Title: Disorder
Author: vashsunglasses
Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Rating: T (for language)
Disclaimer: I don't own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Mirage does.
Author's Note: This comes from personal experience.
Who knew that mutated turtles could have human learning disorders?
Not me, that's for sure.
If I had known, I would never have allowed my brothers' comments to sink so deep beneath my shell.
Lazy Mikey.
Stupid Mikey.
Mikey, the goof off. Mikey, the one who can never concentrate on anything for more than 5 seconds. Mikey, the one who can never sit still for more than a minute. Mikey, the one who never shuts up.
"Shut up, Michelangelo," they'd say.
"Shut up, Michelangelo!"
"Shut up, Michelangelo!"
"Shut up!"
Over and over. The soundtrack of my life.
And I believed it. I believed that I was everything they said about me and more. I beat myself up for my shortcomings more than they ever did. I hated myself more than they ever did.
I did my best. Worked as hard as I could…
Unfortunately my best was next to nothing and working hard was impossible when there was nothing to work with. The drive just wasn't there.
And then, a miracle, or at least a revelation. A psychologist had been kidnapped by the Foot and like always we sprung to the rescue. She needed a place to lay low for a time and it was decided that she would stay in the lair.
At the beginning of her stay, she stared at all of us pretty much all the time. April had done the same thing at first, getting used to us I guess. But after a time, the lady quit looking at my brothers and father so much, and spent all her time looking at me alone. Oh, she tried to hide it, tried to make it less obvious, but hey, I'm a ninja! I notice things like that.
By the time she asked to speak to me alone I was feeling pretty offended by her behavior. I almost said no, but in the end, curiosity won out and I went with her into the dojo where we could speak in private. She barely waited for me to kneel down on the floor before she dropped the bombshell, "Have you ever been diagnosed with a learning disorder?"
My first response was anger. I leapt to my feet, "I'm not stupid!"
She smiled apologetically, as if she had expected my response. "Most learning disorders have nothing at all to do with intelligence. In fact, many people with learning disorders have higher than average intelligence."
"If you don't think I'm stupid, then what do you think is wrong with me?" I said, sitting down once more on the cold wood floor.
"Well, why don't I give you a list of symptoms and you can tell me if they are something you have experienced? How does that sound, Michelangelo?"
"Why not?" I shrugged. "Go for it."
And the next ten minutes were spent listening to her describe me perfectly. Pretty much everything she said was a 'yes' from me. "That's me!" I blurted out towards the end of her list, "That's all me. What is this called? What do I have?"
"It seems that you may have ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. People with this disorder have brains that are wired differently from everyone else's. There is a part of everyone's brain that directs and controls traffic, like a traffic cop. In people with ADHD the traffic cop doesn't work fast enough and this makes it difficult to control random impulses. With medication we can stimulate that traffic cop so that it works more efficiently."
So I wasn't lazy.
And I wasn't stupid.
And everything my brothers had said about me was wrong, or at least, they were wrong to blame me for it.
Cowa-fucking-bunga.
To say that the family was skeptical when I told them would be an understatement. As soon as I told Donatello about what she had said to me, he buried his beak in his computers. The rest of them kept telling me that there was nothing wrong with me and to ignore her.
Yeah right! Finally someone is telling me that I'm not lazy or stupid and the people who are supposed to care about me have a fit about it. Well, screw them! I'm tired of being the family joke.
You'd have thought that everyone would believe the ADHD thing when Donnie came back from his research and said that he agreed with the lady doctor's assessment. But no, their complaints and excuses just kept on coming.
"You lack discipline, my son." -Sensei
"Can't you just work harder?" -Leo
"Quit trying to blame some stupid disorder for your laziness!" -Raph
But I ignored them and asked Donnie and the doc if they could get a hold of some of that medication for me.
And they did, and the family was torn in two for the week it took to get a fake prescription through the system. Finally, the pills arrived and I took them for the first time. They were supposed to work immediately, which was cool because they said that most medications for mental stuff took like a month to work or something.
It was nothing like I had expected. My body felt more awake, and my mind felt so calm. I spent a lot of time just sitting there and reveling in the stillness of my thoughts. My thoughts came so easily now, and they felt so pure. All the background static was gone. I could sit and focus on one thought without being interrupted by countless others.
I think I sat still like that for too long though, even Donnie started to look concerned. So I got up and went into the bathroom and on my way I set up a few booby traps, I mean harmless pranks, to reassure them that I hadn't lost my Mikey Mojo. I was still me.
Even with the pranks it took a while for them to see that this was a good thing. Donnie came around again once I explained how great I felt. Sensei and Leonardo, when I was able to meditate for a whole hour without fidgeting. Casey and April never really had a problem with it at all, seeing as learning disorders weren't a new concept to them, what with all the neighborhood kids who had it.
But Raph just couldn't get his mind around it.
He just couldn't admit that maybe he was wrong about something…
That is, until he discovered that he had his own disorder to deal with.