The Sun Doesn’t Shine as Bright for Some
Though some people don’t experience it, everyone knows it exists. That intense divide between the world and neurodivergent people. How some individuals never experience hardship at work or school, or in relationships whether they be platonic, romantic, familial, or with yourself. Most neurotypical people have little to no struggle getting through day-to-day life activities. They know who they are. We neurodivergent people sometimes never figure out who we are and, if we do, it’s much later in life. Growing up is much different. School is painful. Work seems to be impossible.
Friends come and go and, sometimes, we don’t make friends until we’re out of childhood. Neurodivergence ranges from person to person. It is a spectrum and not a very well-known one. When someone who isn’t well versed in the subject thinks about a neurodivergent person, most of the time they will picture someone with visible disabilities. This person that they picture most likely cannot verbally communicate and, if they can, it is very little. This person probably cannot hide their stimming, which is a physically active form of releasing tension and excitement or nerves.
This person might have never been to a public school. This is not the case for every neurodivergent individual, and it is not my case.
I was diagnosed as autistic very late in my life. The reason was because I “mask” extraordinarily well. Masking is a technique used by neurodivergent people to try and “blend into society” as an ordinary person. This can be subconscious or conscious. In my case, I was subconsciously masking my entire childhood. Even though I didn’t talk until I was about five years old and was in continuous speech therapy, my mother refused to believe there could be something wrong with her first-born child when her second-born child has Down syndrome. I was to be the perfect child. No flaws were allowed. Of course the struggles were intense and loud, but I couldn’t show that. My mother was troubled. She was quite young when she had me, and had quite the expectations for me as her first born. My mind was different. It was loud, it was colorful, it was vibrant and musical, but it was also terrifying and too much at times. I could write incredible stories and write songs at the age of seven. I was the kid who had the most spectacular ideas for playtime. We were to be astronauts who could walk on the stars. However, once recess was over and it was time to focus on my studies, I struggled severely. Numbers didn’t make sense.
The endless nights of crying over homework and feeling like a failure made me a husk. I didn’t understand why I was so different.
High school was a different demon. It was much more intense. Every day felt like the world was getting progressively heavier, and I had no clue as to why. I was able to achieve good grades, but that was only because of the fear of bringing home a subpar report card. The idea of failure was horrifying, and what would follow after was worse. I couldn’t speak up for myself. There was no shield, and there was no way I could tell someone I was struggling. Until very recently, I did not realize how severely dissociated I was. To realize that every day, every week, every month you lived through was all on fight or flight, and to have extremely vague to little memory of what was what, was very surreal. It took fight after fight with my mother to prove to her that I needed help,that I wasn’t her perfect child. I wasn’t neurotypical. And on top of it all, I wasn’t her daughter either. I was her son.
The pain of telling your mother who you really are when she lives vicariously through you can echo through a soul, but to be shunned and kicked out of the house for a year could shatter it. I knew I was transgender from a very young age, and the only people who didn’t refer to me as a male was my family. Every friend I made knew, and most of my teachers did as well. It took years to build up courage to tell someone in my family, and the first person I happened to tell was my father. He was supportive, but terrified. Not because his child was trans, but because he knew how my mother would react. He begged me to wait until I was at least eighteen before telling her. At the time, I thought it was because he didn’t want me transitioning until then. That wasn’t the case. He knew I would be away at university when I turned eighteen. He wanted me out of the house, and I did not realize at the time that this was because he knew how my mother would react. I did not wait until I was eighteen.
There’s this thing I became obsessed with studying called Chaos Theory. The Chaos Theory implies that any minor difference at the start of a process can change the entire outcome dramatically. I told my mom I was transgender at fifteen. I got kicked out and was living with a friend for a year. While living with this friend, I began therapy with the help of my father. I fought for good grades and, by the time graduation came rolling through, I knew where I was headed for college. I had been accepted to Northern Arizona University (NAU), and I was never coming home. I began my transition there, to the horror of my mom. I got better therapy and an official diagnosis for autism. I made lifelong friends. I did three semesters at NAU and came home after a mental break. I took a year off of school to focus on bettering myself. My mother and I mended our relationship slowly. But, even with all of that, I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t come out to her at fifteen. What if I had listened, and waited until I was eighteen?
The pain of severe gender dysphoria, and not knowing what is wrong with your mind all at the same time, is a battle I wish upon no one. It starts so small when you’re a child, unaware of any difference in your mind and the kids next to you on the playground. You don’t realize you’re different until kids around you become a little meaner. Words are thrown around, and that feeling of maybe you always knew you were different comes into play. When puberty hits, it feels like you’re dying. There are feelings words cannot articulate, but the pain of feeling trapped within a body and mind you had no say over is intense to say the least. To feel your brain shut down when it becomes just slightly too overwhelmed. To see the stacks of homework pile up and, as hard as you try, you just can’t seem to start them. To finally getting around to doing the homework you so desperately wanted to do when it was assigned, but points being docked because it’s three weeks late. You knew that would happen, but you couldn’t start. To need to buy expensive prescription hormone injections so you don’t slip into a deep depression episode, and to just feel like a human being. Wanting to feel like a human being. Wanting to succeed in life, but worrying you’ll fail over and over again because of an invisible disability that no one can see.
As a child, I had high dreams. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to live on the International Space Station (ISS) and study the planets. I wanted to spread love and kindness to people, and be that person that someone can lean on when they need a shoulder to cry on. As a twenty-one year old, I still want to spread love and kindness and be that friend everyone can rely on. I want to be an archeologist who investigates the ancient studies of astronomy. I want to go far, but it’s difficult when you struggle so deeply inside your brain. My dreams never die, but the motivation does. The fear of failure and disappointment heightens when I see my grades drop and drop. To have a hidden disability that no one can see feels like a bird in a dense forest calling out over and over again but to never receive a response. The sun appears to shine brighter on those who face fewer struggles, and I am hoping one day I can feel the warmth on my back.