I’m not sensitive or over-dramatic, but it’s hard healing when no one takes you seriously.
It was a lovely office with couches, a desk, and a table with two chairs. There was standard blue carpeting, and on top a lovely oriental rug with ornate patterns.
She, Remmy I’ll call her, was nice and even offered me water or tea. I was grateful for this. We sat down and she asked me the first major question:
“So what do you hope to gain from this today?”
I explained that I was trying to deal with persistant PTSD from my childhood, and in the process of healing I was trying to understand myself and why my experiences were so unexpected. The PTSD was effecting my ability to exercise, to stay focused at work, causing anxiety and depression. Things were at a head, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I needed to understand why somethings were so difficult and painful for me, while everyone else was fine. The pressure of tears welling up behind my eyes nearly broke me, but I took some deep breaths, drank more of the water she gave me, calmed myself and continued talking with the calm, professional tone I prefer.
Already I had been diagnosed with ADHD, and Autism. But even with all that, I strongly suspected there was something more. Remmy said she could evaluate me for dyspraxia, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and other disorders too. It was going to cost me some serious dough, more than I had in my bank account, but I needed this.
The test started out just fine. I was drawing objects in boxes, staying within the lines, reading, and doing math. My hand was writing answers on a packet of grayish paper. As my left hand moved across the page, I felt the thick, scratchy, bulbs of paper pulp across my skin. The feeling of the cheap pulp made me cringe. Suddenly I was uncomfortable and didn’t want to be there. Could I even finish the test? I took some more deep breaths and decided to focus on the test and block out the texture of the paper. But I couldn’t just ignore it. Remmy was nice, and seem to understand, so I just told her.
“I’m having trouble with this paper.” I told Remmy. She looked up from her computer. “It’s okay, I can get through the test, I just needed to tell you the paper is a problem for me.” Remmy looked curious, I returned to working quietly.
After that section was done, Remmy asked me what was wrong with the paper. I explained I could feel the cheap pulp rub against my skin and that bothered me. She asked me why, so I started talking, and remembering.
I am sitting at a desk, first grade, age 6 or 7. On my desk is a giant, awkward piece of beige, awful, cheap paper with wide blue lines across it. On the top is a blank space for me to draw a picture. On the bottom are lines for me to write a sentence about something we read as a class. My hands awkwardly clutch a round, thick pencil, too big to handle. I can’t control where or how the pencil moves. I think of the sentence to write, I know what I want to say. I put the thick lead to the paper, and try my best. I think about the rules my teacher taught us about how to form letters. Don’t go above the top line, don’t go below the bottom line. The scratchy pulp rubs against my left hand as I try to form letters. The thick lead tears a whole the thin paper beneath; suddenly I am drawing on the desk. The whole sheet moves as I try to write on it, I use my right hand to steady the paper, which then causes another tear to develop.
My letters are big and awkward, and are all over the paper. The pencil keeps scratching and tearing as I struggle to just get a basic thought out. I hate my big, ugly letters, and I try to erase an illegible letter, thus tearing the paper yet again with eraser. Despite all this the eraser doesn’t work, and my awkward ill-formed letter stays there. My teacher brings me another giant, thin, awful piece of paper and tells me to start over since my sheet is ruined. I try again and mess up the paper all over, feeling the cheap pulp crease and tear under my pencil. Now I just want to finish the exercise.
Sitting next to me is a boy who doesn’t have a single tear in his paper. His letters aren’t neat, but they fit in the lines and can be read. Sitting across from me is a girl with big, round, beautiful letters. They look like curls, large and evenly placed on the designated lines. She doesn’t have any poorly erased letters like I do. Why can’t my writing be pretty and curly like hers? The activity ends and the class moves on to the next thing, but I’m not done yet. I have to start over again, the thin awful paper awaits before me, but this time I will do better. I no longer am trying my best, I just want to be done. Finally the teacher says I am done and I can join the others for story time. Thank God.
While relating this to Remmy, I break down in tears. I am there again, at my desk, frustrated and defeated. Remmy begins the insructions for the next part of the test, but I tell her I need a moment. I cry, quietly, so hopefully she doesn’t notice. I take a moment to hug that poor girl inside of myself stuck in a first grade desk trying to write. I sip the water, take some deep breaths, and distract myself by looking at the pretty rug on the ground. There is lotion in my bag, I apply it so my fingers can forget the feeling of the paper. A few minutes later I am ready to keep start again. Remmy, wonderfully gets me some manilla folders to use as a backing for paper so I don’t have to worry about tearing it up. I feel better.
That’s one memory of school being a struggle for me. But I know there are more, many more. There is also second grade, when I kept having to miss lunch because my math wasn’t acceptable. It wasn’t that I was hungry, but I liked going to lunch with my class, being one of the group, feeling like I belonged. And if my math wasn’t perfect, I was late, or couldn’t go at all. Memories of running into the cafeteria with everyone gone, left me feeling so out of place and anxious. As a young autistic, I wanted to follow the rules, and doing what the crowd did felt safe to me. Without the crowd, I felt lost.
I remember crying, because I missed recess in kindergarten because I struggeled to cut out a majenta heart on thick water color paper. I hated staying in during recess and I was so proud I finally finished the cutting, only to hear the bell ring and seeing that recess was over, I had spent the entire time trying to cut out that stupid heart. I cried like crazy, and my parents bought me two pair of scissors, one for right and one for left, because no one could figure out which hand was dominant. It was assumed that’s why I had a bad day.
There was the bullying, the confusion, the not understanding why everyone did what they did, and wondering why everything was so hard for me. Eventually I came to the conclusion something was very wrong with me. I would have to work way harder than anyone else, just to appear normal. My goal then became to work hard to fit in, to be invisible, to feel normal and blend in, where people, and even I, wouldn’t notice I was different.
Four years ago, I entered an elementary school for the first time in years, immediately the smell of wooden desks and linoleum floors terrified me and I broke down crying, wondering how I ended up back in hell.
I never understood how anyone could like school. For me it was a scary place where I was made to feel terrible about myself. I just wanted to make a couple friends so I didn’t feel like a freak, and then hide somewhere would no one would notice I was different, left alone in my fantasy brain writing stories and watching nature.
Back to Remmy and her comfortable office, where I could relax. The rest of the testing went just fine. I was rather upset I had to use a pen, and not my beloved, special pencil. I found this one type of pencil in college, and I use it for everything. I am so used to it’s texture, the way it sits in my hand, the way it touches and smoothes paper as I write. Two weeks ago my favorite store stopped carrying them and I panicked. I don’t know what I’d do without my favorite pencils. They make writing so much easier. Everything would be harder without it and my life doesn’t need that.
In two weeks I will get my results. We shall see if have dysgraphia, which would explain my troubles with writing. We shall see if I have dyslexia, which would explain the struggles I had with learning to read. I shall know a lot more about what I have and don’t have, and that will give me some context on why school was so hard for me. Why I still freak out when I smell wood and linoleum. I’ll keep working on it through therapy, and journaling, and hopefully get better. Who the fuck has PTSD from elementary school? According to my therapist and the psychologist who diagnozed me with autism, I do. Elementary school was awful for me.
Anyway, thanks for reading.
