To this day, my dad remembers the burden I carried as a little girl. He tells me that I was always hard on myself and that I haven’t changed. I camouflage myself as a highly functioning student at a top public university, while on the inside I am a slave to my mind.
How long has it been since I’ve felt like this? I stray back to the moments of training wheels and swings that sailed so high that they might break loose from their chains. The moments in class, reading a few paragraphs aimlessly and then realizing I understood nothing at all. The times in math class where I would take a glimpse of the question and surrender before I finished reading the instructions. Or the trickles of sweat that would build as my teacher passed out the timed multiplication sheets with only a minute to complete. About forty seconds of that minute was spent re-reading the equations long enough for it to stick. I often would fake pencil movements so the kid next to me wouldn’t notice I was flustered in my spiraling self-loathing thoughts. I refuse to count the hours I spent in my seat telling myself that math just wasn’t my interest. But after lunch and four topics later, I acted as though I haven’t spent the entirety of my life telling myself that subject after subject.
Staring at classroom posters in a daze and selectively listening to the ticking clock on the wall felt like a choice that I never made. Only when the class reacted to a joke or the sound of a textbook closing would bring me back to the present. How long was I gone? Where did I go? I could never bring myself to recall. When I would return, I would feel a chunk of my spirit sink a little deeper. I hope what they just covered won’t be on the test.
Homework was a task that I either spent hours struggling to complete or not at all. I later realized that I subconsciously sought zeroes on an assignment that I never attempted, rather than a 40% on something I showed an honest effort. It hurt less that way.
I remember one night, in particular, spent trying to teach myself topics for an Algebra II final exam that I had the next day. My mom just picked me up from a tutoring session with a soft-spoken old woman she found on Craigslist from the Panera Bread down the street. My tutor made everything look so solvable, that maybe even I could do it. And when she would turn to look at me and ask me if I had any questions, I would snap out of the one spot of the paper I was staring at and remembered where I was. I would shake my head no because that was less scary than telling her I forgot to pay attention. On the car ride home, I would face the window. I knew I had to lie when my mom asked me how tutoring went because I could feel her pride in scraping up enough money for those few hour sessions from the passenger side. That night was overwhelming with a barely used textbook and study guides open on the king bed in the bedroom that my mom and I shared. Hands tugging at the roots of my hair and my shirt becoming soaked with sweat, there became a point where I just couldn’t bare the feeling anymore and I called my dad in tears. He told me what he always told me, to stop being so hard on myself. The self-deprecating thoughts always ended up winning in the end and I’d call it a night. I needed a 58% on the exam to pass Algebra II. I scored a 60.
For the entirety of my short life, I blamed these obstacles on lacking motivation or the capacity for learning. I felt stupid. Remaining planted in reality was few and far between. I would stay present during class lectures by the luck of my draw, and I would enter and exit conversations at the mercy of my mind.
As my college graduation creeps closer, math and science classes are remnants of a cruel dream. Still, my mind is overcrowded with a dense wall of fog and voices that take pleasure in talking faster than I can think. I wait for the rare moments in between. The instances of clarity where I feel capable to respond to my friends and check my assignments’ due dates. And one by one, as I begin to complete the chores I’ve neglected, the smoke rolls in, and that moment is gone. It only took me twenty years to realize that not everyone is wired this way. And that only I, can overcome this jaded mind of mine.