Page 2 of Tilly in Technicolor
“Dr. Alverez told us it can cause impulsivity. Recklessness.I just want you to be aware of those things so you can overcome them,” she continues, rubbing soft circles on my back that make my skin crawl and my body shudder. I don’t like soft touches.
I want to scream. I want to blow up. I want to sayStop, Mom. Just stop. Stop laying out all the things you’d change about me and blaming them on a diagnosis.
ADHD hasn’t “changed” me, which is how my mom views it. Itisme. It’s an undeniable and simple fact of who I am. Like my black hair or my gray eyes or the bump on the bridge of my nose. It exists in my DNA, probably right between my hopeless romantic gene and the raunchy sense of humor allele. It’s woven into who I am. It’s not some disease that needs to be cured.
I duck and roll away from her touch, standing up and doing a bizarre spin and leg kick like I’m a modern dancer. I sashay toward the door.
“What are you doing?” Mom asks, sitting on the floor, her eyebrows drawn and frown fixed as she looks at me in confusion.
“Dancing for joy,” I lie. “I’m just so excited for the trip,” I add, traipsing into the hall. “And I need a snack.”
I continue my impromptu dance down the stairs, leaving my mom to probably jot a note about my erratic behavior. She doesn’t know I know about her notepad of instances she takes to Dr. Alverez, documenting moments to bring up during the part of appointments I’m not in.
I hate that notebook.
But I do have a tendency to do odd things like this, sometimes. When feelings build and overwhelm me, pushing at my joints until I feel like I’ll fracture from them, I do something explosive with my body. It just feels…goodto move. To get it out.
I know my mom thinks it’s bizarre and some sort of defect in my programming, but I’ve given up trying to hide it.
Maybe if I’m fully myself for long enough, she’ll finally give up on me. And I can just be.
Chapter 2Future? I Hardly Know Her.
TILLY
“While we’re aware you are looking at this trip as a vacation, don’t forget you’re going to help Mona and learn about business. I also encourage you to utilize any free time for educational and enlightening pursuits,” Dad says, carefully changing lanes on the highway as we head to the airport. “Try to learn all you can about the history of the places you visit. Become more cultured.”
History. Right. Because the last twelve years of my public school education didn’t focus enough on Eurocentric history. How tragically I’ve been deprived.
“Write down all your experiences!” Mom says, turning around in her seat to smile at me. “You won’t want to forget a thing.”
I smile. A real, genuine smile. Because that’s the first time in a long time she’s brought up my writing in a positive light. I love to play with words, swirl and shape letters until I’ve translated a feeling into an expression.
I’ve filled hundreds of notebooks with thoughts, getting lost in the creamy lined pages. Much to the dismay of Mom, who flips out anytime she finds me (more frequently than I’d like to admit) at two a.m., eyes crusty from not blinking and hand smudged with ink and a journal stained with my heart on its pages, while none of my homework for the next day is done.
“This will all be perfect for a college application essay,” Mom continues, reaching back to give my knee a squeeze.
I pull away. Not this again.
“Yeah, it would,” I say, picking at my nails. “For someone actually applying to colleges.”
Mom frowns at me for a moment before turning around in her seat.
“It’s not too late to change your mind about college,” Mom says with forced lightness. “You can enroll in community college classes for the fall, or even try to get into a four-year university for the spring semester. You have options, Tilly. I’d hate to see you waste your potential.”
“A college degree doesn’t even cut it anymore,” Dad adds, looking at me through the rearview mirror. “You’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of struggle if you don’t get an advanced education.”
“Right. Never mind the crushing student debt and the mental gymnastics I’d have to force myself through to do it,” I whisper to myself.
“What was that?”
“I said I get it, Mom.” I press my forehead against the window. This is the passive-aggressive argument we’ve had more times over the past year than I can count.
College is not for me. End of story.
My grades in high school were average, but the work to get those average grades felt like turning my brain inside out. I couldn’t figure out a way to focus on numbers and equationsand scientific principles and names of old dead white dudes because, truly, who cares? Sitting at desks, trying to listen to teachers drone on, felt physically painful at times. The second I dropped my white-knuckled attempts at focus, my brain would strap on a pair of Rollerblades and zip away, frolicking into fictional lands and dancing around words, my hands somehow keeping pace with the random ideas by scribbling ferociously in notebooks.
More than once a teacher called out my mental wandering, successfully humiliating me in front of the class by asking if I’d like to join everyone on this planet instead of whichever one I was currently inhabiting. The inevitable hiss of laughter from my classmates always felt like a thousand tiny needles being poked into my skin, mortification and shame prickling out of my pores.
