No one would ever, ever know. How could they? I passed through the high school halls with a calm disposition and a reputation as the easy-going, caffeine-addicted, studious girl. Quite the opposite to my friends, a few guys with only their next meal on their minds, whom I drove to practice and shared countless hours on the water with. Rowing established our common interest, but we became friends because of the hours we spent together.

 I somehow joined this group of stereotypical jocks because I was the only one from our high school with a car, a driver's license, and a mom who volunteered me to drive the carpool. Our car conversations had a regular scheme; I’d ask an open-ended question to everyone, someone attempted to tell a story, interruptions were made, a couple of quips rolled off the tongue, someone else needed to respond, a side story ensued to replace the original, then the cycle would repeat until we arrived at the original story or the boathouse.

 Once we set foot into the boathouse, our focus fluttered away from the inside jokes and landed in the seats of the racing shells. To the fast-paced cycle of the stroke, that on average we’d repeat for sixteen thousand meters a day. Six days a week, ten months of the year, for nearly three years I spent at the San Diego rowing club dedicating my time to my team. The dedication funneled together to actualize our goals of seeing our boat come out first at the next regatta.

Unfortunately, I no longer row because of the pandemic and an injury. The jumbled conversations, coffee addiction, obsession for rowing, and my choice in rowdy friends were seen by adults and mentors as a counter-balance to my rather amiable personality. Though these individuals never saw inside my mind. The thoughts that split and wash away my focus just as a skeg, a fin under the boat, does in the water to direct the boat. My skeg is a little wobbly. It doesn’t pick a direction and tends to steer my boat in a zigzag pattern down the racecourse. The chaotic environment I placed myself in was never a balance, but a reflection of my disordered thoughts. The disordered mind, I would come to find out after eighteen years of life, is an attention deficit disorder or ADHD, caused by differences in neurotransmitters that are correlated with a dopamine deficiency. The doctor’s diagnosis in my first semester of college came as a surprise to most people in my life, but I recognized it as a serious consideration during my junior year of high school.

Conversations during the seven-mile drive to practice spread across a smorgasbord of topics. One topic that occupied our minds was school. For me, coordinating study groups for a big test filled my thoughts—for Luchiano, calculating the lowest score he needed to pass the class took little of his time. If I remember correctly, that year honors chemistry with Ms. Butler  single-handedly deterred me from any career in science and placed the first failed assignment into my grade book. That day, instead of following the regular routine, I started the car ride with my own rant. 

“Ok, I knew Chem was going to be hard, but I definitely didn’t expect better than a D on that test. If I don’t get a B on the next one to average out my grade, my GPA is gonna sink '' Luchiano was sitting by my side, he stuck a retractable straw into a Kirkland signature chocolate milk carton. 

Between the gurgles from his sips through the straw, he remarked, “If only Adderall was an over-the-counter drug. You would definitely ace the next text.” In what seemed to be a single gulp, he finished the first cartoon before he reached for a second in the snack bag my mom had packed for the group. 

Disregarding his casual suggestion of drug use, I snatched the chocolate milk from his hand without taking my eyes off the road and said, “While it would be nice, I don’t find myself using a controlled substance for an extra boost in study time. It's practically cheating.” 

“Well, that was rude” Luchiano eyed me as I took a sip from his carton and he rummaged through the snack bag, but this time for a granola bar. He was just about to open it before Caius reached to the front  to snatch it from his hands ``Hey! Again, rude.”  

Both Caius and I chuckled as he pipes in on the conversation “It’s only cheating if you’re not prescribed. For me, it’s a necessity to hold back the bees in the head.” 

Now completely uninterested in my previous rant, Caius piqued my interest with the news of his diagnosis and new use of analogy for ADHD. “I’m sorry, bees?” I asked him 

“Well, yeah. The easiest way I’ve been able to explain the buzzing of all the thoughts. I can’t keep doing one task because everything catches my attention at once. From the sound of the cars speeding by, the music in the background, your squeaking wheels, the conversation, what I’m gonna say next, those are just the things in the present distracting me. Not to mention what's gonna happen next or what I'm forgetting. It’s anxiety-inducing to say the least, to have all the lines of thoughts buzz at the same time, like a hive of bees. But at least they work together towards a goal, ADHD, not so much’. The initial explanation made complete sense. But not in the “Oh wow, that's a great way to explain that. I could totally understand what you mean”. More in the “That’s very relatable. Wait, not everyone thinks that way?” sense, which sparked the internal inquiry that continues today.

 Caius’ ADHD diagnosis came at a very young age. He presented the stereotypical symptoms: impulsiveness, poor time management, and hyperactivity. The symptoms that are seen in class are clown characters on TV that are easy targets for loud-mouth jokes. I, on the other hand, was told my symptoms— inattentiveness, anxiety, unorthodox management skills—were atypical. I never disrupted the classroom or interrupted people in conversations. Hell, I didn’t even talk till the age of five! 

  Many young people, more commonly males, are diagnosed early because of how they affect those around them or because they are poor students in school. My tendencies of delayed reactions, dissociations, inability to stay on task, frequent overstimulation are internal signs of ADHD that significantly impacted my life but never affected others or lowered my academic performance. Before the conversation with the carpool, I never thought these attributes could be more than just that, quirky characteristics. Just as an athlete needs a coach to teach them skills, I needed someone to point out what was wrong with my stroke. I thought that I might  just be ditzy, or maybe even anxious, but my lifestyle and lack of understanding of ADHD covered my symptoms. 

 Since I can remember, I’ve been in sports and followed a well-structured schedule. Both constricted my availability to slack off but also made decisions easier. Working out is a natural dopamine producer that relieved the severity of my, let’s say, quirky characteristics. When I started to inquire if I should get tested, people told me I was “too good of a student to have ADHD” or “You don’t make a ruckus so there’s not a chance” I heard these statements and more like them countless times, but they are misconceptions of ADHD; the neurological differences manifest in an array of behaviors. Unfortunately, I believed those people. It’s unfortunate that these misconceptions percolated in society and caused countless individuals to be brushed off when trying to talk about their symptoms. It created an internal doubt in me, festering in my mind that rotted my mental health as I struggled daily with simple tasks. I still got through the days, I preserved as I did in the last push of a race. The disbelief of my ADHD symptoms from others created my own skepticism, leading to my late diagnosis. 

Losing the structure of rowing pushed me to see the doctor. A back injury put me on land for the 2020 season. Though I wouldn’t have been in the boats for much longer as the Covid-19 pandemic docked my team, and everyone else, for an entire year. Quarantine pushed my symptoms to the forefront as fast as an oar whipped in the water. As strong as the last stroke in a race, my anxiety, a common side effect of the buzzing thoughts, strengthened with the fuel of fear over the pandemic. I knew it was more than just quirks, whether it be ADHD or general anxiety, I needed a professional's opinion. 

In the fall of 2021, I tested in the top ten percentile for ADHD, officially diagnosed, and prescribed Adderall. This was a big step, one filled with stigma and anxiety, but the true diagnosis relieved me of the doubt I held. I still remember the nervousness I felt walking into the CVS on Apache street for pick-up. I took the first blue pill in the yellow bottle and decided to take a walk. I cried. For me, it’s nothing like the ten-hour studying bender your friend told you about. I could focus on just the first cool fall breeze of the year on that walk, not the buzzing of the bees. In class, I didn’t have five tabs open to focus on the lecture. I just sat and listened. Well, I still shook my leg out of pure habit. I cried because  an overwhelming sense of relief flooded me. I’m glad that I questioned the narrative that people pushed onto me. That I couldn’t possibly have ADHD. I hope to increase the representation of inattentive ADHD and inform people that it is as impactful on the people who suffer from it as the hyperactive type. So that another girl who struggles with the effects that I did can experience the relief I did. 

The relief feels the same as the serenity of rowing on calm waters. Before, I was rowing with swiss cheese oars in rocky water, having to work twice as hard to get the same distance the person next to me did. Now, I don’t have to race anymore. My equipment is fixed. No more wobbly skeg or holey oars. I can finally relax, on the calm waters of my mind.