People are crazy. It’s as simple as that. We all have our baggage, whether you’re the helpless guy who got left at the altar by his fiance, the women who lives alone with her four cats, someone with social anxiety, insomnia, foot fetishes, a broken heart… you name it, we’ve all got our s***. It’s inevitable that we’ll each have issues. Mine just happened to be a learning disorder. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly complaining, Attention deficit disorder means you’ll never have a dull moment. However, when you live in a world where a grade average can decide your future for you, it’s not necessarily ideal.

As a child (I technically still am, but you know what I mean) I was odd to say the least. I wore my one piece swimsuit with princess Ariel plastered on the front about 87% of the time, and clunked around in kids dress up heels the other 13%. I was incapable of sitting still, so when it came time for my parents to send me off to kindergarten they were less than thrilled. My behavior was nothing short of stellar, but my ability to do actual school work was questionable.

Doing homework when I was young was like pulling teeth. I dangled my head and hung my body off the side of the kitchen chair, while holding on for dear life to the legs of the table. Letting the blood rush to my head until I was bright apple red was still better than homework. My Mom scolded me while she cooked dinner only a few feet away, “Annalise, sit up and do your work, you’re making it way harder than it should be!”... this never stopped me. Looking back at it, I could have sucked in my pride and done what my mother was telling me for at least a half an hour. My after school experiences would have been sunshine and rainbows if I had.

It took until I was 12 for anyone to ever put their finger on it, and middle school was a whole new ballpark. Homework was a regular task, classes got harder and I just didn’t love it enough to keep up with my work. Always feeling like the clueless one doesn’t do much for a girl’s self esteem. I was failing science, and never payed attention in dance class anymore, which was extremely out of the ordinary being that I had been doing it since age three. Eventually I reached my breaking point, and it was obvious that there was an issue. “I’ve talked to her multiple times and I feel like she’s looking right through me” my coach told my Mom. This was the cause of my mother dragging me into the doctor’s office on a mid november day. I always hated that place, it felt like Antarctica and smelled like latex. My doctor drew some blood and ran typical tests praying that it was a vitamin or oil deficiency that could be fixed as easy as shoving a pill down my throat. Sorry for them it’s my whole head.
My doctor handed out surveys to all the important people in my life (parents, coach, teachers), anyone who came in contact with me on a daily basis that could judge if I was crazy or not. When results were finally in it was an obvious diagnostic, I had been ADD for years and had no idea. You may hear that Attention Deficit Disorder is an excuse for not paying attention, doing poorly on school work, or just acting out in general. The truth is that there’s never one thing going on in my brain, and I’ll never know any other way. It’s similar to the feeling you get when everyone is yelling at once and you can’t decide who you should listen to, or who will have the best perspective that you can find value in. It’s constant. Sure it’s nothing compared to what other people go through, but mental health is 100% underrated.

I began to see it everywhere. On math tests instead of writing formulas on my allowed cheat sheets I would write “FOCUS” in the top corner to remind myself that I could never be the last one done with my test, and I needed to move quicker. My IQ felt miniscule, And talking to anyone about my opinion of anything was daunting. I was just flat out afraid of looking stupid. Having so much to offer in your head and not feeling able to speak your mind is agonizing.

A few months ago I had a few friends over for a sleepover. Conversation sparked about professions and I had so much to say about the subject. I finally let go of myself and didn’t care what people thought of my intelligence. When all was said and done, someone quietly said “I had no idea you were smart”... I didn’t know what to do. I sat there like a brick feeling like the wind had been vacuumed out of my lungs. No one had ever told me I was intelligent, and to be honest I had no idea that people thought I wasn’t.  Just because I am wired different doesn’t mean I am any less capable of brain power. You can’t let your struggles define you. We’re addicted to the thought of being imperfect, and our journey greatness only begins when we let that piece of ourselves go.