Pretending to be Normal

by Liane Holliday Willey

  The spring before my freshman year was to start, I began to get recruitment letters from a variety of social and academic sorority organizations, no doubt because of my high academic marks. I took no real interest in the letters, other than to think to myself how odd it was that people so often choose to live and work in groups or packs of people. I had no intention of joining any group, other than as a casual member who would follow the line just as I always had, when I wanted to or felt I needed to. For the most part, I was interested in finding a few friends mostly out of curiosity, but also because I felt certain that once in the big world, I would find someone like me. Someone who shivered in crowds and closed their ears to noise. Someone else who could get lost in their own backyard. Someone who only wanted to go to the library or ride bikes with me every now and then. I just knew college would be a liberating experience that held no absolutes and no single files. I had a suspicion the members of sororities and most organizations were too much like lemmings for me, but I never begrudged them their existence or their lifestyle. I never knew how important memberships were. I thought I would find a friend or two without any kind of membership card. I underestimated the significance of belonging.

  I did not expect much from my social life at college. I did not need much. I was accustomed to defining friendship in very simplistic terms. To me, friends were people I enjoyed passing a few minutes or a few hours with. I may not have known their names, but I did know their faces and a few of their interests and usually a thing or two about their routines. For instance, if I ran into the same girl every day on my way to class and if I knew she was interested in a speech communications degree and from the same part of the state I was from, I considered her to be a friend. Never a best friend or someone I felt compelled to do things with, but none the less, someone I could smile at or talk to for a few minutes on the way to class. Maybe even someone to go to the library with or eat dinner with. I did not need anything more, and I never really expected anything more. At first, this seemed to be all other freshman needed or expected, too. But as the first semester moved on, I seemed to be left behind. I noticed groups forming and all of them without me. I noticed people who I thought reminded me of people I had gotten along with from home, but they did not seem to notice me.

  Soon, I found that my smiles were unreturned, my steps were never followed and my phone was never called. Soon, I saw I was invisible. On one level, this did not bother me. I liked my time alone and my personal space. But, day in and day out, rejection began to lay heavy on my shoulders most likely because I did not understand why I was being excluded. To choose to be left out is one thing, but to be locked out, is quite another. A smile and a few minutes of conversation used to be enough to make a friend, and for the life of me, I could not figure out when or why this had stopped being the rule.

  By the second semester, I began to feel too detached, too close to lonely. It made me very angry to learn this. I had always known I did not think like other people and I had plenty of moments in the past when my differences kept me isolated and oddly desolate, but I knew how to fix those problems. I would just go to school the following day and talk to the person I sat next to and within no time, I would feel much better. I could not do that in college, no one would let me. I hated the fact that people were getting to me like this. I hated the influence others were beginning to have on my life. This was not like me. I had never cared before.

  I wonder now, if my AS was beginning to fade then. If my sudden exposure to a world of change was somehow responsible for making me come face to face with the variances that altered the way I saw things, the way I thought. Without the protective attention of my childhood friends and family, I was bound to fall flat on my face. Perhaps this is what I needed to do. If I had not fallen, I might never have discovered how to nurture the parts of me that needed enriching… I might never have discovered how lucky I was to live in a kaleidoscope world…

  I was beginning to see that I might never find my place in the big world, but I could not fathom why or what to do about it. I decided I would do the one thing I knew guaranteed a college student their rite of passage. I decided to join a campus social organization.

  As luck would have it, a friend of mine from home invited me to try out for his fraternity’s Little Sisters program. I think he knew I was drowning before his very eyes and he was trying as best he could to help me survive. I also think he knew that, by then, there was not a great deal he could do for me. Still, he was very sweet and kind and made all the arrangements for me to meet him at his fraternity house where I would begin the first stage of try outs. I went along with the idea, even though the entire concept upset my sensibilities, leaving me to feel like a toy high on a shelf who winds down each night with the wish that some caring soul will soon take pity and come to the rescue. I remember preparing for the event. I remember walking into town to find a dress, milling around amidst the confusion that always struck me in busy stores. Nothing looked good to me, nothing seemed to fit right and no matter what I put on, nothing hid the ten pounds I had gained. I ended up purchasing a dull grey dress with burgundy trim that made me look more like a school teacher than a college student. No matter, I thought. The important thing was, I had found something to wear beyond my daily outfit of choice. A pair of overalls and a man’s flannel shirt.

  My friend brought me to the party and did his best to help me fit in, but as a new member of the fraternity, he had other responsibilities. I was largely on my own from beginning to end. I keenly recall feeling like I was a particularly unwelcome intruder who had no business being at that event. I remember struggling with myself, begging myself to go shake a hand or start a conversation, but I could not bring myself to do either. I noticed how effortlessly the other girls seemed to be handling the crowd of young men. I noted too, that they were not shaking hands nor conversing very much at all. They were giggling and laughing and tossing their hair behind their shoulders, gently putting their hands on the boys’ arms, looking totally lost in the limelight of the attention they were getting. I could see their formula but I could not bring myself to follow it. Slowly, the room began to accept some as its own, while it tossed the others aside. I watched as a few of the fraternity members made their way to a couch in a quiet corner or to the hallways that led to their rooms. I saw a few girls smile and say thanks and wander toward the door that would take them home. I remember feeling like a scientist who was curious to see who made it and who did not, but only after my friend came back to check on me, did I realize that I was standing completely alone, virtually twenty feet or more from the small circles and large groups of chatting and laughing people. Only then did I realize that I had been tossed aside.

  A month or two later I ran into a few of the girls I recognized from one of my classes. Much to my surprise, they were enthused to see me and interested in talking with me. I recall feeling flattered by the attention, and glad to have their company — the loneliness was beginning to hurt my heart. The girls asked if I would like to go shopping with them, an activity I did not relish, but a date I was happy to make nonetheless. They gave me the time and place to meet them, asking me if I wouldn’t mind driving because they did not have cars on campus. I told them I would be happy to do so, particularly since I always preferred to be the driver. I spent all week trying my very hardest to roust something from my closet that would pass for college cool. I settled on a pair of blue jeans and a sweater, the only real option I had outside of my overalls and the dress I wore to the fraternity party. I thought I looked about as normal as any other student, at least I was dressed like one and that, I assumed, was about all I needed to bring me to a successful day with my new friends.

  Finally, the day came for the big shopping event and sure enough, the girls were waiting for me just like they said they would be. We found my car and I told them I would take them anywhere they wanted to go, explaining I never shopped in town much and had no real preference for anywhere in particular. The girls directed me to th
e middle of the downtown shopping area which kept me from having to admit I found it so difficult to make my way around town. I found a parking spot in no time at all, and after a few attempts even managed to parallel park my car. All was going great until we got out. The girls turned to me the moment we stepped on the sidewalk and told me to be sure to meet them back at the car in three hours. Then they turned to one another, began a new conversation and walked down the street… as far away from me as they could possibly go. I wish I could say I left the girls stranded where they had left me. But of course, I did not.

  If this adventure had been a one-of-a-kind trip, I might not even remember it today. Unfortunately, the entire year was pelted with episodes just like it. Most were even more embarrassing and are more painful to recall. I think the real problem laid just below the surface of another of my most mysterious and difficult AS traits — my inability to understand my peers’ conversations. I understood their language, knew if they had made grammatical errors in their speech, and I was able to make replies to anything that was spoken to me; but, I never came to hear what they were really saying. I never understood their vernacular. Suffice to say that, at that point, I was unable to read between the lines. Subtext and innuendo may as well have been birds flying by my window. It was frustrating being unable to break into the thought processes of my peers but I was more upset when I came to discern I never learned from one experience to the next. I kept falling into the same kinds of traps, even after my father warned me it sounded like people were only using me, even after I discovered it was an acquaintance from high school who had stolen my bike, even after I overheard a girl from my dormitory tell her boyfriend I was a fat slob. No matter what I saw or heard, I failed to get the message. I was not fitting in.

  When summer break came, I went home defeated and frustrated. My grades were barely passing marks, my sensory dysfunction was turning my footing to mire and I had not found one single person who was like me. If I had, I might have felt normal.

  Life at home was no easier or better for me than college was. By then, everyone I had grown up with was on a new track, headed for new goals and futures. I was glad for them, but awkwardly intrigued by their new lives. I did not understand how they were managing to do so well. How did they find their way when I lost mine? What did they have that I did not? Why were they happy and I so sad? Despite all the analysis I gave the matter, I found no answers.

  My return to campus the next year was more obligatory than festive. I went back because I loved academics and knowledge and scholarship and research and writing papers. Despite all the rudeness and all the confusion, I went back to study and to learn. And for the most part, I was successful, except when I slipped back into the old pattern, the one that caught me when I was a freshman. The one that had no bright beginning… only a history of brittle endings. Yet when I was strong, I was very strong. And ever so slowly I began to find ways to help myself deal with the struggles I faced.

  On a lark, I discovered I enjoyed working with clay and enrolled in a ceramics class for no credit just so I would have a legitimate reason to play with it. I remember the art lab like it was an oasis, especially in the late evening when it was almost always empty. It was wonderful then. It was so still and nice, so calm and uncluttered. And it was engaging. Without the hustle and bustle of other students, I could focus and relax and really enjoy the art.

  I could mush the clay and sculpt it into odd little shapes that paid no mind to anything real or recognizable. I did not care if I made tall pitchers or deep dished pie plates. I just wanted to work with the clay. It is the most simple and engaging texture I know.

  The art lab was my favorite stop, but the architecture building was a close second. I was enthralled with the drafting classrooms, the slanted drawing tables, the straight edged rulers, the half mooned protractors, the steel compasses and the piles of fountain pens and mechanical pencils. I loved watching the students sitting at their tables, single bright lights focused over their shoulders, as they concentrated on their designs, so riveted and intent. I envied them their tools and their quiet and their skills. I would have given anything to have joined them, but I knew I did not have what it took to draw straight lines and tiny figures all the while contemplating difficult mathematical and engineering decisions that would need to be considered in the design. I wish I had gotten up the nerve to take an introduction to architecture class. It would have been dazzling to use their room and their gadgets, rather like I did the art studio — not for credit or great productivity, but for pleasure and enjoyment.

  To this day, architectural design remains one of my most favored subjects and now that I am older I indulge my interest, giving in to the joy it brings me. In many ways it is the perfect elixir for whatever ails me. When I feel tangled and tense, I get out my history of architecture and design books and set my eyes on the kinds of spaces and arenas that make sense to me; the linear, the straight lined and the level buildings that paint pictures of strong balance. When I feel blighted by too many pragmatic mistakes and missed communications, I find my home design software programs and set about building a perfect sense home. There is something about the architectural design process that makes my brain click and fit.

  As I began to find things that worked to balance my system, I found I cared less about the differences that kept me from figuring people out. Maybe I had just grown tired of viewing social skills as another academic class, a foreign language that I had to study, research and observe. Either way, I lost interest in the condition of humans, but I never lost interest in the human condition. I worried when I saw other students on campus who sat in the movie theaters by themselves, or played tennis against a backboard, or never smiled at anyone they passed. I had figured out by then that the friendship game was played by groups of snickering co-eds, not dispirited solo players. And I knew my own sensibilities were somewhere in between. When I walked or sat or did things alone, I did not hold my head down, slump my shoulders or wither away. I might have had knots in my belly thanks to some sensory dysfunction, I might even have been terribly confused or disoriented by what I was hearing, but I never felt or acted uncomfortable merely because I was alone. I knew there had to be a vast difference between my situation and those who looked so sad. It was then that I found a way to erase a bit of my loneliness.

  Because I never needed, wanted or expected much from friends, I was the perfect friend for those who had no friends. My simple hellos or casual and short conversations, fit well with my peers who never fit in. Though we had different reasons for moving outside the big social circle, we were neighbors in isolation nonetheless. And so, I took it upon myself to offer tiny pieces of friendship, as best I could offer, whenever I could. I am not certain if the people I tried to gently befriend ever realized my concern for them. I do not know if I even helped them hold their heads a little higher. I do know they helped me. I felt good about myself when I received a smile in return for one I had sent. I was happy all day if I could get a lonely peer to talk to me in the cafeteria line. I was thrilled if my starting a conversation led them to continue it. I knew I had made a simple human connection, and that was all I needed.

  My years in college would have presented the same kinds of havoc and distress had I gone straight to a vocation. The fact that I chose further education was not my problem. The things I could have avoided are generic and Can be applied to any other AS person making their way through life. I know in my heart and in my head, that if I had owned more AS knowledge, if I had been able to objectively understand that terms like rigid thinking, semantic pragmatic disorder, social impairment, echolalia, bilateral coordination problems, sensory integration dysfunction and auditory discrimination, were very real words that defined who I was, I would have made small changes in my course. I would have gone to a smaller and perhaps more empathetic school. I would have realized I had a different set of needs and wants that set me apart from many of my classmates, but that never meant I was undeserving or incapable. And m
ost important, I would have asked for the support I really needed.

  I had convinced myself that my high IQ and high academic achievement record meant I was strong enough to handle whatever came my way. In reality, they only worked to help me fake my way to a false sense of security, a security that vanished and left me cold with fear the moment it was overwhelmed by the reality of my AS challenges.

  I was hit hard when I had to realize smarts were not enough to make it in this world. I was turned upside down when I had to admit I could not find anyone who saw things like I did. I was crippled when I found out it took more than I had to give to make new friends. Looking back, it is really no wonder I was never able to build any friendships in college. I was not very good at figuring people out. And so it seems, no one was very good at figuring me out either. Without friendships, my version of friendships that is, I had very little support. Without peers to show me how to fit in and how to make the most of what I had, I could not stay connected. I foundered.

  By the time I finished my first six years of college I was a bit beaten up, limping with failure, and deep in despair because I did not yet know why those things that came so seemingly easy to others, were so impossible for me to achieve. But I was not undone. My slow descent into total confusion and overwhelming anxiety attacks did lead me to a visit with a counselor on campus who gave me some of the best advice I ever received. She told me I needed to assess my strengths and weaknesses, to chart what I wanted to do and how I could do it, and to lay a plan for success that was reasonable and probable. And she told me something that probably seems even more filled with common sense than all the above thoughts combined. She told me I needed to get out in public more, to exercise in the fresh air, to find a job that might help me meet friends, to do the things I most enjoyed, to cultivate my interests and hobbies and most important — never to apologize for my imperfections or my idiosyncrasies. She reminded me in only a few. hours of time together, that I was a capable woman who could do so many things with my life, if only I would learn to tame my life and make it work. Excellent advice for anyone, but lifesaving advice for someone with AS.