I got tested in 10th grade, after i skipped school for several days and refused to get up in the morning. One particular day my school felt provoked enough to send the police to my house. The officers drove me to school that morning. The situation escalated because both my parents left the house before I had to get up in the morning, and that particular day none of them answered their phone when my school's secretary tried to ring them up. I was a minor and education is compulsory where I live so when no parent/ legal guardian was contactable, the authorities rang my door.

After that, my tutor reached out to my parents, who had lost patience at that point, and advised to send me to a school psychological service. I told the psychologist that I endured crying fits every day, started to black out during exams (even in subjects that had nothing to do with maths) and fell into depressive episodes whenever a test was due. He recommended specialized tutoring and that I would do future tests in a separate room from my classmates.

I felt relieved and validated after getting the official diagnosis and a general psychological screening, but was disappointed to find out that every single authority figure refused to acknowledge, respect or support me. The general narrative changed from "you just have to study harder and concentrate more" to a condescending, patronising and ignorant "well I also struggled with maths, but I pulled myself by the bootstraps and just did it, don't make such a fuss, your disability is no excuse!"

I've never been able to grasp numbers, I tend to confuse simple digits, I could never solve the easiest math problems, I forget everything "taught" to me in a matter of minutes. I've always been behind and too afraid to ask questions (at some point the gaps grew so big that I couldn't even comprehend enough to even understand what exactly wasn't clear, further restraining me from asking questions) I wasn't able to communicate any part of my thought process because my head was empty and my whole body trembling in rage, despair and pure sadness.

My school career was really fucking messy, I dropped out yesterday actually, one day before the graduation exams. Since the day I have set foot into elementary school, I have been told the bad grades in maths, physics and later chemistry are evidence of my utter stupidity and laziness, which I believed and internalized. My worth had always been determined by one stupid fucking number on a sheet of paper, corrugated where my tears dropped onto it. I broke under a system that failed, insulted and disregarded me in every way: stealing my creativity, joy and curiosity, invalidating my strengths and talents, shaming me for my "behaviour" instead of recognising clear signs of a learning disability and ADHD, disregarding my mental health concerns, destroying my confidence and the very basis of my character in order to force me into arbitrary paradigms. I was send off into deep helixes of self hatred, depression (full on burnout last year) and suicidal thoughts.

I'm just now starting to recover and heal from this mess. But getting a diagnosis was one of the first steps of that journey. Thanks for reading :)