I'd have to say the first half or so of my junior year of high school, leading up to my ADD diagnosis. Not that the diagnosis was bad, no no -- that was the start of when things got better. It was the time spent undiagnosed that hurt, and it just got worse and worse throughout high school, until that one awful year in which I am so glad I decided to seek help.
ADD for me means not being able to focus on things, simply put. But I don't hyperactively bounce from task to task -- I'm spacey, I zone out easily, and I actually feel kind of lethargic and unmotivated when I'm really out of it and I just can't concentrate at all. This made homework pretty difficult for me, as you might imagine. For pretty much as far back as I can remember, my afterschool activities would go something like this: I would sit down with the intention to do homework, stare at a sheet of math problems for 20 minutes, and then eventually give up after having like .02% of it done as I clearly wasn't getting anywhere. Thing is, it's not that I didn't understand the material. I was actually always considered a pretty smart kid growing up -- above-average reading level, good test-taker, understood and retained information pretty well without even needing to take notes, etc -- which is probably why none of the adults in my life would've ever suspected that I had a disorder like this, and probably why I never thought that I had any real problems until much later into my schooling. Anytime that I didn't do the work that was in front of me, it was just because I was... lazy. That was my understanding of it at the time, anyway, and presumably what my parents and teachers thought, as well. What other explanation would there be for me knowing how to do the work, and then just... not doing it?
Now, in grade school, this really wasn't an issue -- I hardly had any homework to begin with and the small amount that did exist, well, I do recall still zoning out quite a bit, but it was a small enough amount to get through without too much of an issue. Middle school was when the problem started to emerge, as it was when I was introduced to the lovely concept of ~Study Hall~ and, with it, the "I'll just do this before class tomorrow" mentality. I found myself skipping out on like 90% of my homework each night, telling myself I'd just do it tomorrow in study hall. And, while I did concentrate slightly better in a school setting than at home (which was probably a lot of my rationale for doing this, even if I wasn't totally conscious of it), it'll probably go without saying that a lot of my homework didn't get done, which, of course, bogged down my grades quite a bit.
Now, like I said before, I was always a smart kid and a good test-taker, so the bad homework record, at least at this point in time, wasn't the massive drain on my self-esteem that it would later become, as I still generally had high 70's at the lowest in all my classes -- but, high C's and low B's are still kind of disappointing when your test scores are mostly A's and high B's. Whenever my parents would ask why I was never turning in homework, the answer would usually be something like "I forgot", even though I knew that was a lie, and the truth (as I understood it) was that I was just lazy. I knew I had homework, I sat down to do it, and then I just... didn't, and, for the longest time, I didn't really understand why (and I'm amazed that such a reality didn't set off any alarms for me sooner than it did).
High school was more of the same song and dance, for a while. Freshman year wasn't too bad, at least not compared to what was to come -- more work, yeah, but with the same issues at play and me still not being too concerned about it. Sophomore year, I took an AP class. It was hard. Like really hard. It was probably the first time that I sat down to take a test and knew jack shit about what the questions were asking. It became pretty clear that I'd need to actually study in this class if I wanted to succeed, but, with my homework completion being what it was, there was no way that was happening. My parents weren't happy about it, but they were more lenient with it than they would be with other classes, given that it was an AP class, so it makes sense that it would be a lot more difficult. I, too, kind of gave myself that excuse, which is probably why I didn't beat myself up too hard about it (even though it was stressful...) In the end, I'm not sure how I passed that class.
Junior year I took two AP classes. I'm not sure why I thought that would be a good idea at the time. At any rate, that was the year that things really fell apart, and not just for school-related reasons (although that certainly kickstarted a lot of it). AP Physics was what really killed me, not just because of the more regular graded assignments but also because of what the class was all about, really -- problem-solving, and most of the practice for learning how to solve these problems came in the form of homework practice. My other AP classes were history courses, which meant that a lot of it was just memorizing information -- which I was bad at, yes, given the circumstances -- but at least it didn't make me feel nearly as pathetic as I did when I tried to solve AP physics problems. Homework was no longer a matter of me staring at a sheet of math problems that I knew how to do and then just being too "lazy" to do them -- it was me really, really trying to do the work, pushed forward by the immense stress of the course, and then just not knowing how to do anything, and then, I still couldn't do even the most basic and easy homework offered by my non-AP classes. I wasn't just lazy anymore, I was stupid, too, and suddenly I started blaming myself for just about everything that went wrong in my life. A friend of mine is going through a rough patch? Must be because I'm a shitty friend who couldn't help them, who also claimed they didn't have time to help them even though, after spending an hour staring at homework that I couldn't figure out, and then spending another hour staring at homework that I should've known how to do but just didn't do, I then gave up and spent the rest of my afternoon derping around on the internet. I claimed that I worked as hard as I could but I wasn't doing that -- I was just giving up most of the time. And then my teachers and parents would all just keep asking why, why wasn't I doing the work? After all, I was clearly capable, so why not put in the work? And I never had an answer for them, and that just made me feel even worse about myself. I swear, it felt like at least once every other week, I would lie awake at night just... sobbing quietly to myself, and thinking about all the ways that I'm just so pathetic, and how I just couldn't seem to do anything, because I was always either too stupid or too lazy to get the work done, and how I would then just give up and spend the rest of my evening online or playing video games, and, even though I wanted to say that I was giving 110% effort and that it just wasn't enough, I knew that I wasn't doing that, and that I was actually just spending the majority of my time not doing work, and then beating myself up about it.
Emotionally, it was an absolutely brutal time. My grades were shit, my self-esteem was shit -- all made worse by the fact that the adults in my life used to consider me to be such a "smart kid", but, at that time, I had turned into the kid who was struggling in several classes and didn't seem to be putting forth the effort to do well in any of them. The majority of afternoons/evenings were spent with me trying, for at least some while, to get work done, but eventually giving up as that clearly wasn't working, and then spending a lot of that time just feeling guilty about not doing the work like I should have. And then there were the occasional, incredibly painful nights of a shaking, stress-filled me spending the entire night forcing myself to shit out an essay the night before the deadline or, sometimes, even resorting to cheating and looking up the answers to the online physics homework because after spending hours on it, I just couldn't continue. My parents meant well, so I don't want to blame them (after all, they understood the situation even less than I did), but their questioning of why I couldn't put in the effort so much of the time was just such a torturous question because I didn't know, and I kept asking myself the same thing all the time. Why am I like this? Why can't I do the work? The parts I don't understand are one thing, but why can't I even bring myself to try sometimes? Why is it that I have work in other classes that should be easy and yet I just... don't do it.
I want to succeed, why can't I force my lazy ass to just do the work? Why am I so fucking pathetic?! What's wrong with me????!!!
Somewhere along the line, I came to the realization that that last question is a legitimately good one to ask. I did a bit of thinking about the fact that, even when I was incredibly stressed to do work and really really wanted to get it done, I couldn't force myself to get through it, even when it was easy stuff that I could understand just fine in class. I started to think that such a strong desire to do the work probably wasn't a trait of laziness, and that, for some reason, I just couldn't keep my mind focused on the work that I had to do, no matter how badly I wanted to do it, which seemed... not right.
And, wow, I am so glad I talked to a professional about all this. That's when I got the diagnosis, which was a huge weight off my shoulders. I didn't have to keep blaming myself for everything -- I had a very good reason for not being able to focus and get work done, and it wasn't mere laziness on my part. And then I was prescribed medication, and, holy balls, I cannot even describe to you just how amazing it felt to, for the first time in my life, really, have the necessary level of mental clarity to just sit down and focus and get shit done -- I wasn't getting distracted, I wasn't zoning out, none of that -- I just sat the fuck down and did my fucking work, and it felt great. Assignments that I would've previously struggled to get done for a good two weeks were suddenly something that I could complete almost in their entirety in just one or two work sessions. I was utterly inspired by my own capabilities. All my easy classes? Got the homework done without any issues, grades shot up into the 90's in no time. AP classes? Well, the medication didn't exactly grant me a perfect understanding of physics, but it did allow me to actually focus on getting the homework done, which was a crucial first step towards actually understanding the material. I didn't see the same immediate improvement there as I did in some of my other classes, but, I definitely felt like I was getting better. The class never really stopped being challenging, but, at least it stopped being soul-crushing. The meds aren't a cure-all and they have their own side effects, but they certainly take the edge off my symptoms, and, along with an awareness of my disorder, they did wonders for both my performance and my self-esteem.
I was probably happier with myself in the years following that than I ever was in middle school and high school prior to it, especially for the first half of junior year when everything was at its absolute worst. It was definitely my lowest point -- feeling significantly hindered by a mental disorder but not knowing that it was a disorder and, as a result, blaming everything on myself, and just feeling so shitty about my shortcomings -- feeling helpless but not knowing how to help myself because I just couldn't seem to do anything about all my worst qualities, things that I grew to hate about myself, until I finally learned that I didn't need to blame myself like that, which is a very nice thing to know.
So, uh... yeah, long rant. But, with a topic that's had such a profound impact on my life, there's certainly a lot to talk about, lol. XD At least this story had a happy ending. I don't know where I'd be in life if it wasn't for that. o.o Man, what a nightmare college would be... I probably would've flunked out by now. @_@ Ah well, not something that I need to worry about, at any rate. XD I may still rant and whine about my lingering ADD-related insecurities from time to time, but, I'm still way better off than I was back then, which I am incredibly grateful for.