In my Agos-agan books, there’s a spell that mages can stamp on objects with a glyph to make them slip past people unnoticed. It’s inconspicuous, and so simple that even weaker mages are able to utilize it in dire circumstances. It’s appeared over and over again in my books, often as a plot point.
It only recently occurred to me how this spell is a manifestation of something I’ve lived with all my life.
Just this month, I was diagnosed with ADHD. This one thing answered so many questions I had, and suddenly offered an explanation for so much of the frustrations I’ve experienced in life. I’ve always been told I was too much and simultaneously, not enough, for just about everything–education, employment, friendships, and even my relationship to my parents has been defined by this neurological disorder to a distressing point. It explained why I try so hard and still end up failing. I miss little details, important details, no matter what I do. Numbers blur in my head. Dates just jump at me from out of nowhere. I’ve forgotten birthdays and thought I’ve finished tasks that have yet to be done (my brain assumes that because I’ve thought of it, it was finished, and can’t tell the difference between an assumption and a true memory). I even once read a story in a book and wondered for weeks why it ended funny, when what happened was I just didn’t read the next page that was staring right up at me the whole time.
It’s funny to realize how I’ve crafted the don’t-look spell in the Agos-agan books to essentially create ADHD on its targets. They can walk into a room and ignore an important object, even if they were looking for it. Just like whenever I place my phone within eyesight so I don’t lose it, and hey…end up losing it anyway. Or my glasses. Or my shoes. It’s mildly funny on the best of days, but most days, it just tacks on to an already overwhelmed mind such as mine. And when I’m having to juggle kids and their schoolwork and worrying about household finances so that I skip eating lunch in order to get another day to stretch grocery money (and then have to run on empty for a few hours), other things–even sometimes important things–have a way of becoming invisible.
It’s interesting, all these little things that manifest in our writing that we’re not even aware of. Now that I know, I do hope I lose less things. If not…well, maybe I can write up other versions of this spell…
