A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend at school. He said that I had ADD. I just thought he was making stuff up, cause I always thought attention deficit meant you were a neglected child who wanted attention. After watching a show on TV, I figured out a little of what ADD really was. I talked to my friend again and he explained some of the reasons he thought I had ADD (unfortunately my memory isn’t so good so I can’t tell you). His reasons seemed to make sense. Then he tried what he calls the Dot Test. He picked out a nice dot on the wall and told me to look at it for a couple minutes. That went over real well. The first time I did really well, until he said I couldn’t talk. Then I couldn’t last for even thirty seconds, whereas when I made him take the test, he sat there for several minutes before I made him stop. When I got home that day, I told my mother what he had said. She didn’t believe him. The next day, after having thought about it a little, I asked my mom if I could get tested for ADD. Then she said in an angry voice “Why are you so obsessed with ADD?!”. I went to my room without saying anything.
A few days later, my mom told me I had a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks to be “tested” for ADD. In the mean time I tried doing a little research on the matter. The first few sites I found didn’t really help much. When I found this site though things started to make sense. I read the first page and what it said seemed right, so I went to the stories page. As I read the stories, I started to remember incidents throughout my life that were pretty much like the ones in the stories I read. The more I read, the more I could understand about my life. I wish I could remember the some of the experiences I thought of to tell you, but I can’t.
When the time finally came for my appointment, I learned a few more things. One was that my dad thought this was a big waste of time. Another was that one of my teachers thought I had ADD already, but my mom didn’t believe her.
When it came to talking to the doctor, he asked me why I thought I had ADD. As far as he was concerned, it was my friend who thought I had it, not me, but I decided to say a little about it anyway. In a way, I wanted to tell him everything so that he would know what I know, but I also wasn’t sure how he would react. I told him a little bit, then let him talk to see what he thought. It then became obvious that he thought long before the appointment when my mom had first called that I didn’t have ADD.
His only two reasons I know of are: one, Ritalin is an over prescribed drug (I don’t know what that has to do with anything); two, I had gotten good grades at one time (yes, the good ol’ classes where you basically get an A for trying). He then went on to say that my drop in grades (oh no! B- to C+) occurred for one of two reasons. Either I was on drugs or I’m depressed. Neither of which is true, but…He then went on to ask me if I was smoking pot while my mother was sitting next to me on the bench (what was he smoking? like I’d admit it even if I was). I think he might have said something else to me besides “You do not have ADD.”, but I wasn’t really listening when it became apparent that he didn’t really know what he was talking about. As we left the doctor’s office, my mom said how she arranged the appointment to boost my self-esteem from the doctor telling me I didn’t have ADD. For the next couple of days, I started to wonder if maybe I did not have ADD. Then things no longer made any sense. What once seemed so clear, was now shrouded in fog. I was almost certain I wasn’t “normal”, then I thought I wasn’t ADD either. Nothing else made sense, so what was I? I actually started getting a little scared (I can’t really explain why) so I decided to write this story. I can’t really tell anyone else, since no one believes I’m ADD. I think I am, but now I’m not so sure. And now I am starting to confuse myself, again. Feel free to e-mail me anyone. Just about anything you have could probably help. And I’d love to hear from you.