by Rose Calder

Created on: March 11, 2009

When it comes to that neurobehavioral developmental disorder called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), I have been living with it all my life; I just wasn't diagnosed with it until I was nearly twenty years old. Which is pretty impressive, considering that I came of age in the 1990s, when ADD seemed to be the ultimate buzz word. If you think back on all the controversy surrounding ADD - particularly the part concerning whether or not it was being over-diagnosed - it's somewhat amazing that it wasn't until the decade came to a close that someone took an honest look at me and said, "You know, I think that girl's got ADD."

A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that I just don't fit the popular stereotype of what a person with ADD is supposed to be like. This isn't to say that I don't have my off days, where I can't seem to focus on one thing for long or suddenly get distracted by something shiny, but those are pretty much the only real giveaways. In every other respect, I appear to be just like everyone else, and that's because I've had to put a lot of work into acting like it.

Back when I first started school, it became apparent early on that there were some problems. My teachers all agreed that I was bright, but that my attention was prone to wandering instead of staying on track. One of my teachers went so far as to dub me 'Lucy Doesn't Listen' after a story from our reading books, due to the similarity between the main character and myself when it came to following directions. Since this was back in the mid-1980s and ADD was not yet a part of the national consciousness, the common consensus was that I just needed to buckle down and stop being such a little space cadet. So I did my best to do what was expected of me, even though I didn't know at the time that it meant waging an uphill battle against the way my brain is wired.

The majority of the fight has been against my immediate environment. As an admitted high-stimulus junkie, I have a habit of allowing my surroundings to get a bit distracting; television on, laptop up and running, people talking, etc. Which is fine for when I'm just hanging out, but not so much for when I need to be productive. So it's just a matter of recognizing that there are times when I need to cut back on the background noise, and actually following through with that realization. It's not always easy to do (particularly when what's going on around me is a lot more interesting than what I'm supposed to be doing,) but it's the

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