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This Is Us
I’m a Lost Girl of ADHD
This was my inner voice
If I just tried harder, I’d be more successful.
If I could just figure out what’s wrong with me, maybe I could fix it.
Life seems so much easier for everyone else. I must be doing it wrong.
These harsh words were my inner voice, my unwelcome mantras, for decades. They were the fallout from hearing, over and over again throughout my adolescence, “You’re just not living up to your potential.” If only my teachers had known that I couldn’t claw my way to my “full potential” by sheer will alone. If only I’d had the words to tell them.
In elementary school, I’m labeled gifted. I win the school spelling bee in the fourth grade, out-spelling even the fifth graders. My favorite teacher presents me with a citizenship award. Already a book lover, I create a volunteer position for myself in my elementary school library. But the year I turn 11, everything changes. As my hips widen, my grades plummet.
“Your science teacher says you’re always looking around during class. Do you know what he means?” my dad asks me after a parent-teacher conference. I shake my head, stare at my feet. I don’t know why my mind roams like a stray dog during math and science or why segments of school have suddenly become hard. I don’t know about the floods of estrogen and progesterone that course through me, creating havoc.
I’m profoundly disorganized: my folders, my backpack, my locker, my bedroom all brim with chaos. My emotions feel like external events, fierce storms that descended upon me. I’m “too sensitive” — to light, to sounds, to criticism (real or perceived). My mind overflows with a million great ideas, but I can never seem to execute them.
I used to be smart, I think. I just need to try harder.
It will take decades to understand that it’s possible to be two things at once: Sharp and scattered. Creative and cluttered. Gifted and challenged.
When I’m 20, lounging on my gray futon in a cloud of marijuana smoke wondering when my life will actually begin, I catch an episode of Oprah about girls with ADHD. “Inattentive.” “Daydreamer.” “Disorganized.” The words are a poem that spells my name. I glance…
