What I Know
Twenty-three years of my life. Screaming rages, helpless sobs, sudden spasms of inchoate fury, reasonless paralyzing terror. A child who screams wildly in his car seat because the light shines in his eyes. A child who refuses to fingerpaint because she hates the feel of slimy things on her skin.
Twenty-three years of my life.
The doctors who lecture and the doctors who bully and the doctors who, finally, shut up and listen. The moment when they give a name to the thing that's been tormenting you. It has a name. You're sick, not crazy. It has a name, and there is something you can do about it.
This is real. This is my reality.
Days and weeks and months that go by glazed with grey, while you live because you don't have the energy to die. Weeks and months and years when you're afraid to see anyone because you'll do something wrong, something crazy, and they'll know there's something very, very wrong with you....
This has been my reality for twenty-three years, and yes, there is a closet. And so many of us stay in there. The loud ones, the ones who know how to cry for help even if they don't know how to do it without hurting themselves-- those are the ones you see. You don't see the rest of us.
You don't see me, shut up in my room, quiet girl in the checkout line, quiet girl in the park or the coffee shop with her nose in a book to shut out the noise that isn't noise to you. You don't see my brother, strong energetic boy, vivid and talkative, terrific kid when he's balanced, surly brat when he's not. You don't see my sister, endearingly kooky, adorably just this side of trendy, rainbow-spangled, because she doesn't cry for hours in front of you.
You don't see my father, mild-mannered aging techie; you don't see my mother, shy kindly housewife apologizing for the mess. You don't see him in so much pain that it fills the whole house; you don't see the way she tears herself up on the inside.
We don't slice our flesh or starve ourselves skeletal, or scream blue murder in public, or drink too much, and when we talk about the voices in our heads we're kidding. You don't see us, but we're here.
This is our reality. This is real. If we don't talk about it, it's not because it's not real or because it doesn't hurt or because we don't fight with it every day of our lives. It's because we've had too many people tell us we're making a fuss over nothing. Too many doctors who thought they knew what ailed us and were angry when we refused to be cured. Too many teachers who had no patience for a child who wouldn't fingerpaint, who fled from the noisy cafeteria, who punched the kid who poked him. It's because we're human and we have our dignity, and we hate having to lay our pain in front of you, and we hate having to beg for the help we need.
But we're here. We're real. We're people. We are depressive, manic-depressive, attention-deficient, high-functioning autistic, and we know what it's like in here. We know what it's like inside our heads. We didn't make it that way, but we have to live with it.
That's what I know.