#i can’t concentrate on anything else and i’ve got midterms and exams to study for

[imbiactually-28]

i think i need to go to the middle of a really dense forest and just scream at the top of my lungs where no one can hear me

[volantium]

your doorstep calls my name aka soft boys painting each others nails 

for @venomondenim 🖤

also available on ao3

The thing is, Peter’s noticed, is that Harley’s always got chipped nail polish.

It begins out as a fresh coat, clean and without a single mark marring the shiny surface. But it doesn’t take long—usually only a couple of hours—before it starts flaking off. Harley never seems to notice, or mind. It chips because Harley’s so hands on, no matter what he’s doing. The likely cause is the fact that he’s always in the lab, and both of them know you aren’t meant to be wearing nail polish with all the state-of-the-art tech Tony lets them play with.

But Peter’s noticed when Harley’s tapping his fingers against the kitchen bench, and it chips off in small terrazzo pieces. Or how Harley will pick at his fingers when he’s nervous, and it peels back underneath the curve of his nail. Peter doesn’t know what any of this means, that he has this knowledge lurking in the back of his head. It’s just another Harley-ism he’s taken stock of, analysed and put into the drawer of everything else he knows about his best friend, and thusly resolutely and absolutely not thought about again.

He almost always wears black nail polish. Peter can count on one hand the amount of times Harley’s had bright yellow or red fingernails. It follows, logically, that this only occurs whenever Harley’s looking after Morgan.

The thing is, Peter thinks, as he watches one such time, Morgan painting careful lines of bright purple half on Harley’s thumb nail and half on his skin, is that he wouldn’t mind if that was him instead.

Peter’s never had nail polish on before.

He wonders what it’s like.

This thought sits with him for the next few weeks, as he watches Harley chip his black nail polish without a care in the world. Would it be okay if he asked Harley? Would it be okay if he asked why it’s always black? Would it be okay if he asked Harley to paint his nails, maybe, just once, so he knows what it’s like?

They’re hanging out after class one day, supposedly studying for their upcoming midterms, but Harley’s sat at his desk with a bottle of black nail polish and is slowly rubbing off the remnants of his last paintjob with a cotton pad. Peter’s leaning with his back to the wall on Harley’s bed, watching him from across the room, his biology exam notes spread around him.

He watches Harley carefully tip the bottle of acetone upside down so it soaks the cotton pad and presses it to his nail. Peter knows he’ll leave it for a little while, so the chemicals break down the polish, he’s watched Harley do this often enough that he knows black’s hard to get off.

Peter takes a breath, steeling himself for reasons he doesn’t even know.

“Harl?” He calls, just slightly louder than the music playing from Harley’s computer.

Harley doesn’t look back when he replies. “Yeah, darlin’?”

It’s been years of Harley calling him darling in that honeyed accent of his, Peter’s used to it, but like everything else that Peter resolutely and absolutely doesn’t think about, this time it makes something swoop low in his stomach and butterfly settle high amongst his rib cage.

“Can I ask a question?”

“You just did,” Harley says, and even from across the room Peter can see a hint of a smirk flirt across his face. “But you can ask another.”

Peter isn’t in the mood to deal with smarmy Harley James Keener attitude right now. Too focused on the fact that this is finally his chance to figure out Harley just a little bit more.

“Why do you wear nail polish?”

He can tell Harley wasn’t expecting that particular question in the way his shoulders tense and he goes still.

But this is Harley—Harley should know why he’s asking.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” he rambles anyways, because Harley still hasn’t said anything. “I just wanted to know, you don’t have to tell me, like you’ve done it the entire time we’ve known each other, I think it’s cool—”

“Peter, darlin’,” Harley interjects, fond amusement colouring his voice. “Calm down.”

Peter takes a breath, lets it out. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologise for, I just wasn’t expecting you to ask.”

Peter’s shoulders slump when Harley remains quiet for the following minute, only for Harley to get up from his desk and make his way over towards the bed, settling in amongst Peter’s textbooks and worksheets and the green bedsheets. 

“Because my dad always hated it,” is what Harley eventually says.

“Oh.”

It’s kind of half the answer Peter was expecting. He knows enough, between Tony and what Harley’s told him, to connect the dots.

“I’m sorry.”

“Darlin’,” Harley says, looking at him with those sea-blue eyes. “You gotta stop apologising for stuff that ain’t your fault.”

Peter flushes. “Do you think you could paint mine? I’ve never done it before.”

“I’m guessin’ you wouldn’t want black though, right?”

“Do you have any pastels?” Peter asks, in a smaller voice than he means to.

Harley nods. “I’m sure I’ve got some somewhere, I usually save ‘em for Morgan or Abby.”

Harley stands up to go find them, and Peter starts nervously playing with the fraying hem of his hoodie. It’s a faded red and too large and has Rose Hill High scrawled across it in big block letters and not his hoodie at all.

This is when it clicks—the oh moment in his head, that maybe he likes Harley just a bit more than friends should.

Harley returns in the midst of this revelation, setting the handful of coloured polishes down on his bedside table, clinking as the glass bottles knock against each other.

Peter wonders how his world hasn’t been tipped upside down and come to a grinding halt, too.

“This was all I could find,” Harley says, sitting across from him on the bed. “Gonna look like you dipped your hand in a bag of Easter eggs.”

He’s right—there’s pale pinks and blues and yellows like right out of a candy store, but Peter loves them.

“No, it’s fine. They’re nice colours.”

Harley smiles at him, bright and beautiful, and Peter has to marvel, just a bit how he didn’t realise before the depth of his feelings.

“Give me your hand.”

Peter holds his hand out for Harley to take. They’ve held hands before—Peter’s a tactile person—but there’s something new about this, the way Harley gently twists his fingers around so he can paint them comfortably and correctly.

“What colour do you want me to start with?” Harley asks, quiet, his voice barely a rumble in his chest.

Peter looks up at him. Harley’s looking down at his hand and back at the colours on the table every now and again, like he’s thinking of the perfect pattern for Peter’s nails. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is starting to set; it floods the room in a wash of orange-gold, and in the sunlight Harley glows. The freckles across his nose, the faint blonde in his hair gilded and shining, and the clear crystal of his eyes, hidden ever so slightly beneath gold eyelashes. It makes Peter a little breathless, just looking at him.

“You chose,” Peter finally says, maybe a little but too long after Harley asked. “You know more than me.”

Harley sweeps the pad of his thumb over Peter’s fingernail, just enough that it catches amongst the groves of his fingerprint.

“Yeah, okay,” Harley says, and reaches for the yellow.

They sit in silence as Peter watches Harley paint his nails. Yellow on his thumb, then egg-blue on his forefinger. The pale millennial pink goes on his middle finger, then blue, then yellow again.

Harley’s moved onto Peter’s other hand by the time Peter figures out how to say it.

“Harley?”

Harley hums in acknowledgement, too busy concentrating on painting his nail blue without leaving streaks.

“I really like you,” Peter confesses.

Harley gives a short laugh, still doesn’t look up. “I’d hope so, we are best friends, right, Parker?”

“No,” he says, and waits until Harley stops painting and lifts his head. “I like you like you.”

“Oh, okay,” Harley gives a simple shake of his shaggy blonde head, and goes back to painting Peter’s nails with careful concentration. “I like you like you, too.”

Peter blinks. “Don’t just say that.”

“I’m not.”

“Harley.” “Peter,” Harley parrots, finally looking up at him. “Have you met you? Of course, I like you, dumbass.”

“You’re the worst, Keener.”

Harley smirks once more. “No, I’m not. You like me like me.”

“I—” Peter starts, cutting himself off, because Harley’s leaning closer.

“Peter,” Harley says, his voice soft and low. “Can I kiss you?”

Peter nods, unable to speak, and then—

Harley kisses him.

It’s soft and it’s sweet and it’s not at all how Peter imagined his first kiss with a boy would be. But it’s Harley and that counts for something. Harley’s hand comes up to cup his jaw, light and tender, and Peter has to remind himself he currently has wet pastel paint on his nails and can’t sink his hands into Harley’s hair without tragedy occurring.

Harley tilts his head, thumb sweeping across Peter’s cheekbone, deepening the kiss just enough that those butterflies in Peter’s stomach all fly off at once.

“So,” Harley says, after they pull back and the both of them smile like fools. “Do you wanna paint my nails?”

“They’ll look bad.”

“No they won’t,” Harley disagrees, and, because he knows that Peter likes him likes him, says, “They’ll be perfect, ‘cause it’s you.”

Peter leans forward to brush a shy kiss to Harley’s cheek, and reaches for the black nail polish.

[rachelkaser]

Stay Golden Sunday: Adult Education

Blanche is sexually harassed by one of her college professors. The other Girls try to get tickets to a Frank Sinatra concert.

Picture It...

Dorothy is on the phone, trying to get tickets to an upcoming Frank Sinatra concert. She’s almost seen him in concert multiple times and doesn’t want to miss another chance. Blanche enters, upset because she’s failed her psychology midterm. If she fails the course, she won’t get the secondary degree she needs for a promotion. Meanwhile, Dorothy is furious that the concert has already sold out. She, Rose, and Sophia discuss alternate ways of getting tickets, with Sophia promising that she’s “got connections.”

Rose tries to help Blanche study, but it’s obvious Blanche isn’t concentrating. Dorothy comes home, saying she tried ticket brokers, but the only way she’s going to get tickets is to go to a scalper, which she plans to do over Rose’s objections. Blanche tries to head out of the house to go to a bar, but the other Girls tell her to keep studying. Blanche says she’s just not getting the material. Dorothy encourages her to talk to her teacher -- she did it when she was a kid with a speech impediment, and her teacher helped her.

ROSE: Whatever happened to your teacher, Mrs. Lenoff? DOROTHY: Oh gosh, last I heard she retired from teaching, opened a bed and breakfast someplace in Wode Island...…..Rhode Island.

After one of her classes, Blanche approaches Professor Cooper and tries to talk to him about the problems she’s been having. He tells her she’s the only student who failed the midterm and she’ll need an A to even pass the class. She asks if there’s anything she can do to make it up, and he starts to imply she’ll have to do some “hard work.” She says she’ll do whatever she has to, and he gives her his home phone number, and tells her to “use it” if she wants her A while caressing her hand. Blanche picks up on his meaning and is horrified.

Dorothy comes home to Rose and Sophia, and tells them she balked during her deal with the scalper, so now she’s not sure what else to do to get tickets. Sophia thinks she shouldn’t have chickened out. Rose tries to reason that maybe they just aren’t meant to go. Dorothy, on the other hand, is determined to finally see Sinatra in concert.

ROSE: Here we are, Sophia. The perfect after-dinner treat: A nice dish of Jell-O. SOPHIA: I hate Jell-O. If God wanted peaches suspended in midair, He would have filled them with helium.

Blanche comes home and tells the other Girls what happened. Rose and Dorothy are furious on her behalf (Sophia is indifferent), and encourage her to report him for sexual harassment. Blanche didn’t outright refuse him, because she’s not sure if she can pass the course, but they tell her she’ll feel terrible about herself if she gives in. They relate their own stories of sexual harassment: Dorothy was harassed by the principal at her first teaching job (while he was in a corset and high heels), and Rose was harassed by a soda jerk who arranged her sundaes in an obscene way.

Blanche visits the Dean of the school, and he’s swamped, having just started the job. He initially tries to brush her off, not wanting to deal with such a big problem as sexual harassment, but she shames him into taking a report. She describes to him what happened, and he’s aghast, but when she tells him there were no witnesses, he becomes cagey. He says he can’t do anything because it’s just Blanche’s word against Professor Cooper’s, and has the audacity to say, “A man’s career is at stake!” Blanche points out that hers is too, but Dean Tucker dismisses her from the office.

DOROTHY: *regarding Sophia’s tickets* Ma, how in the world did you get these? SOPHIA: Easy -- I called Frank. I told you I had connections. ROSE: You know Frank Sinatra?! SOPHIA: No, Frank Caravicci, from the fish market. He’s always been good to me, never a bad piece of cod. He knows Frank. BLANCHE: Sinatra? SOPHIA: No, Frank Tortoni, the dry cleaner. Tina’s third cousin once removed. DOROTHY: Tina Tortoni? SOPHIA: Tina Sinatra!

When Blanche returns home, Rose immediately starts in with her own story -- she was listening to a contest on the radio, and managed to win tickets to the Sinatra concert. Blanche starts to tell her story, but Dorothy interrupts to say she managed to buy tickets for the concert from a scalper (after convincing the person who was going to buy them that she had three weeks to live). Just when Blanche gets their attention again, Sophia walks in and reveals she got tickets too -- prime tickets in the third row, thanks to her aforementioned connections. Blanche finally snaps and says she’s going to handle this herself and goes to study her butt off.

During her final exam, Blanche stays right up to the end. Professor Cooper not-so-subtly hints that she might have to retake the course as she hands her exam in. She tells him that’s not going to happen and he initially thinks she’s taking him up on his offer. She instead lays him out, telling him she decided to get an A on the final in part to spite him for treating her that way -- and she did. I can’t really capture how good this moment is; see it for yourself:

Later that night, the other three Girls come home to worried Blanche at 2 am. Turns out Dorothy tried to scalp their seven extra tickets to an undercover police officer. So Dorothy once again missed her chance to see Sinatra. Blanche tells the other Girls she told off her Professor, but unfortunately the promotion for which she got the degree has already been taken by a woman who got a tummy tuck and a butt lift. But, as Blanche says the line that takes us into the analysis section:

“Some day her butt will turn to mush, but I’ll always have my degree!”

Sometimes a Golden Girls Very Special Episode hits you over the head with its Very Special-ness using dramatic music or tear-jerking lines. See, for example, the episode about the break-in. Sometimes a VSE sneaks up on you, cloaking itself in gags and jokes, only to reveal a shockingly relevant message at its core. In this case, the topic is sexual harassment, and the message is that women should push back against that kind of behavior in whatever way they can. It’s a little simplistic, but it gets the job done.

ROSE: At least you’re doing well in your other two courses. BLANCHE: But those are art course. They come easier to me. I’ve always had a great appreciation for arts and... artists. SOPHIA: And carpenters and mechanics, and delivery boys.

Out of all the episodes I’ve thus far reviewed of Golden Girls, it depresses me that this one’s core concept is still so pertinent in the times we’re living. In this, the age of #MeToo, it’s more important now than ever. Everything Blanche goes through here can (and does) happen today, in almost exactly the same way it happens here. It would almost be upsetting to watch, if Blanche weren’t such a badass about the situation -- and hell, even then it’s hard to stomach parts of the episode. Hell, just look at Blanche’s expression in the image at the top of this post, when Professor Cooper gropes her hand after making her his scuzzy offer.

I mean, look at what happens to Blanche in this episode: She’s demeaned by her professor, the person who’s supposed to be helping her, and told she’ll have to sleep with him if she wants to pass the course and get the degree she wants. He even prefaces his offer with, “If you really want that degree,” which just reeks of the same kind of manipulative bullshit I and many others have heard from harassers. Then, when she tries to report him through official channels, she’s dismissed by another man who has the absolute temerity to say he can’t take her word for it because, “A man’s career is at stake!” In what’s perhaps the most progressive moment of the episode, Blanche stands up and retorts, “Well so is mine! Not to mention my dignity!”

ROSE: Look, if the tickets are that hard to get, maybe we just weren’t meant to go. DOROTHY: Maybe you weren’t, Rose. But two weeks from now, I intend to be sitting in front of Old Blue Eyes himself. Live, in-person, middle-aged spread and all. ROSE: Dorothy, you can take off a few pounds by then if you put your mind to it.

In a way, I’m glad the writers had Blanche consider the offer, however briefly. That’s the devil of it when it comes to harassment like this: One party is in power over the other, and manipulating the vulnerability that the lack of power gives them, and because of that the victim might think it’s easier or less confrontational to just go along with it. Blanche, in this case, is on the verge of failing and losing her degree and a chance at a promotion -- she even tells him this, which is unfortunate given his malicious intent -- and so he has the power to both really help and (this is the important part) really hurt her depending on how she responds. And it’s crucial that this vulnerability and the effects of this kind of manipulation be recognized, because -- and I think this needs to be stressed -- even if Blanche had agreed, she would still be a victim.

I am ridiculously proud of Blanche for choosing to get back at her professor by taking the test and keeping her nose clean. I’m pretty sure that, if he tried to ding her score so she didn’t get an A, she could file an appeal and get the test reviewed, and her professor could be then be censured if he graded her unfairly. At least, I’m assuming that’s how it works within the show’s logic, and that’s why she can tell him off without it affecting her grade. We don’t get much resolution, or see the professor get his comeuppance, but sadly that, too, is realistic. I choose to hope for the best outcome.

ROSE: My life will be ruined if this ever gets home to St. Olaf. DOROTHY: What’ll they do, Rose? Revoke your ice fishing license? Take back your helmet with the horns?

That’s not to say this episode is completely above-board with the way it handles the topic, at least not by today’s standards. Some of the ways they try to inject humor into the situation don’t feel especially natural and are even insensitive. Dorothy’s principal wearing a corset and high heels while harassing her is alright, as jokes go. Rose’s story about Nils, the soda jerk who harassed her via ice cream scoops (side note: not “attempted to” harass her, did harass her; important distinction) is very funny, but Blanche bringing it up later just to mess with her felt more than a little mean.

Also, I’m not crazy about the fact that Blanche’s storyline culminates in her losing her promotion to the unseen Sally Folgeson. I don’t want to sound like I’m reaching, but I think the implication is that the museum director promoted Sally because the tummy tuck and butt lift made her more attractive -- meaning, Sally is using her body to get ahead, the same thing the Girls encouraged Blanche not to do. I’m glad Blanche is cool with it, but it kind of punctures the message a bit, doesn’t it? Also, shame on that museum director, because YUCK. If that’s what it takes to get ahead at that museum, then I don’t think Blanche would have wanted the promotion in the first place.

Probably the most troubling part of the episode to me is that Rose and Dorothy are more helpful and attentive to Blanche when she’s neglecting her studies than they are after she’s been sexually harassed by her professor. I know that’s part of the comedy, but I’m honestly a little offended that they’re so wrapped up in a Frank Sinatra concert that they can’t even be bothered to make sure Blanche is okay after her test. And this is coming from someone who would absolutely hock an organ to go back in time and hear Sinatra live.

Speaking of the B-plot, this episode is very well-balanced, with Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia getting roughly equal screen-time while Blanche handles the A-plot. I love that they’re getting better at this, because it makes for a better episode overall when one character (usually Sophia) isn’t getting reduced down to a handful of lines. They even give Sophia an extra bit where she’s cleaning out her purse and makes a few cracks at Rose on, including the immortal line:

ROSE: Did all that stuff come out of your purse? SOPHIA: No, I was also cleaning out my ears. That’s where the Feenamint and the rain bonnet came from.

This culminates in the great scene where Blanche is trying to get a word in edgewise, only for all of her roommates to come in with their own triumphant stories about acquiring the precious tickets back-to-back. As annoyed as I am with them for not listening to Blanche, it’s an hilarious scene that brings the two plotlines together and lets everyone’s comedic talents shine through, culminating in Sophia explaining how many degrees she’s separated from the family of Frank Sinatra.

I do have a few nitpicks. First, there’s a continuity error in the first scene when Dorothy describes how she almost saw Sinatra when Stan bought her tickets: She says that in the divorce settlement, she got “the house and the kids” while Stan got the tickets. Given that Dorothy’s only been divorced from Stan for two years, her children would have been in their thirties at the time of their divorce, so Dorothy wouldn’t be getting custody of them. It’s never made clear when Dorothy moved to Florida, but I presume she had to sell the house she got in the divorce at some point in order to move in with the other Girls.

ROSE: Oh, you can’t buy from a scalper. That’s a crime! DOROTHY: Well, so is eating grapes at the supermarket, but you do that all the time. ROSE: I have to test them. DOROTHY: Rose, one is testing. Fourteen is brunch.

A little historical housekeeping, as well: Vikings didn’t actually have horned helmets and, to my knowledge, they’re not called “Longenhödden.” Though, fun fact: I went back and scoured transcripts for the show up to this point, and this is the first time we hear that Rose’s hometown is called St. Olaf. So mark this episode as the official debut of the Cradle of Idiocy itself: St. Olaf, Minnesota!

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰🍰 (four slices out of five)

Favorite part of the episode:

Blanche’s exasperation with Rose’s story is the best:

ROSE: I was driving down Biscayne Boulevard-- BLANCHE: No. No! NO! NO! Please, I cannot bear that again. *to Dorothy* She was listening to her car radio -- Big Band, not All Talk. There was a contest. Something about a little voice, a lucky number, and a dime in a door handle, then bim bam boom, she won the tickets! DOROTHY:...take a lesson, Rose. That’s how you tell a story.

[tessaractwasp]

The REAL Truth About ADHD: An Open Letter to Nicole Arbour

Hi, Nicole.

I’m Tessa. I am 19 years old- that’s right, a legally full-grown adult, old enough to make my own doctor’s appointments, pay for my own medications with the money that I make from my very own job, and make my own decisions about said medications and doctor’s appointments (which I kind of have a lot of).

Here’s the thing. I have ADHD. Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder. Me. The full-grown adult (in the eyes of the law at least, but probably not to you if I had to guess). The person who has never had an entire cup of coffee in her life. The person who hasn’t had soda since she lived at home full-time and it was the cheapest drink at the grocery store so it was what my family bought. The person who had to have a lot of junk food growing up because it was what we could afford since, you know, fresh fruits and vegetables or whatever you might approve of are pretty damn expensive. But also the person who has since been eating much healthier since she’s been at college where the food- the fruits, the vegetables, the almond milk, the vegetarian options- is provided to her for free under her meal plan.

I was diagnosed about 2 weeks or so before my 19th birthday. I was a freshman in college, midway through my second semester, and was having a decidedly difficult time. I had managed to make Dean’s List first semester (I have yet to find out if I made it second semester), but that didn’t stop me from calling my parents at 11 or 12 at night, crying because I couldn’t do the reading for my class. I couldn’t do any of them. We had one or two readings each night, and I hadn’t done any. Not for lack of trying, I just couldn’t do it. I would sit down, and an hour later, was still on the first page. So I tried removing all distractions- I hid away my phone and my computer, cleared my desk, and removed all distracting sounds from the area. But still, I couldn’t get through it. I would read the same few sentences over and over again, but it was like my eyes were reading it but my mind wasn’t. I just couldn’t remember what I’d read. So I tried listening to music. Listening to music without lyrics. Listening to music I’d never heard. Listening to soft sounds of the beach or the forest or a city. I tried listening to nothing. I tried highlighting and not, annotating and not, reading out loud and not. But still, it would take me an hour to read a single page. I would go and discuss my difficulties with my professor almost once a week, trying to come up with strategies to finish these readings. They weren’t particularly long, by college standards- they were usually under 25 pages. But still, nothing helped.

So I would tear my room to shreds, tearing and throwing papers, throwing my books and my folders and my notebooks around, ripping my hair out, hitting myself, and just crying because I hated myself. I hated myself, because this wasn’t hard, but I couldn’t do it anyway. I hated myself because I was sure that I would fail every quiz and every exam that was thrown our way because I wouldn’t know anything since I hadn’t done any of the readings. I would punish myself because I thought that it was my fault, that I just wasn’t trying hard enough, that I just didn’t care enough, even though my efforts would prove otherwise.

Then, one day someone asked me, have you ever been tested for ADD? And I started thinking about it. I hadn’t ever been tested. But two of my brothers had ADHD, and I didn’t act anything like them. In fact, most of the time, I couldn’t stand them and many of their behaviors. I was never really hyperactive. As a child, I was stubborn and a pain in my parents’ necks, I never acted out or misbehaved in school, I got As and Bs. But I still had ADHD. Because ADHD doesn’t just mean a hyperactive child, because, yeah, those are common. But in fact, there are a few different kinds of ADHD. And I just happen to have Inattentive-Type ADHD- one that is more common in girls than in boys, too. So I wasn’t just daydreaming when I got distracted in class. I wasn’t just overreacting when I couldn’t accomplish a small, menial task. It wasn’t my fault that I got bored quickly and easily, that I was insanely disorganized, or that it took me more explanations and more tries to learn to do something than it ought to.

And so the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I couldn’t do the readings, because I’d be sitting there trying to read, but all of a sudden I was thinking about what my brother said two years ago, or what my friends were doing then, or what other assignments I had to do, or what was going on outside, or what dresses I had in my closet, or where I had put my book, or who else throughout history was born on my birthday. I could never remember where I placed anything- on multiple occasions I had lost my phone and searched up and down campus for it when it was in my purse the entire time. I was always fidgeting in my seat, changing positions over and over and over again even in short 50 minute classes. I started thinking back, too. In high school, I never did the readings for some of my English classes, either. I convinced myself it was because they were boring, because I didn’t want to, because I didn’t care enough, but I realized it was because I couldn’t and since I knew I couldn’t I then wouldn’t want to. I would try to sit down and read the first few chapters, but a single page would take me 45 minutes. So I just wouldn’t do it. I hadn’t been able to finish my English midterm my freshman year in high school not because I was tired or hadn’t studied enough- I knew the material perfectly. I just couldn’t concentrate in the silent room, and instead fixated on the poster across the room or the outlet on the wall to my right. In 6th grade, when we took the placement test for math for 7th grade I got placed in the lower math class because I hadn’t been able to finish the test. I told everyone it was because the boys in the classroom were being loud, but I knew that wasn’t it. I was just too embarrassed to admit I just hadn’t been able to finish it. And it certainly wasn’t because I wasn’t good at math- I was in the advanced 6th grade math, and finished that lower level of 7th grade math with a 99 overall average.

And so, I talked to my parents about it. We made an appointment with a psychologist. We went out to the appointment together. And, for most of the appointment, I talked to the psychologist by myself. Since I was an adult, and not only was I able to, but I was legally obligated to make my own decisions on the matter.

But here’s the other thing. I also have Crohn’s disease. So when that psychologist wanted to prescribe me with a stimulant, which is proven to have an opposite effect in those diagnosed with ADHD as in those without, I told her I would have to get back to her since a stimulant could be bad for my Crohn’s disease. And because of my Crohn’s disease, guess what. I am on 5 prescription drugs. Every morning, I take Hyoscyamine so I don’t feel like I’m going to vomit every time I take a bite, and that way I can actually finish an entire meal instead of being dangerously underweight from avoiding food. Every morning I take a prescription strength Omeprazole so acid doesn’t burn another hole in my esophagus for no reason, like it already has once before. Every night I take Junel Fe, a birth control, not because I am having sex and need birth control, but because the hormones control my period which in turn guarantees that I won’t have a severe flare-up where I’m trapped in the bathroom for 3 days before and all 7 days of my period having severe diarrhea and cramping so bad I have to stay home from school and work the entire time. Every night, I take Indomethacin so I don’t have migraines so bad that I have to stay in my room all day in silence, with the blinds shut and the lights off because my head hurts so badly I can’t walk. I very frequently take prescription steroids so that I can stop vomiting and go to class, instead of continuing to vomit for hours.

So, yeah, I was taking 5 prescription drugs when they prescribed me another one. But those drugs help me be as functional as you are.

Since I was diagnosed with ADHD, guess what else. I haven’t torn my room apart, haven’t ripped papers to shreds or hair out of my head in fistfulls, haven’t cried for hours because I couldn’t do a simple 20 page reading, haven’t physically harmed myself because it should be easy but it wasn’t. In fact, since I started that ADHD medication, I’ve been able to sit down and finish a reading in one go. I sat down and finished one reading in 45 minutes instead of spending 2 days on it, getting nowhere, and giving up. And I finished a reading several times. Because I could do it now. I could sit down and concentrate.

Nicole, ADHD doesn’t mean hyperactive child that acts out in school. ADHD means I, the 19 year-old adult who lives away from home full-time and makes her own legal and health decisions, just don’t work the same way you do. And I just need one more prescription drug to help me be as functional as you are. You said in one of your videos that you’ve had chronic pain. That you’ve been clinically depressed. You would think this would make you more receptive to this issue, to taking medications just so you can function, just so you can get through the day. So please, when you try to tell the world that “ADD and ADHD are not real things,” try to take the whole picture into consideration.

Sincerely,

Tessa