It started in middle school, when I was around 11 years old. I started feeling weak, had memory lapses and had no motivation to do anything. I felt sad most of the time. I thought the sadness was a normal part of pre-teen angst. I often starved myself for attention from my parents and friends. Most days, I cried myself to sleep.
Often, I didn’t finish my homework or turn it in. How could I? My thought processes were so chaotic. My grades slipped, and I felt guilty about it. I knew I was letting down my parents. My dad had done well in Silicon Valley. How I wish they understood what was going on inside of me. Whenever they asked me why I looked so exhausted, I just told them I was fine. And they didn’t press me further.
I tried to pull myself together, to work through my issues. I hid my pain, plunging myself into Indian classical music and South Indian classical dancing. Many people told me I was a good singer, but I didn’t recognize it as a skill I possessed and I had no confidence to sing before a gathering.
At school, my teachers didn’t understand me, either, but that may have been because I couldn’t articulate what I was going through. But even so my counselor sensed something was not well with me. My classmates began kind of bullying me, telling me I was dumb. It made me feel awful because I had always been a high achiever. My self-esteem hit rock bottom. My social life all but disappeared.
When I was in middle school, the principal told my parents to have me checked. They took me to an occupational therapist/educational strategist, who diagnosed me with Attention Deficit Disorder. While she treated my depression as a mere footnote, I was relieved to know that whatever it was that had been troubling me had a name.
[For more of this story, written by Viji Sundaram, go to http://newamericamedia.org/201...rents-to-swallow.php]
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