When I was very young – in elementary school – I knew I was different. Not only did I know I was different I knew this was something to hide and I was really good at hiding behavioral quirks like a wounded animal, “I didn’t just get hit by a car! I’M FINE!” Actually I am kind of morbidly proud of myself for how much I could hide. I held back twitches until no one was looking. I channeled my fidgeting into doing things no one would bat an eye at – kicking my feet discreetly under the desk, twirling my hair, obsessively doodling a squiggly line, knitting… as long as I was quiet I may as well have been a piece of furniture. For the most part this was a good thing – because of it I was never diagnosed as autistic and forced into what I still think is cruel and ultimately useless social reprogramming. To this day witnessing what those “classes” did to other kids like me makes me completely and utterly unwilling to get an actual diagnosis. For now it’s just a deep deep suspicion but a likely suspicion none-the-less.
Most people don’t know that living “on the spectrum” also frequently means that you have a “high comorbidity” with other issues. One of the cons of not being noticed was that I made it all the way until 9th grade before anyone realized I was struggling in math and even then they blamed me for being lazy rather than diagnosing me with dyscalculia, a mathematical learning disorder. It’s one of the biggest reasons I never graduated from high school (because they put me in the special class and I knew I would not have enough credits to attend college – so why the fuck was I bothering going at all?!) Over the years I learned I had a lot of other neural atypical isms. It wasn’t until I was in my mid twenties before I realized I had facial blindness – an inability to recognize human faces as distinctly different. I thought everyone was like that! I’ve always known myself to be a playfully androgynous gender-fucker (what the shrinks call “gender dysphoria” – a label I can’t stand.) And only very recently did I realize on top of all this my simultaneous hyper focus on things that interest me and complete lack of focus on everything else might be due to some form of ADD, something else I will not be going in to be tested for. The way I see it all these “disorders” are part of my personality, why the hell would I want to drug them away?! Except for the dyscalculia (which I have looked for help with and failed repeatedly) I don’t want to “fix” any of these things. But more importantly I have found these particular quirks are really common to be found together in clusters in the same individual. All these years of thinking I was a freak and it’s Twitter that lets me know that no, I’ve just been separated from my herd.
But this all got me thinking. I also have a lot of physical health problems and I noticed other people with auto immune disorders tended to have more than one of them. At least those of them that were lucky enough for a real diagnosis. I have to wonder if being neuro atypical doesn’t also predispose some of us to being also immuno atypical. Maybe I initially got sick because I’m wired all wrong… and if that’s the case is there anything I can do about it? I don’t have any idea but I think the first step might just be to try going back to some specialists, putting my profound lack of faith and insane anxiety about the medical establishment aside for a moment. From there I don’t know… is it worth getting my very odd little mind a check-up? I don’t think I’m there yet, probably never will be… but as with everything it’s one day at a time.