The Dreamers
They called us Dreamers.
On any given weekday morning in the nineties, we could be all be found living some variety of the same moments in unison: shuffling out of the cold into the warmth of a classroom, where we’d slip our arms out of our coats and settle into a hard plastic chair. The classroom held a sense of comfort, at least before the morning bell rang. The space was alive with chatter, the walls adorned with a familiar smattering of construction-paper letters, finger paintings, and glossy posters of the solar system and the human body.
At age ten, my awareness of the world around me had begun to prickle in a way it hadn’t in my early childhood. I was aware of my spot in the middle of the classroom, and of my comfortable rank in the social hierarchy of Washington School. My life wasn’t terribly exciting, but I was aware that I was more fortunate than those kids we’d learned about in faraway lands who didn’t have food or heat or clean water. I was just grasping the concept of my place in the world, of who I was as a person. In fifth grade, I knew little of my own uniqueness, that what stood out about me was my bright red hair, on which adults loved to comment, much to my dismay. And I’d recently become aware of the fact that my stomach clenched the moment Ms. Caldwell took her place in front of the classroom and began the day’s lesson.
While her kind voice expertly picked up where she’d left off the previous afternoon, I poured my energy into narrowing in on her words, grasping for meaning. But the periodic chart looked like hieroglyphs. The multiplication tables too. Though we’d been studying them all week, each day I felt the concepts slip further from my grasp.
Each time we moved onto a new subject I felt a swell of relief. I would get this one. I would really focus on every word Ms. Caldwell said. This time, I’d not only understand, I’d soar to the top of the class. This time, my name would be on the honor roll alongside those of my friends. I vowed to finish my homework on time and turn it in the next day. This time I wouldn’t dig through my bag to retrieve a wrinkled sheet of notebook paper scrawled with half-answered questions, my face aflame with embarrassment.
I narrowed my gaze and fixed my ears on the words Ms. Caldwell spoke. Lead. Remember it with peanut butter: PB. Peanut butter. I could remember that. I had this.
“Melissa? Are you with us?” Ms. Caldwell’s voice severed my thoughts, and I scrambled to ground myself. I am here. Melissa. March 11th. 5th grade. We’re reviewing the periodic table of elements.
The faces of the other students turned in my direction, and a wave of shame gripped me. The projector had been switched on, an image I didn’t recognize now aglow against the whiteboard. The other students had scribbled notes. My page remained blank in front of me.
“Come see me after class, Ms. Morris,” Ms. Caldwell said, with a bite at the end when she spoke my name.
Ms. Caldwell turned back to the lesson, her voice remaining even, as if she hadn’t just issued me a death sentence. And I hated her in that moment. Just as I hated the counselor my parents had taken me to at Ms. Caldwell’s suggestion. I hated the scolding I’d receive when I got home if Ms. Caldwell called my mom.
I don’t understand it. You’re smart. You’re just such a daydreamer. You need to learn to focus. The words had spilled from so many lips they now held no meaning.
One floor down, I knew my brother sat in his third-grade classroom. But he wasn’t dreaming. His behavior had been far more severe, disruptive even, and had required intervention. While I went to a counselor he’d been sent to a therapist. An orange bottle had appeared in the kitchen, and each morning our mother doled out a tablet with his breakfast. Mom had fretted about medicating him, but the school had given her little choice. Those tablets had worked wonders for the other boys who couldn’t sit still.
But I wasn’t disruptive. I was just a daydreamer.
Like so many ‘90s girls, as the years passed, I went on into middle school and high school, my report cards and teacher’s conferences all echoed the same sentiments: she’s very social, she’s a pleasure to have in class, she reads at an advanced level. She’s just not focused.
An entire generation of dreamy girls trudged through high school and on to college. We saw therapists and read self-help books and watched documentaries. We self-medicated. While the markers for ADD and ADHD are still skewed toward “male behaviors,” the narrative started to shift, albeit at a glacial place. In the meantime, we were collectively forced to overcome the same hurdles as our male counterparts without the clinical support. We were left on our own to come to the collective realization that our quieter symptoms were just as valid, and we forged our way in the world. We became painters and journalists and moms and accountants.
I’m in my thirties, and I still struggle to focus. but I’m smart. I’m a professional. I’m a runner. I’m a partner. I’m a daughter and a sister. I’m a writer. I’m a person among the millions who has struggled with ADD since before it was diagnosed in girls. I’m a dreamer.
Melissa Morris’s (The Dreamers) essay “Yesterday” was published in (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic by Regal House Publishing and their short story “The Pause” was published by Monnath Books.