Why: I’m Scared But I’m Here
April, 2024
TW: Ableism, Institutionalization, Blood, Mental Illness
I guess I want to start off here by saying that I’m scared.
I’m not comfortable with my thoughts laid bare on this page. Where I’m not writing for simply writing sake, like the sprawling pages of my journals, but writing to say something. To reach out a hand in what can feel like a terrifying, violent, mystifying, beautiful cluster-fuck of a world and say, “Hey! I’m here too!”
I’m scared.
There are voices that swirl within my skull, that tell me there is no point, that I don’t deserve to be heard, that no matter how loud I scream and punch and kick and cry, no one is listening.
I don’t think those are innate thoughts or feelings, but learned ones.
I grew up in a household that wouldn’t acknowledge or address a need, confront a problem, or have a difficult conversation until the fire alarm is blaring, 911 has been dialed, or someone is dying. So as a young neurodivergent, mentally-ill child, I learned that it was easier to pretend my needs and my truths simply didn’t exist. Plus, it was exhausting to die, and nothing is more embarrassing than your parents calling 911 on you.
I’m scared.
By 13 I was so fucking exhausted of clawing for a sliver of agency over my adolescent body and mind—a body and mind that did nothing but confuse and betray me. If tantrums and screams and hospital beds and blood wouldn’t get my parents to listen to me, to see me, I might as well try to be a different person. One whose desires for communication and predictable systems, massive feelings, queerness, curiosity, deep fear, and creativity were buried beneath a Victoria's Secret pushup bra, clumpy mascara, and brassy highlights.
My friends laugh when they catch a glimpse of my drivers license or my student ID, with my 17-year-old self staring blankly out of the plastic card. I laugh along because it’s easier. I see the humor in juxtaposing the long blond hair to my chopped brown, the cakey makeup-clad face to mine peppered with metal piercings. But I wish I could dive through the plastic, take my own hand, and tell myself that hiding will hurt me ever more. I wonder if 17-year-old me would let that hand go, balking at my purple cane, my baggy jeans, and the lovely soft bits of skin that spill over the waistband.
I’m scared.
People talk about finding themselves like they must travel vast distances, rip up floorboards, and shout their name from rooftops. I didn’t have that experience. The needs and desires and messiness and truth that I buried deep in the crevasses of my being started to bubble over. They would ooze out during early mornings in my dorm room, when I would wake up gulping for air, wondering why my dorm felt like the familiar corridors of a hospital, questioning what persona I would adopt to make friends that day, and thinking about how the fuck I would get out of bed. They would trickle down my cheeks as I tried desperately to get my loving but depressed partner to open up to me, remembering those years of my adolescence I spent banging on my brother's door, begging him to let me in. They would seep out during nights spent alone in my room spreading paint across a canvas, relishing in the simple joy of creating for my own enjoyment.
People talk about finding themselves as a sudden revelation, triumphantly completing the puzzle of their long-lost personhood with courage and ease. I didn’t have that experience either. My gut wrenching, sticky, oozing, delightful, and chaotic puzzle pieces of memories and feelings don’t magically complete the bodymind I occupy today. I’ve spent long and lonely hours staring at these pieces, conversing with them, cooking for them, writing with them, and bringing them with me to therapy. And I’m still so incredibly perplexed, knowing I can’t be the only one who feels this way, and wondering why the hell aren’t we talking about it. I’m scared of the jagged jigsaw I am, with mismatched pieces and whole chunks of puzzle missing.
I’m scared.
As I type this at 21, I am only now finding my footing after what has felt like the most terrifying, impossible, and isolating two and a half years of my life. A lot happened in that timespan, but stepping into my identity as a disabled individual is really the catalyst for my showing up on this page.
I’ve always been disabled. Turns out my specific desires for communication and systems and colossal feelings and confusion that I spent 6 years of my life burying beneath brassy blonde highlights were autism and ADHD. And it turns out the chronic injuries and pain I have been experiencing for the past 3 years aren’t just “growing pains”—as I’ve heard from many doctors, family, and friends— but a connective tissue disorder.
It’s been quite a painful and lonely realization that if I want to survive, I cannot continue to hide myself, my access needs, and my desires. So on my quest for survival, I learned that I need to express, to create, to write, to release—it helps me make sense of this agonizing, pointless, yet delicately beautiful human experience, it keeps me from collapsing under the sheer fear of waking up in the morning, and it allows me to reach a hand out into this void of existence and say, “Is anyone else having this really fucked up feeling?”
And maybe someone is.
I’m scared, but I’m here. Somehow.
As I reach my hand out through these typed words strung together, I am still the same 4 year old throwing a tantrum in a taxi cab, I am the 12 year old crying in a hospital gown, I am the 17 year old staring blankly though my student ID, and I carry this ugly unfinished puzzle within me, ready to share it with the world.
