Dealing with suppressed memories has been a gift; it has helped me face my uncomfortable college memories. I remember feeling distant from my peers and often angry with them. At first, I never understood the source of that anger. They were experimenting with substances in ways I never did. I had two seizures in high school and was on Keppra for at least half of college, so I was terrified of anything that might trigger another seizure. I longed for the freedom they seemed to have. I wanted to shout into the void. I, too, wanted to lose myself in as many ways as possible, but I also didn’t want to risk dying. They all seemed able to take risks. I wasn’t able to. I was terrified of my body betraying me. My first seizure happened at an AP interest night during high school, when I was trying to learn how to take academically rigorous courses. I should have been safe there if I were safe anywhere. My second was in the trailer of an elective class I was taking. I felt angry at my teenage body going into college. I hadn’t asked anything extraordinary of it, just to keep me in one piece while I took classes, sat in a chair, and filled my brain with information. If these non-strenuous activities were too much, then how could I experiment with anything deemed dangerous in college? I watched peers and siblings party and experience the stereotypical parts of young adulthood. I studied hard, still didn’t fit in, and struggled mightily; my body wasn’t working well, and my brain didn’t seem to want to cooperate either. I was surrounded by experiences I didn’t know how to participate in or access. I liked the idea of Greek life, but I was sure I’d be rejected if I rushed any sorority. Intramural sports sounded appealing, but I didn’t want to be embarrassed by my lack of coordination or by my asthma acting up. Even when I found an activity that sounded appealing, I would find a reason not to participate. The fear of rejection or social difficulty kept me at home before I had even tried.
I held myself out as someone who had seen the effects of addiction in a loved one, or as someone wiser than her peers, and while I wanted those to be true in college, the truth was messier. I wanted to do what my peers were doing. I wanted it desperately. I just wasn’t willing to pay the price of what my neurologist and other healthcare professionals said could happen if I took it while on my seizure meds. Hearing about my peers’ exploits filled me with deep emotions because I wanted to tell them, I want that too, but I can’t have it without something exceedingly dangerous. I also wanted to believe I was better than them, and that was why I didn’t partake. It made me feel better. Saying I was too afraid didn’t sound as good. Addiction fills my extended family tree, and I know genetically I’m most likely predisposed to many unpleasant things, and this is just one of them. After Keppra, there was Lexapro, and then I was camped out in Ther’s offices so frequently that when I even mentioned wanting to try something, I was told, tepidly, it wasn’t the wisest idea, given my medical history. I also felt I needed more release than my peers. How much could any of them truly be suffering? They were taking for granted the hedonistic rituals that should have been my birthright. I still don’t understand why I was camped out in the campus C center for all four years, off and on. I had played the game well in high school, and there was no prize in college. Only more suffering and less of a place to belong. Just as the Israelites wandered in the desert, my four years in college felt like a wilderness.
The rural landscape that surrounded my campus reflected the emptiness I felt inside. Most students would pilgrimage to large towns with large universities on the weekends to attend sporting events or just have something more to do than the town that our university offered. I had access to my own vehicle starting my junior year of college, but I didn’t bother to go anywhere else. I spent a lot of my youth waiting for my mental illness and struggles with socializing and or social anxiety to improve. I’ve written extensively regarding what I did when I realized that this might not improve, or I did not know how to improve my life. The Israelites eventually reached the promised land. I did eventually reach my promised land, but not at the end of four years of college. It took another several months to get a diagnosis, and it took several more years to rebuild my life after spending so many years wandering. That’s the problem with an undiagnosed, invisible disability. The world tells you that there is nothing wrong with you. The gaslighting at the individual level is often not intentional, but it is damaging nonetheless. I looked normal to those around me, but it was heartbreaking to see the reactions of person after person I interacted with when they realized there was something different about me after entering the professional world.
I barely survived the internship I needed to graduate. I don’t know how much I should share about my supervising clinician. I look back on her as someone who must have been having a difficult time personally, who may not have been a very nice person, who may not have liked her job, and who, in the long line of bullies I’ve had in my life, is just one of many. What I still find most disappointing about that experience is that in a clinic that dealt with at least a third of its clients being children to young adults with autism, they could not have been crueler to an undiagnosed young adult with the same disability. I can count on one hand the people who showed me kindness. I will never take any child of mine to that clinic or recommend the vast majority of those clinicians to anyone if I ever hear of anyone in my circle taking their children there. Being a student intern showed me that I never wanted to be an adult and that I never want any children I have to be in the world.
I did run into my clinical supervisor years later, and she didn’t remember me. It’s strange how someone who can scar someone can barely remember them years later. I used to think of her a lot, and this is the first time in years I’ve thought about her. I don’t think I have anything specific to say to her. I think I just have general thoughts for people who are unkind and cruel to those with disabilities. People like that are okay with picking on the weak until someone they know or love is the weak one being picked on or needs something. It could be a parent who gets diagnosed with dementia, a child in their family who has a disability, or themselves who becomes disabled with age or injury.
I didn’t realize until adulthood that people didn’t think about the disability community on a regular basis, as my family did. One of my mom’s best friends had a son born with level two autism. When I was in elementary school, one of our new neighbors, who had experienced a traumatic brain injury in childhood, moved across the street. My dad’s dad had died of parkinsons. My mom had taken us to visit the elderly, and one of them was a lady I formed a very close bond with, who had a limb difference caused by an accident at a young age. Disability was just a part of life. I didn’t know I was disabled or different, but I knew people with disabilities could do the same things as people who weren’t disabled. I knew accessibility was important; I assumed everyone did, too. Because I had always been around disability and it had been talked about and treated as normal in my family, I thought everyone was this way. It was only as I got older that I realized that disability could be used as shorthand for other or even second-class.
It’s all very easy to mock and be cruel until we need the help ourselves or someone we love does. I’ve been disabled all along, needing accessibility and accommodations. How long will it be before you or someone in your life needs it, too?
Living on the Spectrum 
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