Memoirs of a Socially Impaired Person
The sum of all of its parts, our blended family is not unlike so many others in that our parts are extremely dynamic. Recently, our eldest received accolades for her award-winning personal essay, a narrative about her life with autism. With her permission, the essay is featured below:
Memoirs of a Socially Impaired Person
One of my first memories was trying to sit down only to fall on the floor. My butt would slam onto the wooden floor. My rear would sting a bit, while my mother would grab a “seat belt” to stabilize me on the chair. Now, I am sixteen years old. I don’t need a seat belt any more, because my torso can support itself. My name is Lora Fletcher. I’m diagnosed with High Functioning Autism. Autism is a developmental disorder that impairs socialization, cognitive ability, or thinking in general. I’ve been considered developmentally delayed, which means I’m slow in some areas. Which makes sense, because not only do I come off as a socially awkward teenager, I also have to work on some life skills. On the surface, I look like any other teen, but that hasn’t always been the case.
2004
I can speak. I’m four years old, and I’m fully capable of speaking, although the adults around me think otherwise. Judging from my velcro shoes, I can’t tie my shoes either. Right now, I live in a beige house next to my Uncle Tommy and his family.
My attention is on the TV. “Beauty and the Beast” is on. As long, as I’m out of the room when Beast yells at Bell, I won’t be scared. Right now their dancing. Mrs. Potts, an animated teapot, narrates the words, “tale as old as time.” I respond “Tale as old as time.” Wait, what just happened? I just repeated a phrase! “Song as old as rhyme.” Song as old as rhyme. I did it! I just spoke! I can’t remember when I started speaking, but I did it anyway. Speaking for me just arrived. When I started to speak, it was clear my education would begin soon.
Originally, I attended to a local church/preschool, but that did not last long. One of my teachers had to pull my mother aside to gently inform her that she should look at my behavior. They apparently could not handle me, so I was transferred to a the early childhood program in the public school district. Before long, I was also doing physical therapy and occupational therapy, as well as speech therapy.
At home, I would have to undergo pressure treatments. Since I couldn’t feel pressure, my parents would roll me in a large spongy mattress. That was a fun activity because it felt like I was rolled up like a tortilla. I felt like I was inside a very tight burrito, which made me laugh as I liked the sensation of being hugged very tight. Another form of therapy involved a swing, which I could spin on. We had a small plastic pool filled to the brim of colorful balls and a rope ladder with a bell I could ring once I reached the top. Finally, I would wrap up my mornings jumping on a mini trampoline in our basement.
Not only was I qualified for an early childhood program, but I was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder. I would spend two years in the early childhood program. In elementary school, I would spend a half day at the regular kindergarten (AM), and spend another half a day in intensive special education. As I grew older, my diagnosis changed from Pervasive Developmental Disorder into High Functioning Autism. I didn’t understand why I had to go to a special program, why there were ladies helping me, why I acted peculiar, or what was wrong with me.
The Middle School years ( 2012-2014)
Until I saw a movie based on Temple Grandin, I thought I was a typical girl. Temple grandin was diagnosed with autism, at a young age. As a teenager, she lived with her aunt at a ranch. As a result of living on that ranch, she developed a humane system for slaughtering cattle. At the time, I didn’t think that we had much in common, but as I grew older I realize we both a lot in common. For instance, we were both bullied. Temple was made fun of for being weird, and socially awkward. I tried to fit in, but non-disabled peers figured out I lacked some social skills, which they took full advantage of. We also found solace in animals. Temple had an interest in cattle, and I am more into cats than farm animals. Finally, we found our own forms of trying to avert panic attacks. She used a squeeze machine, which calms her down by putting pressure on her body which causes her to breathe more evenly. I used music, which also calmed me down by allowing me to breathe in and out. At first, I started to listen to the Beatles which had simple melodies, which allowed me to not only breathe, but to focus on the music.
Around the time I was twelve, I started getting panic attacks. To make matters worse, I was transitioning from sixth grade to seventh grade, which meant I began to have panic attacks in middle school. These attacks started to occur the summer before middle school started which was even worse because I couldn’t control when or how my panic attacks started. Until I was 12, I didn’t seem a likely candidate for panic disorders, as I had a positive demeanor. I remember being fine in the morning. In the afternoon, I would freak out over something trivial. My heart rate rose, my breathing became irregular, and I started to have meltdowns in public. It was like a toddler having a massive temper tantrum. I didn’t understand what was going on with my emotions. Every day, provided a massive emotional crisis. Every day, I waited for the exact moment I would burst into tears. I also had developed this nasty habit of repetitive behavior. Sometimes, individuals with OCD wash their hands over and over again. Even though I did not have OCD, I washed my hands until they turned red with dry blotches criss crossing each other.
In a way, the middle school social worker did calm me down a bit. I lost a bit of the emotional instability, when I talked to her. She also gave me a warning if I didn’t change my behavior, I would be sent home early. My mom didn’t know why I acted out either. At this point, my parents were divorced which meant my brother and I lived with her. I came home one day, only to be informed that one of the teachers told her about my new behavior. She asked me if I was depressed. No, I wasn’t depressed, or suicidal, just scared. The panic attacks proved not only to be annoying, but they were crippling. One night, I started freaking out, in which my body started to tremble. In an attempt to calm down, I started to listen to Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds, a song by the Beatles. As the Beatles played, my body stopped shaking violently, and I felt peaceful.
In April, my social worker decided that we should stand in front of a random classroom and recite facts about being autistic. She partnered me with two other boys with autism who became my friends. We just copied and pasted facts from the internet. At the end of the day, we were pulled to give a lecture on Autism awareness to a random classroom.
My 8th grade year was better than the previous year because I was emotionally more stable. I stopped having meltdowns in public, as I learned how to communicate about my emotions. My homeroom teacher, had me write on a graph sheet about how I was feeling each day. The entire class had to write their emotions down. Our emotions were represented on a laminated graph. Blue meant tired, sleepy or crying. Yellow meant annoyed, or cranky. Red meant rage, or generally being very upset. If any of the peers were in any other emotion other then green, then we had to find a method to come back into green (content). Green had a positive connotation. The way we were taught was black and white teaching. We weren’t taught about grey areas. We were taught that positive behaviors resulted in a positive reaction while (unexpected) behaviors caused people to have a negative reaction. Even though I understood the concept, these rules had a massive impact on me. I hated being told my actions were unexpected, which meant people thought I was weird. Internally, I wanted myself to adopt more socially acceptable behaviors, so I could gain more friends.
On the other hand, I didn’t pay attention to how I was perceived until I reached high school. I concentrated on making eighth grade my best year, as I knew I would be moving at the end of the year. Despite some of the educational flaws, I tried my hardest to make the most of the year. We were taught that it wasn’t socially acceptable to talk about politics, religion, or personal topics. It was ok to talk about music, tv, anything that didn’t spark backlash or negative thoughts from our peers. We also couldn’t swear, say inappropriate topics, or jokes. Our teachers told us that telling such jokes were upsetting to neurotypical peers which could lead them to think negatively about us. In reality though, middle schoolers were not all that wholesome. They were loud and rowdy on the bus, while I sat quietly reading to myself. Students messed around with each other, and told inside jokes.
I didn’t understand why they were playfully teasing each other. Neurotypicals, I learned, were just as odd as the special ed peers. They talk about any subject, like politics, or current events. One pair, I sat with, talked exclusively about high fantasy, which was fun! We talked about fan fictions, dinosaurs and the Metamorphosis series. Again, I came off as socially awkward, but few peers could suspect I had an aide or paraprofessional. She walked me to some of my classes, which was nice because I could talk to someone. She made sure I behaved expectedly, and achieved my IEP goals. These days, I don’t need an aid anymore.
If I could describe myself in my middle school years, I would say I was very happy but hesitant about social situations. I was an avid reader, and drew pictures in my journals. I guess I could consider myself as an bit of an cartoonist. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a bullying issue on the bus. Every day, a couple of boys used to bother me while I was going home. From my experience, ignoring bullies sometimes worked and other times it didn’t. Ignoring those boys was pointless because they still found ways of agitating me.
I attended drama club meetings, won first place in a talent show, and even attended a couple of middle school dances.
High School
When I became a freshman, I had to learn to transition to a new environment. I had just moved to a new town, which meant I had to make a new start. I desperately wanted to make a positive impression on my peers. I saw my new environment through teal cat eye glasses, which remained unchanged and intact from the seventh grade. My experience with technology had been mostly limited to knowing how to open google docs and making slide shows for school assignments, and my phone at the time was an beaten up Android, which had an equally peeling purple plastic case. Social media like Facebook and Instagram while popular with most teenagers, were fairly foreign to me. When I arrived at my new school, I had the misconception that I would make a bunch of friends while still remaining my dorky self.
One of the major problems that come with coming to a new school is the nerves. While I wasn’t reduced to tears in the hallway, I had a nervous feeling about social expectations. This would be a constant feeling for the first few days of school. Some people feel nauseous and vomit when they get nervous. What I did was info dump about John Lennon. I used to talk about John Lennon in an attempt to create conversation. I admit that I was an obsessive fan then, and I’m still an obsessive fan now. My obsession was an apparent violation of social expectations, as it caused friction between my friends and me.
My relationship with two peers I tried to connect with did not work out, as we did not hang out as much, and they both found me to be problematic. I realized there might be a problem when they wouldn’t accept my Facebook friend request. In an attempt to help us, my social worker sat us all down to make a graph of our behaviors. My two friends wrote down their complaints as did I. It seemed like my behaviors had been the source of our problems. For example I asked one of the girls if she was a hippy, for wearing a tie-dye shirt. I was just curious, but she thought I was asking her if she was a drug taking hippy. Another complaint was that in a play, Romeo and Juliet, while playing Romeo, I apparently got too invested in the part, causing a majority of the class to laugh, thinking my acting was comical. My friend didn’t think so, and gossiped behind my back. I was shocked at what I was hearing. All I wanted to know was why they didn’t respond to my Facebook request! All of a sudden a minor problem seemed to be my undoing. Their final complaint was that I obsessed over John Lennon. I came off as annoying my peers by constantly spouting off facts about John. I was horrified to learn that I was the cause of this social situation.
Since I’ve grown in the past two years, one thing I have learned is people judge one another. If someone does something controversial, then those actions cause a reaction. What my social worker and speech teacher have taught me is unexpected behavior will cause people to think negatively about how they see you. Here’s the thing though; if someone like the President were to fall asleep during a meeting, there would be two reactions. One would be, “How disrespectful! He clearly doesn’t know how to run a country”! Another would be, “So? He’s clearly tired. I can understand his reaction because I’ve been tired myself”.
In an attempt to learn social skills, I had to drop my John Lennon obsession. It wasn’t easy, and took at least a couple of months. I listened to the Rolling Stones and Queen, in order to branch out my music tastes. While I was branching out my music tastes, I found myself facing another challenge: Peer Leadership. Peer Leadership was another version of Special Ed P.E. in my high school. At first, I didn’t mind being placed in Special Ed P.E. I soon found that Peer leadership had some drawbacks, as I would not be a mentor, but a “peer”.
I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the other students in the program. Some of the students could not speak, using Ipads in order to communicate. Some of them had limited speech or were echolalic, meaning they would only repeat phrases they had heard. There were few students capable of full speech. We were put with peers in order to plan activities with each other. I didn’t like planning out, because these games had to accommodate everyone, cutting out details and adding new plans to each game. I would ask my peer mentor, “Hey how about soccer?” “I don’t know Lora, so and so has to do X, another student needs to learn to ask for the ball, and we need to add more accommodations.” As frustrated as I could get by being told what to do, I managed to develop a meaningful friendship with my peer mentor. I even had the confidence to ask her to spend time together outside of school.
My social situation had not improved by my high school sophomore year. I grew to have a strong dislike for lunch as it meant trying to search for a seat. I worked hard to recognize someone from my classes. This has been a problem since middle school, as neurotypical peers know how to develop long lasting friendships, and this is an area where I struggle. As a result, I often would find myself wandering the lunchroom for several minutes. I thought I found a solution to my problem when I sat a table with other special ed students. In hindsight, I should have picked a different table. There were always two teacher’s aides sitting at the table, which made conversations awkward. These paraprofessionals would try to start a conversation with the entire table. In my successful attempts in finding a lunchroom table, I’ve found that teengagers have call and response in conversing. The aides asked us about our days, which resulted in short answers and awkward interactions.
To make matters worse, I was bullied by the abled and the disabled. Bullying for me was not physical, like being slammed into a locker, or being called “loser”. In middle school, I was verbally taunted during bus rides. I’ve had a group of peers come up and mock me for saying error 404 when I forgot a name. I’ve had my chair repeatedly stolen, only to have it used as a footstool. I’ve been grabbed and teased. I’ve had personal items stolen during class. In my attempt to socialize I’ve learned that while there are friendly students, there are people waiting for me to make one solitary mistake. I’ve been taught if you make an social mistake, then people will think badly of you. To make matters even more confusing, my social worker put up a poster asking “Is This Bullying?” To me, she was making it sound like the perpetrator was just being rude or mean, but I knew better. I had enough of being pushed around and had become frustrated by the feeling that I was being shut down by adults and special education.
I started rebelling the beginning of my junior year. I chopped my lengthy locks into a more shorter hairstyle. I kept listening to old school rock, which differed from the top 40 that dominated my peers tastes. In addition, I took out my frustrations by drawing in my art pad before my first morning class. I started becoming irritable and sluggish from staying up later than I should have, but I still did well in my classes and tried to remain polite to my teachers.
My high school allowed us to wear costumes on Halloween, as long as the costume wasn’t too distracting. My junior year, I dressed up as Brian May, the guitarist from Queen, for Halloween. The best part about dressing up as him? No one knew who he was in 2016! Most other girls just wore cat ears. Not some British rock star with a huge perm! The black curly wig I was wearing itched during class, but I was proud of myself. One of my peers thought I was Isaac Newton or Mozart. A lot of students were lost for words at my costume, which meant they didn’t know why I was dressed up in a white printed shirt, and dark black pants, complimented with a tie. Even the teachers kept saying “I don’t know who you’re supposed to be.” I would try to play air guitar. “Nope doesn’t ring a bell”. I would stomp my feet, and clap my fingers. My Geometry teacher gave me look of confusion. Another teacher would shake his head. He advocates for animals? Nope. I finally give up, “He worked with Freddie Mercury!”
During my junior year, I tried to socialize even more than the previous year. During lunch, I tried to to go to different tables, with varying outcomes. Some students proved to be kind and talkative, while some of the peers enjoyed toying with me. Since the special ed table was no longer an option, I was socially on my own. I developed a more calm personality, which made me come off as collected during lunch. I worked to become more approachable and talkative which helping me make more friends.
Socializing wasn’t just limited to school. My mom signed me up to go to Second City, an Improv group in Chicago. It took place every Friday evening. Second City had a class for students, where I felt like I fit in. Second City also helped me come out of my shell by helping interact in a mature environment. I made friends with many of my fellow improvers, which turned out to be very outgoing. I also had the chance to say and do things I would never would have done in a high school environment.
This past semester has been very tough on me. I faced endless amounts of homework which dug into my free time. Despite my best efforts to socialize, I have often felt like an outcast. I’m no longer an innocent preteen, but an more emotionally aware teenager. I’ve cried late at night, feeling hopeless for myself because I realize that I was socially disadvantaged. Despite my emotional downfall, I know, deep down I am capable of anything. With this mantra, I’ve become more confident, and motivated, which helped me to pass my classes. I’m set to graduate in December of 2017, which means I have to prepare to succeed as an adult.
As an autistic individual, I’ve started out as a delayed child, not speaking full sentences, and having body control issues, requiring physical intervention. I matured into a happy child, but I started having panic attacks. I’ve realized that as I pulled myself together, and learned to control my emotions, I learned how to embrace my weird behavior instead of shunning it. I have developed my own sense of personality, and I’m proud of it.