Navigating neurodivergence in girlhood
January 20, 2024 | Essay by Emilia Cardenas-Perez | Illustration by Delia Sauer
This article is part of Atrium’s Winter 2023 issue. To view the print edition online, visit our Issuu here.
I left behind a long list of teachers who despised me during my 12 years in the Florida public school system.
Twenty-six kids sit under the fluorescent lights of a classroom, staring down at a sheet of manila paper. The Floridian humidity creeps in through the windows of our portable – a clever euphemism for the mobile homes that served as our cramped classrooms.
The class is silent, except for the tapping of my foot on the floor. I’ve already read the passage and answered all the questions. I don’t want to just sit around while everyone else catches up.
I look down at my three dull Ticonderoga pencils – the perfect excuse to shake off the buzzing in my body. The manual pencil sharpener in the wall often provided relief from an otherwise painful day of sitting still in my wooden desk.
My teacher calls out my name. I already know I’ve done something wrong, but I’m not sure what.
I spent the rest of that day sitting in the back of the classroom, wiping away tears with the rough cotton of my polo uniform. A sunbeam was shining directly on the corner I had been confined to, making the already stuffy room even more unbearable.
It would be over ten years before I would understand why I was labeled the “problem child” and told I was “smart but lazy” or told I was wasting my potential. At 21, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Much of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD is catered toward boys and men. The assessment test for adults is littered with questions on behavior that isn’t socially acceptable for women. Much of it is based in the type of awareness that is ingrained in women from a young age.
My younger brother was diagnosed with ADHD at age 7 after a series of public tantrums, preschool expulsions and physical fights on the playground. His hyperactivity and impulsivity manifest in a different way than mine do; he was external, obvious and visible. The average age for boys to be diagnosed is around 7 years old. For girls, data shows that diagnosis is most often anywhere from age 17 to late 40s.
I was a high-performing student perfectly capable of making friends. I knew that if I acted on certain impulses , I would get labeled as “weird” and I wouldn’t be able to sit with the girls at lunch. Unlike many others with neurodivergence, I was never bullied or outcast. My academic achievements overshadowed any issues I had, with my talkativeness and strong emotions chalked up as the quirks of an otherwise bright girl. No one had any reason to suspect anything more, so I assumed what I now recognize as symptoms were character flaws that I alone was responsible for fixing.
Other girls were not loud. Other girls were not messy. Other girls were calm. Other girls were quiet. I loved being a girl – my mom always said she prayed for a daughter. But I envied the freedom and the unattainable liberties of boyhood.
Boys were allowed to be loud and messy. They weren’t constrained by the same rules that I was. The classic symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity and disruptiveness earned boys the title of “class clown,” while I would get an asterisk on an otherwise perfect report card for behavioral problems.
Sitting on the squeaky twin XL beds of my freshman year dorm room, my friend suggested it. She spent a lot of time psychoanalyzing herself, considering the possibility of her own diagnosis. I brushed it off at the time, but the thought lingered like a stain that won’t wash out.
For a while, I was stuck in a limbo of wanting to face the issue for the sake of my daily life while also wanting to avoid the definitive and unforgiving mark of a diagnosis. If I did have ADHD, I would have to accept this lifelong condition that burdened my brother for his entire life. If I didn’t have it, it meant I really was the obnoxious little girl that several middle-aged teachers made me out to be.
After months of hesitance, I decided I would finally muster up the courage and spit it out during my next check up with my doctor, who doubled as my psychiatrist. Sitting on the crinkly paper covering the standard issue medical bed, my heart pounded as I planned out the way I would finally declare it. My chaotic inner monologue was interrupted by his knock at the door.
The words sat at the front of my mouth, begging to be let out. My jaw was wired shut with shame and fear, with automated answers to his routine questions being the only thing that could pass though.
He skimmed through the ordinary questions and wrapped up the appointment in the same way he always does.
“Alright then, anything else?”
I intended to sound as nonchalant as possible, but I tripped over the words like the final stretch of a race. I expected him to ridicule me for even suggesting it, like I was stealing valor by self-diagnosing to excuse my personal shortcomings.
But he didn’t. He looked up at me behind his bushy gray eyebrows and circle lenses with a kind of compassion and understanding that I had never given to myself. He knows things about me that some of my closest friends don’t, but he often forgets what school I go to.
The word ‘adult’ headlined the assessment he gave me. It felt reductive, ignoring everything I endured as a child. I finished it in less than 10 minutes. I had a clear answer for every question.
The subsequent summer months were filled with distractions that kept me from wondering about my diagnosis. After almost two months of traveling, I was finally on a flight back to my hometown. As the landing wheels dropped and the tiny outline of my city grew to normal scale, my phone rang with a call from an unknown number. I declined it, assuming it was spam.
When the same number called again, I picked it up to hear my doctor’s New York accent on the other side. In his typical direct style, he casually dropped the diagnosis, unaware of its weight to me.
The boy who sat in the seat next to me during the flight handed me my carry-on. Maybe he could tell the phone call was too important to focus on plane etiquette.
I shuffled through the gate past the chain restaurants and souvenir shops on autopilot. The Palm Beach airport didn’t have any time to spare on a summer Saturday. Yanking my overfilled suitcase with its one broken wheel and pushed forward by retirees, I attempted to process how a ten-minute phone call on a JetBlue flight lifted away the blame and guilt that little girl had carried for so long.