I have been careful over the years to keep my activities online as private as possible. I was growing up when the internet began to be ubiquitous and we were just starting to see how dangerous it could be. Limit identifying information and you won't get kidnapped. If only that were the biggest concern.
Recently, people have taken special care to comment on the importance of sanitizing your online presence. Don't let your name be connected to anything embarrassing! Everything is suspect. Political, social, health, etc. Make sure no one can find anything about you that might hinder your chances at employment or receiving awards or any other such thing. Be careful what you say; it could bite you in the ass.
I know this. I Google myself regularly. I have gone after websites to have older web identities scrubbed from the Way Back Machine. I am careful with who I reveal information to and how I share things.
So why, with all this care, am I writing this, fairly openly attached to my REAL NAME, with all this HOMG! EMBARRASSING information about my personal mental health history? Maybe I'm just a damned fool, but I like to at least pretend that there's a real reason. It is important to me to normalize depression. It is important to me to normalize ADHD. It is important to me that people see that this is a part of who I am and that I'm not going to hide it until HR squeezes it out of me. I have no illusions that the Americans with Disabilities Act is something that people go out of their way to uphold. But I also cannot bear to take advantage of my invisible disability when (and because) others cannot.
It's a funny concept, this invisible disability thing. I have friends with Multiple Sclerosis. My mother has Rheumatoid Arthritis. Diseases are generally packed into the baggage that is the "invisible" disability, but sometimes these are less invisible than they may seem. The worse the inflammation in my mother's hands get, the less invisible she'll be. But learning and cognitive disabilities are often supposed to be the most invisible of the invisible. And yet, everyone thinks they can pick people with ADHD out in a room (and in many cases, they could).
But I'm special. I'm swift. Really swift. It's not something I've had any part in creating, and it's been more of a complete pain in the ass than really any sort of badge. But the test scores, well, they exist. Here's where the pain comes in. I have a crippling cognitive disorder. An accident of fortune gave me a powerful mind and an enormous tear in it (or two, whatever). I could do anything, think anything, learn anything. But because of this problem I have, I function about average. It's horrible because it's so obvious how quickly I think. The old books that talk about "lazy, stupid, or crazy" truly catch the issue. I'm so swift; how can I possibly not be able to do this assignment? I'm so swift; why can't I understand the same instructions everyone else receives. I'm so swift; why can't I learn how to follow social rules? I'm so swift; why can't I fill out a form without looking like an idiot and having to fill it out 12 times because I mucked it all up?
And that's just the ADHD. What about this depression business? Why in the world would I come right out and say that I have a chronic mental health problem? For the record, I don't know the exact code that's written on my files, but I have been told (and know from rigorous experience) that I suffer from recurrent, chronic low-grade depression (sometimes less low-grade than others). So, I chose the term. Maybe next semester in psychopathology I'll decide to change that. Probably not. I'm pretty swift.
So why would I readily admit to these? Partly to help people I know understand me. It can be very hard to be my friend. A big part of why is also because I am, despite my problems, a shockingly effective person. I have nearly performed according to my potential in direct defiance to my limitations. I must succeed because I can. I will be highly effective because I won't let these monsters beat me. I want people who don't understand disabilities to see the potential that even we with mental problems have. There's always talk about how people with physical disabilities shouldn't be restricted in their mental capacities, because they aren't slow. Well, neither are a bunch of us who do possess mental limitations. :) Finally, enough can never be said about the power of another person's meaningless anecdotes to provide hope and comfort to those facing the same issues.
But, this part is complicated. I've been doing really, really, REALLY well the last few years. My problems have become more invisible as I've become entrenched in adulthood. Now I just seem eccentric. Now I just use the skills I've learned to ask repeatedly for clarification. Now I'm just careful to accommodate my needs on my own so I don't need assistance. I also know how hard it is to see a standard and be tortured in trying to compare to it. Now, again, I'm only remarkably effective considering. I'm not yet to highly effective. So I know I'm not some glowing awesome standard of awesomeness. But I did complete a graduate degree and am working on another, and that's pretty awesome. It's also something I was terrified I would never succeed at even though it was always part of my goals. And that's why I include all the awful, deep, dark, scary, nasty bits from the dusty archives of me-dom. These embarrassing stories are exactly what people need to hear. These are the parts of my life that made it hard. These are the crux of my disabledness. And, most importantly, I'm learning not to be ashamed of myself.
If someone decides that they can't use the insights of someone who has battled grief and depression and disability and come out on top, then they probably aren't really interested in helping anyone anyways.
No comments:
Post a Comment