What’s it like to have ADHD?

‘But you said for me to write a couple of lines’, I protest as the teacher ushers me out of the classroom for having had ‘the cheek’ to write only two lines.

Situations like these were rife in my childhood, at home and at school, and one thing remained constant throughout – a powerful feeling of injustice for having been punished for doing exactly what I was told. Although now as an adult I can better appreciate the irony of this self-perpetuating cycle, as a child I could only express its absurdity through appeals to fairness and the teacher’s inability to issue clear instructions (which went about as well as you can imagine). As a result, I could always feel the teacher’s eyes on me as soon as I entered their classroom, and they made no attempt to hide their gaze until the bell would ring and I would leave with a sigh of relief bidding me farewell from behind. Now I am someone else’s problem.