I can confidently say this is the most personal thing I think I could ever post. It is my inner most thoughts and feelings caused by the effect others have on me.
"What Disability Feels Like"
Waking up each morning knowing that you are automatically set up for failure is my smell of eggs and bacon in the morning. The first time I felt this way was in the second grade. I was in the middle of writing a sentence, had a mind blank and forgot how to spell something. I went up to my teacher after thinking long and hard about the word and how to spell it. She was surrounded by all of her favorite students who were all doodling and making cards. I asked her how to spell was and all of my classmates busted out laughing, including my teacher. I was then mocked and told how to spell was by a sassy second grader and I sat down and felt far away from the rest of my class. After that, I was afraid to ask my teacher anything. Through recent years of school I was never able to complete assignments on time or make good grades on tests. When given assignments on certain material I was always in trouble for turning in my assignment late, but if I turned it in on time the quality of the work came out being very poor. In social situations I am suffocated by an absurd amount of people and conversations full of pointless things that have no depth or purpose. I often drown in my own thoughts. When I take my medicine, I often drown others in my thoughts so much that I am soon to be ashamed that I have said too much or not the right thing. I have no balance. I want to give up because everyone tells me I should. If any of my teachers knew the way I was thinking or feeling, maybe they would understand why I am so behind in their classes. Maybe if they knew I was trapped inside my own mind, too ashamed to speak up and too afraid of disappointment. Through my actions and responses to things, and not to how much I memorized on the study guide for my exam the morning of the test. If knowing or guessing between a few choices of a language of numbers and letters I don’t understand is how to get somewhere in life than often I stumble and cannot make it anywhere. I get too nervous to show up in class the next day if I said something wrong. The next day turns into more anxiety and the days begin to pile up. My breath gets shorter and my lungs even tighter. I can’t breathe. My skin turns red and I become disoriented and too dizzy to walk. My thoughts are so loud and so painful that I can’t even hear what I am saying or what is being said to me. I become very hot and I cannot speak but if I stay calm and quiet I can escape to the bathroom to let my body take it’s unnatural course back to health. To the world’s standards, I can’t seem to do anything right. What happened to open conversations with people on topics that you have just learned? Or things on hardship, pain, and recovery? Why can’t that be my grade or my assignment? Maybe if I mapped something out for you on paper, or created a scenario explaining each thing to you so you will understand. Oh. I can’t seem do that. I have to write an entire essay of uselessness instead. I will most likely end up searching for it on the internet forgetting everything I have written right after typing the very next word. I hear and see things that tell me that my grades, my job, etc. don’t define me. If that is so obviously said, then why is this defining me? Why is everyone else defining me this way too? Why do parents and mentors tell me to make good grades or it will damage the rest of my life? How does that not define me to the rest of the world? I can’t focus on learning when my time must be consumed by busy work, assignments, and things that will never help me understand what we are learning. There was a bombing in Boston. Why are we not we talking about that? Why can’t I apply my sociological perspective to the way that society has responded to this crisis as a whole and look at the psychological trauma it has caused for people there and all over the world? Even if it’s not about bombs killing our families and friends, why do we use fake examples? In my finical class I have to make up portfolios and fake people about their money and lives. Why can’t I learn to do my own taxes for the project and get help when it’s needed and learn from real mistakes? I am stumbling farther into failure. If you had a conversation with me, I think you could understand that I more than anything strive to apply myself but it feels impossible for me to do them in a room of minds that apparently think the same, act the same, and are all tested the exact same. Maybe if I pretend to be the same too, no one will notice me. I try so hard to act like the others, to wear the clothes to what my “friends” wear but I feel stupid, over-exposed, and uncomfortable in them. I attempt to talk about the same topics they do and I am often laughed at for not knowing what I am talking about. I thought I was good at having conversations. I guess I can’t talk too much now either or else I will annoy everyone with knowing everything (which I don’t). Where did these social rules come from and why do I naturally break every one of them? One day, I overheard what others were saying about me. “She tries way too hard to be someone she’s not.” If I wear the things I want to and I learn uniquely, I am a social outcast. If I try to fit in and attempt to pass in these fleeting information tests, I look foolish and I am a suck up. I talk too much. I don’t eat fast enough. I can’t turn in an assignment done alternatively regardless of if it shows my understanding of what was taught. I don’t want to be in a sorority. I can’t write essays. I am not skinny enough. I can’t pass a Math or English class which are “the most important things to learn in my education.” My imagination is too big and my practical skills too little. I care too much what other people think about me. I care too little about what other people think of me. I have been born into a society of “equal opportunity” where my teachers fail me because they think I don’t care about the class. In reality, I don’t sleep at night due to anxiety attacks, sleep paralysis, and depressing thoughts I have because all I care about are passing my classes and I don’t know how to express it to them. So I will just give up. If I speak up, I am shot down. I am told to be quiet, to conform, and do my work. If I follow those rules I can be successful. I am too much, and not enough. And I am not quite sure how that could be. This is the power that society holds in my so called disabled life.