I did my best to hide it for years, and sort of succeeded because I make my own hours, work from home, and do long-term projects. That way I was able to balance the good and bad times enough to make it seem like I was doing well "on average." Nobody knew that there were weeks or even months when I didn't do any actual work, because in the rest of the time I did enough to compensate. The end result was all that mattered.

Unfortunately, I've been doing very badly now for over a year, and I was getting increasingly unstable for years even before this. At this point I can't hide it anymore, even with all the flexibility I have, and I've had to go on medical leave, which I just hate so much. I feel absolutely worthless. Also, now they know that there's something going on. They don't know exactly what but they know that it's something related to mental illness and that I'm trying to get treatment soon, and hopefully after that I can go back and try to start functioning again. My employer is being pretty understanding but I'm still worried that that's just on the surface.

In my teens I had a few jobs where I had to be on-site and perform to standard every day, like one of my first jobs in a convenience store. I learned very quickly that I can't do that. I don't think I could keep any job except the ones where they give me enough freedom to try to average out my performance over time.