introducing me and my adhd...

Hello world, my name is therese rocha but I prefer tess. I am 19 years old and am currently a full-time freshman in college. I grew up in Houston, Texas, and have many brothers and sisters. It was always loud and busy in my house, never a dull day. I was diagnosed with adhd and dyslexia towards the end of third grade which honestly explained a lot.

Going through my elementary years I am not gonna lie, I was trouble. I was always yelling, running around the classroom, or just straight up bothering the other kids all the time. As the diagnosis came so did the meds. At age 8 I was assigned to a psychiatrist and put on a stimulant to "control" me and my actions, and have been on them ever since. And yes I did say them. Growing up my mom every morning supervised me as I took my medication, it was an essential part of my day. Not only did I HAVE to take medicine every morning but I also had to take a booster at school during lunch. As time went on it became my responsibility to take my meds but me being me i did not indeed do it every day.

At first, I was not able not to see the difference between taking and not taking the meds but as I got older that changed a lot. I am not really a school kind of girl, I don't like studying, presentations give me anxiety, and test-taking will always be the death of me. Around my first sophomore year of high school, it kicked in that i needed to take school seriously so i started taking my meds. When i woke up one day to late to where i didn't have the time or i would forget to take it, it was very obvious. One day i was the girl in the front of the class taking the most detailed notes and asking questions to the next day sitting in the back of class nonstop talking and goofing around.

Taking and not taking my meds did affect me a lot but not in just how i acted. It messed with my self-esteem, my self-awareness, and how others thought or treated me. Sometimes I would be loud without even noticing it until i saw it in people's faces and all they would do is give me a nasty look or say something gross behind my back. Social ques a lot of the time are not there for me personally when I do not take my meds, I am very bad at reading rooms or situations. One thing that will always be with me is what someone said to me my junior year, "you are a lot easier and better to be around this year like I can handle you." During my second sophomore year, I very rarely took my meds and that was on me, I would just straight up refuse. But when junior year kicked in I knew it was collge time so I had to do what was best for me and that meant taking my meds every morning and afternoon. So when someone said this to me it hurt because I took it as they could not handle me for the real me. I took this as they didn't like me and from then for a really long time, I tried to lay low around them. It took me a while but I did come to the realization that I was indeed a lot to handle. From this personal experience, I became a lot more self-aware. For people reading this if someone you know has adhd and is too much at that moment don't be afraid to let them know. But when doing so please be careful how you say and or express it because it will stick with us. As for the people with adhd reading this i suggest just trying to be more aware, i know it's hard but we can be a lot.

What is really funny to me is my adhd is what actually led me to make this. I got back from cafe 62 and hanging out with friends when i started googling things. In the search bar one of the suggestions that came up after typing in the word "how..." was how adhd affects relationships. I got super curious and read up on it. By doing this I saw that adhd was an effect of a lot of things that happened in my previous relationships and that it had a bigger impact on my life than I could comprehend. So now we have this. lol.

This is gonna be it for right now. I would say I would post regularly but with adhd i can't promise much but I will try to keep up with posting at least twice a week. I hope this is as interesting to you as it is to me and gives you new perspectives on life with adhd.