I got in trouble for the first time when I was in 1st grade. I chased a kid in my class around with a sharpened pencil and ended up accidentally stabbing myself in the palm which left a mark due to the lead getting under my skin. The mark is still there to this day, at 15 years old. I always wondered why I was so different from other kids. Why none of them played with me on the playground. Why none of them had as much energy as I did. They told me “I was too crazy and I scared people”. The girls didn’t trade Shopkins with me because they thought I was too annoying and energetic. I later got diagnosed with ADHD. I had no idea what it meant, my parents and teachers just told me I was special and different from other kids.

Instead of going to Recess, I went to a special room that no other kids were allowed in. I went there everyday to talk to a lady named Mrs. Allen, who let me bounce on a yoga ball and sit on a little blowup mat that would move when you leaned a certain way. She told me that I would get special attention since I was special. She called it “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder”. Of course I had no idea what that meant, I just knew that barely any other kids were like me. I became friends with a boy named Aiden, and he was just like me. In elementary school, we weren’t allowed to chew gum. But me and Aiden were special and we were allowed to chew gum. Other kids would often ask us if they could have a piece of our gum and we said “No, you’re not special like us”.

When I was in 3rd grade, my teacher was always pointing out the fact that I stared out the window or just zoned out looking at anything. I hated that they said it outloud and it always embarrassed me because, quite frankly, I didn’t know why I did it. I started going to a group called the lunch bunch with some other girls who just happened to be in my Girl Scout troop. We sat in the counselors conference room instead of the lunch room every wednesday to talk about how our week was going, and to get away from the loud Cafeteria.

To this day, I still struggle with ADHD. I take 4 hours to get an assignment done that should take 45 mins for the average person. My best friend was recently diagnosed with ADHD, so it’s interesting to see people get diagnosed so late in life. I’ve learned to try and regulate my impulses that could and have gotten me into trouble. Even though my father also has ADHD and is not medicated he still struggles like I do and has learned to live with it and function without medicine. ADHD has made a huge impact in my life, but I can’t imagine what life would be like without it.