KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and 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.
From my perspective, most people seem to just swim in Normal their whole lives. They figure out how to move around there with ease as they grow up and by their late teens/early twenties the compass, map and most efficient swimming stroke are thoroughly imbedded, to the point that they don't notice them any more. Others of us are dumped in blindfolded, in a darkened, half-flooded maze, where well into adulthood you can only tell that you've gone the wrong way after bumping into something. Bumped hard, while the more acclimated people laugh at you or are embarrassed on your behalf. There are a lot of ways to react to this predicament, this is just about how I dealt with it.
I'm an introverted, ADD, OCD, very curvy, asthmatic schizophrenic (schizo-affective) with a bunch of other physical problems too lengthy to go into here. My parents are dears with the best of intentions, but they have their own problems and weren't that great at instilling the social rules and niceties (let's just say that quite a few of my problems are clearly genetic). I also have a ridiculously high IQ combined with, if something bores me, the attention span of a caffeinated ferret.
I have worked for most of my life, often juggling more than one job at a time, and I can put my hand on my heart and tell you that the vast majority of those I have ever worked or socialised with have absolutely no idea that I am technically mentally ill. They probably figured out quite quickly, despite my best efforts, that I was smart and a little weird, (and the bust size really isn't something that can be missed), but 'crazy', no. They certainly knew about some of the physical disabilities, since most of them were caused or aggravated by various workplaces, but on the mental and emotional front I never admitted to more than mild depression and tiredness. I got very good at passing for normal and have only recently started to realise just how much of an effort it actually was. I will say upfront, though, that I do not regret that effort. Mastering Normal is pretty much essential for surviving in this world, at least for almost anyone who does not have great wads of cash. If you're female then it becomes even more necessary, I learned early that I couldn't copy the behaviour of the more eccentric men and boys I knew because girls and women are given much less leeway in the matter of permissible weirdness.
It goes without saying that I was horribly bullied as a child, and have been as an adult in the workplace. Somewhere along the line I formed the belief that if I could just learn to be normal, or at least fake it well enough, then the bullying would stop. Maybe then I could also get some praise, or just acknowledgement, for my brainpower, instead of having it treated as an embarrassment, a disfigurement. I also worked out quite quickly that Normal is also something that you can wrap around yourself as protection. As well as making it less likely that you will attract negative attention, if you do encounter workplace harrassment, abusive customers or sociopathic 'friends', having a previous track-record as Normal makes it more likely that others will defend you. They will not assume that you deserved it, they will come to your aid and listen to your version of events. Being able to recruit allies is one of the single most important life-skills there is. And, with considerable effort, I managed to go from 'completely useless' to 'acceptably proficient' at it. Only took me about 20 years.
Just as important, during and immediately after my first major breakdown in my early twenties I had a chance to meet other people living with schizophrenia and bi-polar (Iwasn't hospitalised, this was through community work/activism). None of the ones I met were operating very comfortably in the world and they were suffering because of it. I decided that I didn't want to be like that. I wasn't going to end up unable to hold a job, with a whopping great label pinned to me, doomed to poverty. So I decided to be normal, I chose 'sanity'. It didn't occur to me until much, much later, that the very nature of the venue in which I met those others pretty much guaranteed that they would be those unable to cope, unable to navigate the treacherous seas of a normal life. I just knew that I didn't want to be like that, so I lied through my teeth to the psychiatrists, never got diagnosed with anything worse than 'an atypical mood disorder', stayed off anti-psychotics and buckled down to coping with everything while telling virtually no-one.
So how the hell does one set about being Normal when you have little innate ability for it? First work out where you seem to have the most problems, what areas of your life are causing other people to scream or laugh at you most often, what behaviour is making others back away and fail to invite you to events. Watch what other people are ridiculed for. Children can be useful measuring devices for this, as they are less likely to cover their distaste or amusement behind a polite facade. I learned in high school that some of what I could hear and see wasn't being perceived by those around me, and that giving any sign at all that you could hear or see things that others didn't was the fast track to absolute isolation and horrendous treatment from just about everyone. Keep your face as blank as possible regardless of what you're perceiving. Don't move your lips, don't make a sound when talking to the voices that others don't pick up. Watch for others' reactions before you react to things yourself. If you have to, make yourself walk straight through whatever manifestation is blocking your path, no matter how unpleasant, rather than arouse others' suspicions by veering and hugging the wall for no reason that they can see. Tiredness due to lack of sleep because of the 'Whenever I turn the lights off, the bugs come back' factor is not acceptable. Tiredness due to partying, is.
That's the basics, then there are the delicate niceties of social interaction. As other people have noted, ADD and Asperger's can present with some similar symptoms. One of those is difficulty in reading social cues. Apparently the problem with ADD is just not paying attention to one face or voice long enough to pick up the little micro-expressions and fluctuations in tone that make up about 75% of communication. All those little hints about mood, intention, interest, and the social hierarchy of groups, that others seem to pick up automatically, used to just go right over my head. Actually they still do, I've just taught myself to compensate with close observation and analysis of any other clues that I can get. One (dis)advantage of this deafness to social cues is that I am literally a born rebel. I am terrible about picking up on subtle in-group communication, like, the other people here are all deferring and giving social submission signals to this other group member. That combined with a tendency to blurt out the truth without thinking about (also common to bother ADD and Asperger's), and you're talking serious 'blindly stomping on the toes of authority' potential.
I trained myself to do deliberately what most people do unconciously. I devoured etiquette books, Miss Manners was a godsend, filling in the blanks of my deficient childhood social training. I watched people's faces with unnerving concentration, I amassed examples in my head and developed a kind of algebra of social interactions and reactions. What it wasn't much good at was predictive power for situations where I had no relevant prior example, but it worked pretty well apart from that.
So far, so good. These were all fairly essential skills. The problems came when I got too good at it. One definition of PTSD is crisis-adaptive behaviour that persists beyond the time or situation when it is useful. I developed my skills to the point where I could pass, and then I couldn't relax and just enjoy being able to move around in society. I was hypervigilant about anything that would make me stand out, devastated by the smallest rejection from others and always, always, tightly buttoned down emotionally. I was scared that if I got too angry or upset in front of witnesses that something would slip out, that I would lose control. My working definition of Normal was actually far too narrow, I was terrified of stepping outside the boundaries I had set up for myself in case everything overflowed.
And one of the most painful lessons to learn was that being too conformist, too 'safe', too nice, can paint a target on your back as well. That combining the careful maintenance of a safe, eager to conform public persona, with activities like union activism and defending other staff was just saying “I am a pain in the ass union rep, but I'm too meek and mild to fight back if you retaliate”, which doesn't actually jibe very well with the reality of what I'm like as a fighter. Being both very Normal and painfully bright, meant that the insecure boss who was scared of the IQ and efficiency could blatantly block promotion in the knowledge that there would be no blowback. There was, by the way. I have spent far too much of my life seeing the shock on other people's faces when they discovered that the meek mouse was prepared to fight like a cornered rat. But by then, the damage had already been done, and the ensuing disruption could be blamed on me for having the nerve to protest. It would have been better all round if they had been a little bit more scared of me to start with. There is a certain kind of bully in the world who will cheerfully suck up and punch down, but only to what they think of as weak targets. They can become remarkably angry with targets that turn out not to be as weak as they thought. The reaction tends to be a mix of 'How dare you object to my exploitation/mistreatment of you', and 'Oh my god! You mislabelled yourself, so I thought I could get away with thumping you! That's not faaaaairrrrr!!!!'.
So, here I am, trying to get all this shit sorted out for myself before I go back to work after an 18 month hiatus from both employment and most of my previous social life. The time off has enabled me to shake out a great many things, to sell a house that I couldn't physically cope with, deal with some serious health issues, and to get at least some way towards working out what I really enjoy doing. Now I just have to get back into the ocean again. Hopefully this time I'm going to be able to settle into a bigger version of Normal that allows enough room for the better bits of the crazy, even, perhaps, to allow back in some of the bits that aren't crazy at all but which didn't fit into my idea of what Normal was supposed to look like, and how it's allowed to move.
So, what's your relationship with Normal?