I have to say, I do love the “there’s no test for it, so it can’t exist” trick. Very clever.

Indeed it is. Under that rationale, love can’t exist–hey, there’s no concrete test for it, right? Can’t exist!

And, wren, thank you. I’ve had ADD my whole life–it was diagnosed early, but I’ve only been on light medication for it. I’ve always kept it a secret from people, ever since I found the term “minimal brain dysfunction” used to refer to it in an old quiz bowl book, and I didn’t want anybody to find out, or to say that exceptions were being made for me. I got through high school and college, and now that I’m in law school, I’ve realized that I need help. Reading your comment made me finally have the courage to go to the Office of Disability Services and get an appointment to get tested.

Here’s how it works:
1. Go to a popular feminist blog, make a lot of posts for a few weeks
2. Find something offensive and post almost non-stop, responding condescendingly to everyone that disagrees
3. When the original offending post is shut down or no one else is posting, bring up the offending action in every other (related or unrelated) post
4. Slowly drag the conversation to your blog
5. Become more inflamatory/condesending/rude on your own blog thus drawing traffic from the supporters from the original offending poster and possibly a few people who agree with you

Follow those five easy steps and you have Elaine’s method. Basically, she is trying to build her online presence by picking fights with prominent bloggers. Hopefully enough people are onto her crap that she won’t be successful when she tries it again – and I have no doubt that she will.

But that’s my knee-jerk vegan hatred popping out again — apologies to the rest of you, aka the non-crazy vegans.

[/snark]

I’m currently negotiating the new medication dance… my depression started building again recently, and I had a suicide attempt. My partner has had to spend his vacation monitoring me to make sure I don’t end up dead. This isn’t me being disgruntled with the world, it’s not me deciding everything is too hard for weak, medicated me… it’s quite simple me trying to stop unbearable, all-pervading pain. My old antidepressant worked fantastically for three years, but now I need to shift onto something else.

You know what’s been affecting me horribly the past week? Vision problems. Physical pain. Weakness in my limbs. Stress-related muscle pain. Agonising back cramps. Dry eyes. Nausea. Etc etce etc. For many of us, depression is a very physical condition. Don’t tell me that’s all in my head, and that I only “think” my meds are stopping it.

I call my meds “meds” or “crazy pills”, depending on my mood. On the similiarity between this stigma and trans stigma, though, I do know a transwoman who refers to her hormone tablets as a very tongue in cheek “girl germs”. And frankly, she’s the one dealing with the related issues, if she wants to lighten the mood by being jokingly self-deferential about her medication, that’s entirely up to her.

I’ve only read excerpts from Women and Madness, but always had it on that big list of Things to Read Someday.