Today's diarist is plf515
I'm weird.
Not just in the ways many of us here are weird - liberal, progressive, etc. No. Not even just because I am an atheist. No. I am weird because I am learning disabled. And not even one of your common garden-variety learning disabilities. I have nonverbal learning disability (NLD).
If you'd like to read more, join me below.
(note, this diary is an edited combination of other diaries I've written)
First, the KosAbility boilerplate
KosAbility is a community diary series that is posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and 8 PM ET every Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and or ask general questions about disabilities, share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered.
OK, back to my diary. I'm going to base it around 4 questions:
What is this NLD stuff?
How can someone (me) be LD and really good at both reading and math?
What's it like being weird?
What does all this have to do with politics?
What is NLD? NLD is a neurological impairment that affects people's abilities in many areas, typically ones that are not related to speech. Common areas of difficulty are reading body language, spatial perception, visual skills, physical coordination, and so on. Also, I read in a book that NLD people have no sense of humor. I read it in a book, so it must be true. In the same book, I read that we are bad at math. Sorry. I'll give my ability back so I fit the diagnosis better. (Remember, we have no sense of humor) (uh huh) (We especially don't get sarcasm .... yeah. Right.).
How can someone (me) be LD and really good at both reading and math? Anything an adult knows that an infant doesn't know has to be learned. If you are much worse at one set of these skills than at most others, that's LD. It can be about reading (dyslexia), math (dyscalculia) or other things....NLD, Asperger's etc
There are a lot of things that I am really bad at. I don't remember where things are or when they happened. For example, during my adolescence, I got hit by a car and I had eye-surgery. Which happened first? I don't know. As an adult, I got a PhD, got married, and had two kids. What order? Well, the first kid came before the second (told ya I was good at math!) And marriage before either kid. But where does the PhD fit in? I have to think about it.
In graduate school, I repeatedly got lost trying to find the right buildings.
I came home one day with a cup of juice, put it down to go to the bathroom, then spent 10 minutes looking for it.
Some people think you can't be gifted and learning disabled. You can. Just like you can be tall and fat.
What is it like being weird?
Well, being weird generally sucks. (I have a friend who is blind. She says euphemisms are for the differently-brained).
By the time I was 4, it was clear I was, in my father's words "Screwed up somehow, but not stupid". I was asked not to return to pre-school. A psychologist told my parents I would never go to college. (hehehe ...I got my BA when I was 20). There were no schools for such children back then (45 years ago), so my mom started one. She handled everything that wasn't education, and Elizabeth Freidus (that's pronounced FREED US. Cool name for a special ed person, huh?) handled everything that WAS education. That school helped me a lot. Now, I am on the board.
After that, I went to mainstream schools and was miserable. Really miserable. Suicidal for much of adolescence. Absolutely no friends (I mean NONE). I had one date (disastrous) before college, and only a couple in college.
Much later, I lived in Israel for a few years, and learned Hebrew. The word for `to commit suicide' in Hebrew, is, literally, `to lose oneself' (it is the reflexive form of `to lose', as in the opposite of `find', rather than the opposite of 'win'). I lost myself. I lost myself in reading (not the books assigned.....but lots of science fiction, history, biography, math, science, almost anything). I lost myself in math. In fifth grade, I had a math teacher of the old school, who thought that if you could not do a whole sheet of multiplication without error, you were not ready to learn division. I was given remedial math over the summer. She taught me 2 or 3 years of math. Then, in sixth grade, I had a wonderful teacher who skipped me to his ninth grade class when I took the book home and did the whole thing in one night). Then I came to class (this puny 6th grader) and wondered, aloud, how stupid the ninth graders must be to not understand material that was so easy for me. (Social skills are another of those things I just didn't learn). I lost myself in poetry, but found myself there, too. And I found myself in therapy (many years of it).
Gateway to myself
I dwelt alone, in misery, a shroud of hate lay over all.
Too alone, and far too fearful, to let a friend within my wall.
A castle tall and strong I built
And locked myself within its walls.
With my ego bruised and hurting
From a slew too many falls.
I was alone, king of my castle;
Lord of all that I surveyed.
And if others didnt' want me,
I with hate their hate repaid.
I called myself a better person
Than anyone that I could see
But, deep within, I knew me lying
For deep within myself was me.
With the help of years and teachers
(Many of each, I am afraid)
I began to see that I
Could see my castle be unmade.
My first reaction, dim and fearful
Was to build walls higher still.
But I knew myself unhappy
And, somehow, I knew my own will.
Those walls remain, they'll never vanish
Too much pain remains in me
Soon though, they will be made smaller
And let in a friend, or thee. ).
Things got better. College was MUCH better than HS. And post-college was even better. I'm married. I have 2 great kids. I have 2 MAs and a PhD, and a job as a statistician... remember, though, that we NLDers are bad at math and have no sense of humor. That book was, after all, by an expert.
But I am still LD, and still weird. And it still sucks.
What has all this to do with politics? I can't say for sure. I'd like to think that my own victimhood has made me more sensitive to others. I do know that I have a visceral dislike for those who take advantage of those less fortunate, and that I have a visceral fondness for the `other' the `different' the `odd'. Naturally, these traits make me a Democrat and a progressive. Did my progressive views spring from my pariah status in adolescence? I don't know. It could easily have come from my parents, both of whom are progressive. I've now been on dailyKos for several years, and, while I've read only a small fraction of the diaries, enough people have posted about their trauma to make me wonder if there is not some connection. And both the weekday and weekend version of KosAbility are booked for weeks in advance.
Was Nietzsche right when he said "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger?" No. Nietzsche was a jackass. What doesn't kill us leaves us maimed. Some of the wounded show up here. Some do commit suicide. Some wind up racist, homophobic, and horrible; people who feel badly about themselves sometimes need to find others to feel better than, and sometimes the only way they can think to do that is by finding some whole group to denigrate. And, while bigots make me angry, they also evoke my pity. They are missing so much!
Do we, the weird but walking (I just made that up!), not have an obligation to reach out to others? No one should commit suicide because they don't have friends. No one should be outcast. Not because their skin is a different color, not because they believe in a different God (or no God), not because the people who make them all tingly inside are the same sex as they are, not because they were born in the wrong bodies, not because they speak the wrong language, or because they come from a different country.
There is no 'them'. There is only us. We the people. All of the people. Including the weird.
To borrow a phrase:
We're here. We're weird. Get used to it.
Thanks for reading.
If you have questions, I will try to answer.
If you have comments, I will read them and be generous with mojo.
If you think others should read this, I would appreciate recommends.