Last week was the premier of Ms. Marvel on Disney+, and as a long-time fan of the MCU, I was excited to watch a new chapter! Especially about a character that I had practically no knowledge of – Kamala Khan.
Before hitting even the halfway mark through the episode, something remarkable happened – I related to Kamala on a level that I have never, ever felt with an on-screen character before.
Specifically, traits and attributes of her character that screamed ADHD. And lo-and-behold, my wife looked it up, and Kamala does indeed canonically have ADHD in the comics.
It struck me as interesting that I related so deeply to a character who, on almost every other level, was someone whose life was wholly unfamiliar to me. As a white male, who lived in a fairly open household with parents who trusted me and let me do what I wanted (most of the time,) I could never relate to Kamala’s struggles as a woman of color in a strict household with an overbearing mother.
But her ADHD. Oh, her ADHD and how it presented itself, and even more importantly, how it was depicted in the episode took me back to my childhood and teen years.
Imagination and ADHD
The director and producers of Ms. Marvel did something rather clever and unique with Ms. Marvel (and if you’re wondering, no I’m not going to spoil the episode’s plot for you.) Watch Kamala’s surroundings throughout the episode. Especially when she’s talking to one of her friends about her ideas and plans. Her surroundings come alive! What she’s imagining, what she’s picturing in her head comes alive around her, and everyday signs, pictures, shapes, they all become the tapestry of her thoughts and feelings.
Some might see this as an homage to how comics are drawn, and not having read Ms. Marvel’s comics, I don’t know if that’s how they portrayed it in the comics or not. But beyond just a clever and fun way to make dialogue scenes more interesting, it reminded me exactly of how I was, and to an extent, how I still am.
When I was a kid, I got in trouble a lot for being distracted. I have a very vivid memory of imagining a No. 2 pencil as a spaceship in class (this was pre-teen years,) and in my imagination, it was under attack by who knows what (I don’t remember that part so well.) What I do remember is the ‘ship’ took a bad hit, an explosion ensued…and then the whole class was laughing at me.
I’d made the explosion sounds out-loud. It had become so real in my imagination that I just made the sound without thinking about it. This was perhaps when teachers and maybe even my parents began to suspect I ‘suffered’ from ADHD.
This was how my life was. Everywhere I looked, everything I saw, there was a potential story. There was something beyond the mundane, beyond the ‘real.’ In another “Holy crap, I can relate to that!” moment in the show, at one point Kamala begins to imagine Captain Marvel flying around the buildings they were passing by in a vehicle, and I immediately remembered doing the same thing (with other fictional characters, or even imagining myself) throughout my life. Anytime I was a passenger on a super-long journey, someone or something was flying along next to us, weaving in and out of power poles, soaring above farm crops, and overall just having a lot more fun than I was sitting in the car.
Unfortunately, this active imagination was a distraction to ‘normal’ work, and my schoolwork suffered horribly. Medicine helped, and I won’t ever say that I am against medication to help with ADHD – it is unfortunate that, at least for the moment, ADHD creates additional struggles to ‘fit in’ to the mold of the neurotypical world we live in. Medicine for ADHD helped me control and focus my imagination, and allowed me to excel in school. Later, it became integral to functioning in a day job.
But this connection to Kamala, this realization of seeing someone go through the exact same issues related to ADHD that I did at her age started something inside of me. Because I noticed how her teachers and other school staff treated her and berated her imagination. I saw how her parents, particularly her mother, thought of it. And I started to realize something.
Neurodivergence and ADHD
Let me rewind a bit. (Sorry, but welcome to my ADHD mind.) Several weeks ago, Beck and I attended Starfest 2022 (which sadly was the final Starfest.) While there, Beck got to briefly meet Michelle Hurd, most recently known in her role as Raffi from Star Trek Picard. Their interaction was incredible, and both Beck and I found that we were interested to learn more about Michelle Hurd.
So we made sure to attend the actress’s Q&A session later that day. Many interesting topics came up, and by the end, I thought that Michelle was just a beautiful, lovely human being.
But one thing in particular struck me – when she spoke about neurodivergence, and her experiences as a neurodivergent, and her support of neurodivergent persons in the world. While I cannot recall word-for-word what Michelle said, I remember her saying something along the lines of, “we may not get to where you are as fast as you did, but we’ll still get there, and we’ll get to go on this incredible journey along the way!”
Somewhere in there, either by Michelle or by one of the questions asked, ADHD was linked to neurodivergence. It sparked something in me that was later ignited by Ms. Marvel. It made me realize that there’s not actually anything wrong with me. Because while I may not think or even act like a neurotypical person, I still have value, and I bring something unique and beautiful and wondrous to this world.
Just like Kamala, whose active imagination is precisely what she needs to conjure physical manifestations with her newfound powers. It is her ADHD that becomes perhaps her greatest strength.
I came to realize that it, too, gives me strength. I may not have a super power, but I am a writer. A storyteller. My imagination gives me the power to conjure new worlds, new characters, and bring them all to life. Those ships I saw clashing in school were just the beginning.
…if only the world saw the benefit in it.
Neurodivergence Is Rejected By The World
It seems only fate or destiny…that after all of these realizations and understandings, a friend of mine posted a Twitter thread on Facebook that immediately brought it all home, and helped me understand something about myself that has eluded my comprehension for so very long.
To read the entire Tweet thread, click here – it was written by a person named Josh Weed, whom I’ve never heard of before this weekend, but whose words have had a resounding impact upon me. Basically, he states that by pushing ADHD kids the same way you push neurotypical kids, you are harming them.
That is such a watered down oversimplification of the entire thread, and I encourage you to read it, because as I read through the entire thread, the pieces clicked in my life. The same way I saw how Kamala’s teachers and parents treated her, pushed her away from her gifts and towards what they considered normal and successful…
It was the same as my life. I would wager every person with ADHD could relate to it. I was pushed by absolutely everyone around me, some more harshly (some of my grade school teachers in particular) than others, to work towards a ‘normal’ education, a ‘normal’ career. It was ingrained in my head that flights of fancy, imagination, etc, were of little value, or were just a funky quirk. So many times was I told that “You’ll never make a lot of money on writing, so why are you bothering with it?”
To be fair, the stability offered by a ‘neurotypical’ life is a nice-to-have…but it became so much more than a nice-to-have for me. It became the only real goal that was worth anything.
Oh I never stopped imagining. I never stopped wanting to be a writer. I knew I would always be a storyteller, and throughout my life, I’ve put considerable effort towards that goal.
But I’ve always stopped short of total commitment to it. I’ve always diverted my attention to ‘real’ work. At least as best as I could. Sometimes having to fall back on medicine to help keep me from wandering too far off course.
So what has this done to me? What have the words “You have so much potential” as noted in Josh Weed’s post done to me over the course of decades?
It’s made me doubt myself. No, that’s a light way of putting it. It’s made me hypercritical of myself.
“I have so much potential, and I’m not realizing it, so I must be a failure.”
“I can do better, so I must be lazy for not doing better.”
“I must be stupid. I must just be bad.”
A lifetime of insecurities that never, ever made sense to me. The kinds of insecurities, the kinds of terror and self-flagellation I induced upon myself made NO sense to me or my friends and family. It was so bad that one would have thought I’d grown up abused, and that absolutely was not the case. My parents were loving, caring, and never once abused me.
So what was the cause of this? Why did I hate myself and doubt myself so very, very much?
And now…I think maybe I’m starting to understand. It was something far more insidious than actual abuse. Something systemic, and has been there through every moment of my existence.
Society rejected my gifts. Society told me I was different, and different was bad, so I needed to conform to neurotypical ideals, no matter what it did to me on an emotional and psychological level.
Where This Has All Led To
I currently have a very stable job. It makes a fair amount of money that means not only is my life relatively stable, but we live rather comfortable lives (sudden inflation this year not withstanding.) In my off times, when I’m not recharging my imagination with other stories (movies, books, video games,) I’m working on my own stories.
In fact, on top of my day job, I’ve published 6 books (with 2 more coming,) and, well…there’s one other storytelling objective I’m about to complete, but that’s a story for another time.
My point is…I should be happy. I should be relatively satisfied with my life. That’s what society tells me. Stable job, stable marriage, a consistent hobby – how could I ever want for more?
But anyone who has known me recently knows that I am increasingly dissatisfied with my career. Hell, more than that, in the past decade I’ve felt increasingly trapped.
Can you imagine it? You’re in a cage just big enough to sit up in. You’re given scraps to keep you alive, but that’s it. Not enough to thrive, only survive, leaving you with a persistent, unquenchable hunger and thirst. But out there, beyond your prison cell, is all of the food and drink you could ever want. Enough to sate you forever.
But every time you’ve ever even thought about escaping your prison, you’ve been beaten. Whipped. Cut. So much so that when the cage door is opened…the idea of leaving it terrifies you, and you stay hidden in your cage, where it’s safe. You’re not happy, but you’re safe.
That’s how I feel. I…can’t break away. I can’t quit my day job, not until/unless my writing somehow becomes a stable source of income. Except, ask any writer who does this full-time, and they’ll tell you that it is never a stable source of income. Ask any creative and they’ll tell you that. There are exceptions of course – the very famous ones that the media fawns over adoringly. They make more than enough money on their gigs that, usually, in between publications/gigs/etc, they don’t have to worry. But they’re the exception.
Writing will never be a stable source of income. Neither will my other creative endeavor (that I’ll talk about more in a later post, when I’m ready to announce it to the world.) So when, if ever, can I leave my cage behind and do what I was always born to do?
I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe never. Goodness knows I’ve felt helpless about it. I’ve written about it before after hearing Peter Dinklage’s commencement speech, but I didn’t quite understand myself or my situation back then like I do now.
So maybe…maybe understanding why I am the way I am, and how I got to where I am, will be enough to get the ball rolling.
But even still…I have a lot of work ahead of me.
The road is long and hard. My journey is just beginning.
I’m not saying there hasn’t been such a need before, but we live in a fortuitous time when producing movies about super powered individuals is much more feasible. Had the same cinematic technology existed during World War 2, I think superhero movies would have been a gigantic hit.
A Writer at Heart 