Disordered

Another child is talking to you,

But the lights are too bright, the books and shelves and feet and voices are too loud, the colours are too brilliant. It all melds together into one noisy, tyrannical soup, surging towards you and entrapping you in the chaos.

The other child looks sad, and you know you did something wrong, but you don’t know what.

The other child goes away.

You go hide in the cubby house.

They call it a disorder.

Actually, They call it a lot of things, but ‘disorder’ is the only word you recognise amongst the stream of syllables that washes over you. You don’t know what it means, but it sticks to you like superglue. You thought the problem was the lights, the room, the colours, the screams, the pushing, the other children, the go stop this that sit stand write tidy apple plus banana minus, but you were wrong.

The problem is You.

As long as you can remember, They’ve been part of your life. Every few months, there’s a new one; a new Doctor, or Psychologist, or OT, or Speech Therapist, who knows how to fix you. They all smile at you, and ask you the same questions. They give you the same tests, and enthusiastically shower you in praise and rewards for every act of compliance. They say “let’s play a game”, and stare at you unrelentingly every time you take your turn.

Their irises all glow as they utter Their pronouncement, Their revelation. A brand new cluster of words to describe what’s wrong with you, a fresh, shiny label to slap onto your box. They’re all so nice, but your skin still crawls, and you still have that yucky taste in your mouth. The word Disorder is still there.

You’re always back at school the next day.

It takes you a few moments to realize everyone is sitting on the mat, and you probably should be, too.

The teacher asks you to take a seat, so that’s what you do.

The other kids all start laughing.

The teacher hushes them, gives them that soft, that’s not very nice look, but there’s still a few muffled snorts amongst the small crowd.

You can tell they’re laughing at you, but you don’t know why.

When you’re eleven years old, you visit a new doctor. You have to go all the way to the hospital to see him, so your mum picks you up from school. You wait in that stinky hospital waiting room, surrounded by chipped, discoloured toys for which you are far too grown up, and towers of those flaking, brightly-coloured magazines your Mum scoffs at and never lets you read.

You hold your book between your hands (Mum made sure you didn’t forget it), but the book feels too heavy to hold up. Laying it flat on your lap hurts your neck. You try lying on your stomach on the chilled, sterile floor, the book splayed out front of you. It makes your arms sore, holding yourself up so your face is over the book, and your knees feel like arrows are being shot through them, but it’s a bit better. Your Mum pulls you back up onto the chair as soon as she gets back from the bathroom, so you go back to twisting in your chair, attempting to balance your book on your armrest.

You can’t read anyway - well, not here. Not with all the phones ringing and the machines beeping and that hospital smell. It’s too quiet to tune those noises out; you have to read each sentence at least ten times before you have the faintest idea of what it says.

It takes hours, but eventually the doctor calls your name. You follow the same, well-trodden routine, following him through the beige corridors, sitting in the chair he waved at and saying ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ when he asks how your day was. It takes you two activities to decide you like this one better than the others; he talks to you, and asks you what you think, instead of just talking about you to your mum, offering you more than juvenile chit chat. He actually listens, too, and doesn’t treat you like a little kid. He doesn’t try to pass his tests off as ‘games’, but still gives you a lollipop at the end of the appointment.

By the third time you go to see him, you’ve learnt that he’s always running late, so even though you still hate waiting two whole hours for your appointment, it doesn’t make you want to cry. Your mum buys you hot chocolate from the cafe, and brings some really yummy cakes with her, so you lean back against the cool, hard fabric of the waiting room chairs and do your homework.

When your Doctor finally calls you through, he suggests starting you on a pill that he says will help you. He explains the benefits, some of the common side effects, and tells you to go away and think about it.

Your parents talk to you about it over dinner, but you’ve already made up your mind. All you hear is ‘Pills that make me smarter,’ and you respond enthusiastically.

The pills work. Suddenly, you can listen in conversations, focusing on and responding to what the other person is saying. You can tidy your room, without being crushed by the enormity of the task. You can complete your classwork in the time your teacher gives you, instead of having to bring it home to toil at, and your marks at school soar beyond what you ever thought yourself capable of.

The pills work, but they come at a cost. The first one you try winds you up far too tightly then deserts you after several hours, leaving you devastated and furious at any poor soul unlucky enough to be near you. The second one materializes a firetruck in your bedroom, crashing through your window and hurtling towards you. Firetrucks aren’t as cool after that.

The third one does something to your eyes. You come back to class after lunch one day and can’t read; the letters gain a green-purple tinge and duplicate, swimming around the page. Your friends don’t believe you, and say you’re doing it for attention. Perhaps most unbearably, you can’t read anymore, stripping you of your greatest source of comfort.

Your Doctor wants you to try a fourth pill. A thousand clamps fall off your shoulders when your parents say no.

You learn other ways to cope in a world that isn’t built for you. You learn to speak the majority language, but you’re not a native speaker. You know when you’ve made a mistake from the incredulous derision of those around you, but you never know what it was.

You accept that you’re a Bit Weird, learn to study in a way that suits you, and barely survive your final exams, clinging on to the threadbare promise that University Will Be Better, You’ll Like It There.

It is better, thankfully. You don’t know what you would have done if it hadn’t been. The social hierarchy’s Big Brother isn’t scrutinizing your every move, and the kaleidoscope of humanity surrounding you emboldens you to rest, to just be You.

It’s weird, sitting in a lecture hall, seeing childhood being laid out in stark bullet points. Glancing at those around you and seeing them nod and scribble in their notepads. Raindrops begin to prickle at the backs of your eyes, battering against the barrier, so you fortify your forces.

Again and again, the concept of comorbidity is asserted, the lecturer cavalierly contends that your ‘condition’ is almost always accompanied by Anxiety, and a Big Black Dog hovering at its heels.

You wonder why no-one ever warned you - why They didn’t warn you, if They knew the torment that was in store for you.

They call it a disorder, but you don’t agree. Just because your order, your language is different, doesn’t mean it's wrong. Why should You have to warp yourself just to put others at ease, to become a perfect little foot soldier turning cogs inside the ceaseless machine?

You believe that, and know many others believe it too. And now, You know for sure that those most precious to you love you for who you are. You can never truly regret your decision to let yourself be You.

But sometimes, when You have to flee a room to escape the sensory tsunami crashing down, or frustrate your colleagues because You don’t understand what they’re trying to tell you without words; when everyone else seems to be making friends and getting married, but You can’t manage any of that; it becomes excruciatingly obvious that You are, in the eyes of others, a Bit Weird.

And you begin to wonder if being You will always mean being lonely.