Hi there, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Melissa , I'm 27 yrs old and live in Western North Carolina where I share a home with the love of my life Jr who is 28 and has suffered from ADHD, Bipolar as well as OCD for the last 7 1/2 yrs we've been together. To say the least it's not been easy being in a relationship with some one who is ADHD, as well as Bipolar and OCD. I was born Jan 15th 1981 my mother Linda is a retired airforce nurse and has always been there for me through out my whole life, no matter what. . When I was 18 months old my parents seperated and then divorced shortly after I turned two, my dad was in and out of my life , so it up to my mom to take care of things. My mom knew that something was wrong with me when I was about 5 yrs of age, so she had me checked out . At the age of 6 I was diagnosed ADD, from there I tried several medications, Ritlian being the first, it really didnt' help , just supressed my appitight which didn't help much considering the fact that I was a tiny patiete thing any way , so my mom took me off of the Ritlian , as I got older and into my teens I tried Nurotten , Depicoat, Tenex, Prozac, Catapress ( the patch), my parents said that they worked, but i just felt like I was doped up all the time and couldn't really function the way i wanted to. At the age of 17 i decided to go off of all medications and try for once to live my life with out medications and to learn how to manage my ADD on my own terms. At the age of 18 I dropped out of high school due to the fact that I wasn't feel that I was being challanged as well as I could have, not to menton the fact that I was mentally burnt out , which at the time I was in my junior yr which is the worst yr you can pick to drop out. it was in that same yr I met a gentleman online and started dating, little did i know that the realtionship was too good to last , after 2 yrs of being in an off and on relationship with this man I found out i was pregnant with my son William , 3 months into my pregnancy I finally ended the relationship after discovering that my partner had been very dishonest with me about every aspect of his life. In May 2001 , I gave birth to beatuful handsome boy named William weighing 7lbs 15 oz. Then in Sept 28 2001, two weeks after 9/11 , 4 months after giving birth to my son and 9 months after leaving the realtionship with my son's father I met the love of my life Jr, we started dating but little did i know I was up for a rough road ahead. To say the least the first 3 yrs of relationship were a disaster, neither Jr or I were really emotionally and mentally ready for any type of serious comitted relationship . Jr was dealing with some battles of his own, struggling with a horbile cocaine and crack addiction along with some major legal issues. After 3 yrs of drama , we broke up and went our seperate ways. A year and 1/2 after breaking up , we started talking again and hanging out, that was 3 yrs ago we've been together ever since. Now i'll be honest, these last 3 yrs haven't been easy either . When I was 25 I moved out of my moms house and moved in with Jr to his one bed room, one bathroom basement apartment that's when all the mental Health issues started. The Bipolarness and the OCD, the first year wasn't too fun, Jr was on probation and was forced to get clean and sober for the first time in his life. Well it took a year but he got his probation paid off and did the drug task thing and proved that he was no longer a drug addict , he's now been clean and sober going on 4 yrs and has been on unsupervised probation a year now. In Jan 2008, we finally moved out of the one bed room, one bath room basment apartment and move 30 minutes out to a bigger one bed room one bath apartment with a nice little kitchen, which before the other apartment did not have, plus we don't have a lan lord above us , our lan lord lives across the road, so we have our own domaine. To say the least it's not been easy, Jr and I have to work ten times hard on our problems compared to a non ADD/ ADHD couple. Now for me getting pregnant with my son actually retrained my brain in alot of ways. I guess you can say pregnancy hormones did me good and I've been that way ever since. It's taken me 7 yrs to retrain my brain, Now at the age of 27 i've finally taped into all the gifts that come with ADD, I don't see my ADD as a negative disorder, I know that god has a purpose for me , and he revels those gifts to me ever day .

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