Jello in a Square Box

When I was a little girl, my grade school teacher called me Jello because I couldn’t stay still. ADD didn’t exist in the national lexicon yet. My old country still had military style education system. A wiggly daydreamer didn’t fit. I was shamed for being Jello and told not to move.

So I put the wiggly Jello in a tight square box, like a Japanese square watermelon. They nicely fit into a cardboard box, and then in a fridge. That’s my parents and teachers wanted: to fit in.

I grew up believing I was a square box, until I found I was not.

I was diagnosed with ADD by a psychiatrist I was seeing for depression. “I don’t have ADD. I have depression,” I protested. “I never be hyperactive.” “You are just highly disciplined. ADD could lead to depression,” he said.

It is usually mild but when it’s bad I can feel my brain is misfiring. Laser beams of multiple colors criss-cross in my brain in an accelerated speed. I can’t sit still and I walk around in a small apartment only to forget why I was in the kitchen or the bathroom. I can’t finish any small task. Noises are amplified in my brain and I need to wear a headset to muffle them. My eyes rove. It requires tremendous effort to focus on one thing.

And I remembered I was Jello. A fabulous rainbow colored Jello. All that I was made to believe I was were lies. I spent almost 20 years working in the same office, sitting at the desk from 9 to 5, doing the same thing and I thought I liked the structured mundane routine. It was a lie.

I was an ADHD magnet. All of my past relationship was with a severe ADHD guy. I thought they were attracted to me because I was still, because I was the person who held a string of floating balloon. I captured them and tried to put them into square boxes. Because I believed it was dangerous to be freaking fabulous multicolored Jello.

Now I know that they weren’t attracted to me. I was attracted to them, because I wanted to move, I wanted to be spontaneous, I wanted to float and bounce. I wanted to be them.

Since I accepted my original state of being, I haven’t had major depression. I am magical rainbow colored Jello, who is happy and dances freely.