I have been locked in an internal battle of galactic proportions everyday of my life since I was born. I'm at war against a chronic mental disorder that is constantly changing and can effect somewhere around 3 million people in the United States. I am locked into a changing internal battle inside my head with my ADHD. ADHD is not fun and it's not a joke. I can read your mind, reader, you are about to say, "But Maggie! Everyone makes those Jokes so It has to be okay right?" No, reader, it's not.

I'm going to get something out of the way first before I begin. I really hate my ADHD. I wouldn't wish this on anybody. It can be hell for me sometimes. The scatterbrained moments. The stress. The self-esteem issues. It's a cocktail of a train wreck.

People call ADHD a gift, There is ever a book called, "The Gifts of ADHD". I'm calling bullshit right now because having ADHD doesn't seem like a gift when I'm behind on articles, classwork, constantly distracted, and stressed out. It doesn't seem like a gift when I wake up at 11pm and take my medicine a few minutes later only to enter into a weird brain fog and rapidly remember everything I need to get done in a few hours because I've been unintentionally putting everything off because "I'll have time for that later", having ADHD does not seem like a gift when I put expectations on myself and everything collapses on top of me when I remember one more thing I need to do on my to do list, ADHD doesn't seem like a gift at all right now. ADHD feels like a discouraging shadow monster that is lurking inside of my head and devouring parts of my brain. It's a shadow monster that makes my stomach turn to knots and stresses me out. It's a shadow monster that creates impulsiveness that people find frustrating to handle and somehow shoves people away. My ADHD is the shadow monster that is in my head that forces me to need medicate myself with chemicals on a timer in a digestible pod so my brain can function normally and I can act human. My ADHD is something I hate with nearly every fiber of my being because I can't go through life like an out of control car letting things happen and be able to live a regular life that is normal for someone of the economic status I've been raised at.

I have to be able to function at the level of competence that society has deemed acceptable for someone looking to enter the workforce someday with a higher education. That level of competence is like trying to scale a mountain with a box of paper clips and duct tape some days. There are moments in my day that I just want to hide in my bed and not come out. There are also moments in my day when I feel like I'm in control of my shadow monster then something happens and It's like Helios' son lost control of sun chariot and is frying the earth. I have days where I feel like I'm spiraling out of control or am sliding down a slope and can't get up. I have days where I am fine then stuff goes wrong and I am in this pit that I can't get out of. To be able to be deemed a functional member of society I have to hide all of my struggling because if I don't I face letting myself down and that would be the biggest disappointment of my life. I'm barely holding myself together since the past hour when I realized I hadn't written anything for last week. I feel like glass and steel held together by tape. I feel like I could fall apart at any moment.

I feel that I am not good enough. I feel that my work isn't good enough. I feel that my ADHD is something that has crawled its way into my mind and is slowly sucking out information I need to be able to preform the Content Editor Job I have effectively. My ADHD effects my writing, creates anxiety for my everyday life, and creates stress from that anxiety. The anxiety and stress combination that stems from My diagnosed Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder comes in the form of forgetting important information, like how to properly make an article appear interesting so it can be clicked on to be read while not appearing like click bait, and things I currently aren't sure how to describe.

The only thing that has made my plane crash of the last few hours bearable is the fact that I can tune out the rest of the world with a pair of headphones and music. It's not distracting. Some people have asked me if in order for me to get anything done, I need to be in boring silent room alone. Sometimes, yes, I need that, but very rarely. If I need to get stuff done what I need really depends. I've established areas in my life where I can do certain things and only those things. I never use my bed for studying because I'll associate my bed with studying instead of sleeping. I work on school work in the library or at my desk in my dorm. Associating things with certain tasks is something I've learned to do over several years. I am able to focus while writing in this particular moment because of the music playing my headphones.

The only good things about my ADHD is the Hyperfocus. When I go into Hyperfocus... It's like I have a superpower because I can plow through something in a few hours. Hyperfocus can be a double edged sword because then I can only focus on that one thing. Hyperfocus can sometimes lead to lock-on when I get so focused on something that I start stressing out and spiral out of control. Anyone who aids people with ADHD can detect that I was having lock-on earlier when writing this. Anyone who aids people with ADHD and does it in a way that the person you are helping benefits...