I want to write about what I felt when I was in the hospital.
They stuck a needle in my arm and filled me with Ativan. My arm was strapped to the gurney. I was terrified.
I was twilight. I needed to be engulfed by the quiet.
I could feel the drug enveloping me, swallowing my anxiety, running through my veins and causing me to peacefully leave my anxiety behind and return to reality.
I was hospitalized because I was out of control and my life was deteriorating rapidly. I was too far gone in my manic episode to stop my feelings at that point and I needed help. The day before, we went to my school for them to evaluate me and see how RPM worked. I failed miserably and felt terrible about it because I knew how important it seemed to my parents. This moment was monumentally significant because I needed to show them how necessary it was to educate me. And I froze.
My head was attacking my body and I wasn’t able to stop myself from rocking and stimming. I was trying to prevent myself from reaching the level of autism where I couldn’t feel anything but my childlike urge to stim. However, I really failed to show the school staff that I was actually in there. I temporarily met my autism and made friends with it.
When I am spelling in front of doubters (people who think I can’t spell on my own and that I am being manipulated), it takes me a long time to point at the letters on the letterboard. This is because autism is at war with my head and I am in the middle. Sometimes I am too kinetic to spell. However, I can’t stop myself from moving.
Nobody understands this better than my mom, and I am supremely grateful for her efforts on my behalf. I understand why people think I am intellectually disabled–at least think so–because I really don’t appear to be very smart. But I am smart. Not always on the take-up, but in the yet to be determined, yet to be defined, yet to be slowly-spelled-out words. I know that I am telling a pathetically sad story, but I am telling it to underscore the importance of trusting that I am in here.
But like I was saying before, somewhere along the way, I lost control. Now I couldn’t go back and fix my attempt at showing them that I can study advanced topics. I managed to restrain my rage that day, but couldn’t keep it inside the next day while I was at my RPM school. I couldn’t take any more pain. I began to hurt myself. Someone called my Dad to come and get me. He called my Mom and asked her what to do with me. They discussed the possibility of taking me to the nearest hospital. Never in my life had I contemplated that I could be hospitalized–at least I had never dreamed that it could happen. The fact that I was so worked up about my meltdown at school meant that I was stupendously screwed up. Now they were going to lock me up!
When we arrived, they took my vitals and put me in a room with nothing in it. I was scared that my Dad was going to abandon me there. My body was jostling for control, but my mind was losing the battle. How was I in this position? “You are not in control of whatever happens now.”
On the whole, it seemed like the hospital staff seemed stumped about what to do to help. They also seemed blown away by the fact that I was testing their understanding about what it means to be autistic. Sometimes people think I am not able to understand what is being said about me, but I learn more about the world by observing and not speaking. Some people think I’m stupid; however, they underestimate me at their worst risk. They don’t realize that I am taking it all in.
People started coming in whenever I pooped in my diaper to assist my mom so that I wouldn’t touch or eat it. I am interested in experiencing every taste in the world so I eat everything I can get my hands on in order to experience the world entirely. Every autistic thought I have is a little silly to your ears–I know. I eat everything because I need to feel its center and sense its fiber. My sense–too autistic to explain to people on the outside and too lovely to keep inside. I know I shouldn’t eat these things, but I can’t stop myself. I like autistically experiencing the world–even when I’m in the hospital and drugged.
The night continued to drag on and I applied my pressure to at least autistically pass the time. Everything came to a head when the psych staff finally entered the scene. Everything became clear when they started to ask me really tough questions about my autism and my desire to be hospitalized on that night. Never assuming that I wasn’t in there, they included me in the conversation and I communicated with a letter board. They asked me what I wanted to eventually happen to me. I spelled that I wanted to go to college and cure autism. I asked what would happen to me when we left the hospital and they said that was up to me. How that would happen was unclear to me, gauging my mom’s level of anxiety.
I am still not clear about my future, where I’m going to live for the rest of my life, after my childhood ends. Someday I hope to live together with a friend, but I am not sure how to make that happen. I understand my parents’ dilemma, for I am not easy to live with. My parents are doing their best and I am sure it’s not easy. I hope that someday they can go places without bringing a staff person to help with me. I love them hard and I am sorry they have this life. No one deserves this life because it is a difficult one to endure. Having these parents has forced me to autistically make progress and dream about my future in a way that wasn’t possible last year. I wish I could thank my parents out loud, but spelling is the best I can do.
How do I think everything will turn out? I don’t know. But I am willing to bet that nothing will stop me from becoming a writer and a scientist.