I am Not a Victim

by Stephanie Hurd in Uncategorized

January 3, 2012 • 4 comments

 I never wanted to do things for myself it seemed, especially when the odds were not in my favour. I loathed when people were against me. As a person with ADHD, I have extremely amazing empathy skills. I can pick up on people’s happiness, sadness and so forth. It has been a blessing and a curse. When people were against me, I stood there and allowed myself to be thrown down due to vicarious amounts of feelings I felt coming after me.

 Why? Why did I do this? I desired at the time to live in this “Woe is me” scenario for the rest of my life. I would whimper about parts of my life that weren’t going my way. It was more or less a melancholy state. I believed I couldn’t put my life back into working order, that it would stay broken. The nastiest part of all this behaviour was the grumbling. I would protest to the wrong people, my family, most of the time, taking out my feelings of anger and sadness on them. I complained assuming someone else might care enough to fix it for me as I couldn’t be bothered to fix it myself.  If not, I would just have to suffer due to the end results.

 I don’t know if anyone else with ADHD has experienced this—I do know that it hindered me for years and ADHD made it almost worse. You see, my father took me off my medication at ten years old. With untreated ADHD, I was not always able to vocalize my feelings in the most appropriate ways. I would almost turn off in my own brain and have conversations with these people; I would literally see them in my head. I could yell at them there, make plans of revenge I would never take and so forth.

 You see, everything but solve the problem. I remained very much so, a victim. I often couldn’t go forward as I would almost push myself backwards. It was a sad sight. For instance, I once was the top student in math. I really enjoyed numbers and multiplication. I learned about polynomials and so forth. I loved to learn about it and was real interested. After I would finish all the problems given to me, the teacher would then have me sit at a separate table and do a division problem that was as long as the table divided by one number. I loved it!

However, I had troubles in 7^th Grade math. I never vocalized to the teacher that he spoke too fast. I figured all the other students looked as if they were able to understand as they were doing the problems. If they were able to understand him, what was wrong with me that I didn’t? Moreover, I was most distracted by other students laughing and having a good time.

 So, this teacher was eventually replaced due to a health condition. However, by then, the damage was done. I never did well in math again. I didn’t get the concepts. However, I wasn’t willing to vocalize in the first place—I was willing to throw up my hands and give up. I am giving up because I don’t get it, there’s no way I’ll get it.

 I almost willed myself not to succeed. I remember next in high school, I perplexed many of my friends. I could help them study and they would get astounding marks on tests. However, they would look at my test with severe looks of disbelief. “Why didn’t you get higher? You knew more about this subject than I did,” They would say to me.

 I didn’t want to tell them I couldn’t focus. I saw the teachers walk past me, heard their shoes clunking on the floor. I heard pencils tapping, paper flipping—students rustling clothes. I heard chairs tip—chairs move more forward. I heard teachers whispering to students and to each other. I saw and heard the clock ticking the time away. Then as students handed in their tests, I thought I was running out of time and became anxious and quickly filled in the rest of the test.

 I didn’t want people to think there was something wrong with me. Then they would place me in a “Stupidity” category. They would think less of me. I didn’t want them to…you see? “Woe is me” they’ll think I’m dumb.
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 Oh if only I knew what I know now. I got on my medicine—it helped a lot with being able to come up with plans and how to vocalize in a better fashion. It opened many doors for me. Suddenly, I could read a whole book without skipping half chapters or focus on a teacher’s voice without having extreme zone out moments. Sure, the problems were still there but it was significantly better. However, I still was in that mode.

 Then I met my fiancé…who was at the time my boyfriend. I had a group dinner as I did almost every Sunday. He was unimpressed as I let everyone walk all over me. They weren’t helping and I was serving everyone, they left a huge mess as well. He asked me how I felt about this.

 I explained I was very upset as this was overwhelming. I then added my usual, but there was nothing I could do about it. I invited them. I made all the food and it was my job to serve them. He looked at me and said,

“That’s great, but what are you going to do to make it less overwhelming?”

I had heard it before, the words were not new to me. However, they seemed to ring out louder than ever before what are you going to do about it? The more I spent time with him, the more these words sunk in. It was clarity at its finest moment. I can do something about things I hate in my life. I don’t have to take things lying down.

 However, getting out of “Woe is me” is not an easy journey nor is it over. Today, I talked to the boss about a coworker who was almost killing my spirit. She would boss me around when in reality, she has the same status as me and moreover, I have been there almost ten years and she has been there three years. Thus, I obviously knew my job but felt stressed as she would try to yell me into doing things her way.

 Two years ago, I would have taken it. Today, I wasn’t going to. Twice in one day she did this to me. I couldn’t let it go. She had not only done this to me but two other people in one day that I had seen. The day before, she did it to her partner she was to be working with. “There’s nothing you can do”—the phase first hit me. Nonetheless, a stronger voice rang out, “She’s going to keep doing this to everyone unless you vocalize it. So, what are you going to do? Be the victim or help the crowd?”

 I went to the boss. She did understand, and was willing to take action. I did my part to help out. Deciding not to be the victim, whether the issue is underachieving or just believing you can make a difference, is not a crime. ADHD makes me special but it doesn’t control who I am. I may have the symptoms but I can learn techniques to advance who I am. I am Essy and I am learning to not be a victim, but rather a victor in my own life.