Inside My ADHD

Thoughts racing. Focus, focus. Frenzied; Focus, focus, focus. Push-down. Twist cap (righty-tighty, lefty-loosey). Pour out the contents. Select one-white capsule. Toss into mouth. Swallow with water. Wait--fifteen minutes. The chaos has stopped. The storm in my mind has passed; the only remnants are the puddles that are merely glimpses of thoughts. My mind is now clear.

My effective thought process has begun this way since the summer before my junior year in high school. Up to that point, I worked twice as long as my peers to do at least the same quality of work. I knew something was wrong from my overabundance of what seemed like careless errors, my difficulty with sight-reading music, and my nervous habits. Less-than-capable school psychiatrists tried to prod my mind to see what was wrong. I had to sit in a room with stained walls, broken chairs, and a table that wouldn't sit flat and count squares, repeat sentences, spell words, and add apples and oranges. The report came back negative. According to the school district, I was proficient in English, mathematics, and social interaction. The report went on to say that during the testing, I seemed distracted by tinkering construction outside the window and a noisy fax machine. Is this not what they were looking for in the first place? But since I wasn't a failing or misbehaving child, I was "fine." Eventually, a specialist was able to recognize patterns in my struggles and areas of weakness; I had Attention Deficit Disorder and slight dyslexia. It was at this time that I realized the full impact of the mind on one's actions. However, I was in no way prepared for the effects of one single 5-mg pill.

It was not as plain as a l...

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...we want to. The way I have felt inside my head is not normal. I may not be able to describe it clearly, but it is a feeling that I know-- and I recognize is wrong. It is not the result of bad parenting or poor schooling; it is only a feeling that I was not able to identify as a child. I will no longer be told that I am faking a disorder. Instead of seeking a diagnosis, I felt my school district (and the rest of the world) was just trying to prove me wrong and throw me into a pile of statistics about false cases of AD/HD. People can't read minds, so how can they say that someone else does not think differently than they do? Our high-speed modern world affects people's concentration and raises stress levels, but it does not make someone ADD. We are born with it. It was only a matter of time until I was able to recognize my problem and confront it.