grades, you don’t have ADD.”

“But you aren’t hyper all the time.”

“You seem normal.”

“What type of medications do you take?”

When I was first diagnosed with ADD, I started to take a medication to help me focus. In the long run, they seemed to be working. I could focus at school, but focusing at home was another issue.

After awhile, I realized I didn’t like the way I felt when I was on the medications or the way I felt when they wore off. After years of taking medications and conversations with my doctors, they took me off my medication. I finally felt free. I wasn’t under the cloud that I felt like I was under when I was on my medication. This is when I started to embrace myself and not let my disability define me. I was seeing the world through new lenses.

When you go off ADD medication, the world sees you differently too. Since I’ve been off my medication, people treat me differently. They think that because I am off my medication that my disorder has simply gone away, but it hasn’t. A learning disability is something that will never go away. It is something that you have to deal with for your whole life, even when you are finished with your schooling. Making the decision to go off my medication was one of the hardest decisions I had to make as a middle school child. There are days now, as a college senior when I cannot focus on anything and I hate myself for asking to be taken off medication. But then I remember how trapped I felt and I never want to have to have that feeling again. Medication isn’t for everyone, and I see that now, but if I didn’t have that trapped feeling, I’d go back to it in an instant.

Living off medication with ADD is a constant inner battle. Even sitting here, in the quiet room in my university’s campus center, I have to fight myself to focus on writing this. Living with ADD is something that is hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have issues focusing. The littlest sound can distract you.

The door opening and closing.

Someone popping their knuckles.

Someone walking by a window.

Hearing someone blast music from their phone.

These are just a few of the things that can distract me from that task that I was trying to focus on. The worst thing for me is sitting in a big lecture class. This is a danger zone for someone who has ADD. You have the professor spatting out different terms while walking around the room, the girl who’s two rows in front of you on Facebook on her laptop and the person next to you tapping their pen. I might have been fully prepared for this class, but once my focus is adverted from the professor, I will not have it back until it is time to go. Reading texts books for a person who does not have a learn disability can be hard and they might have to read that chapter two times to understand it. In the time it takes a person to read the same chapter twice, I will still be struggling to read it once, it’s not because I don’t understand the material, it’s because I cannot focus long enough to make it through the whole chapter and I have to start reading it over.

Living with ADD might be a pain in the butt, but it’s what makes me, me. If I didn’t have ADD, I might not struggle with daily tasks that require me to focus for a long time, but I wouldn’t be the same person. There are days when I hate myself because of my disorder, and I want to just throw myself a pity party, but I’ve learned that only make it worse. I hold my head up high, reevaluate my life, and make changes if I need it.

If you are like me and are living medication free, and wonder why you are doing that to yourself, just remember, it gets better. All those times when you cry yourself to sleep because you got an F on a paper or test, and you feel like you are not good enough or smart enough, remember you are smart enough! If you are my age, the jokes stop once you get to college, the only people judging you because of your learning disability will be yourself. If you are newly diagnosed and are in high school and kids are picking on you, just remember you are not alone in this world. There are many people struggling too. If you have to deal with kids picking on you because you get extra time on a test and you have to go to a special room, just remember most people who have a learning disability have been in those shoes. Take all the time you need, it’s your grade not theirs.

Most importantly if you are reading this and you hate yourself because of your learning disability, don’t let your disability define who you are. You can learn to manage it. Soon, you will learn how to love your silly, hyper, easily distracted self, and you wouldn’t want to be any different.