By Yamila García

I don’t want people to solve my problems for me. Nor do I want them to go through my difficulties for me or eliminate the complications that I may find in my path. I never intended for them to remodel reality for me or to adapt to what is comfortable for me. It would never occur to me to ask them to change the ways in which things have been done and work for others. I think that when many hear about inclusion, they have a confused idea of what it means, and perhaps that is the main barrier to achieving it. An accessibility ramp was never a reason to eliminate stairs. Likewise, accommodations for other needs should not be a reason to eliminate spaces or resources that still work for others.

All I would like is that in every space I go to, which probably won’t be designed for my way of seeing the world, there are places or accessory aids that I can use to make it more manageable for me. I think about how many times it could have helped me to have a quiet space to take away some of the overstimulation. Or how many other times a simple PDF explaining “what to expect” could have reduced my anxiety about the new and unexpected. I also think about how many have been inclusive without even realizing it. Professors uploading videos introducing themselves to their class through HuskyCT a week before the semester starts probably don’t know how much this helped me. Breaks during long events, quiet spaces to just relax for a few minutes in between, professors and offices offering different ways to contact them—all these things help. Basically, having options helps. Many of the things that can be done are simple and do not involve extra work for anyone. Just goodwill. I know that there are accommodations that involve other types of effort and dynamics, but in this case, I am only talking about those that can be adapted simply, quickly, and with minimal or no cost. These are things that can help many of us and are a basis for beginning to understand that we all function differently.

By Yamila García

I remember my younger self wanting to try things other people did. Many things weren’t clear to me at that time, so I wanted to try and see why I didn’t feel attracted or compelled to do this or that. I always observed how people interacted, and through that, I learned what was expected of me and what was considered socially acceptable. I knew what I had to do to “fit in”; I had it all studied in my mind. However, every time I tried something, things didn’t go as they were supposed to.

I think that by telling you that in my country a normal time to go to dinner at a restaurant is around 10:30 or 11 pm, you can imagine how late any other type of night out is. Just eating pizza at a friend’s house would imply that I had to stay up until 1 am at a minimum. Getting together with your friends in my country will never be a quick one-hour coffee; it will be several hours. Considering that by dinner time it would have been a whole day of stimuli and social interactions that imply fatigue due to the energy that all this entails, by dinner time things were getting difficult.

I was beginning to notice that my eyelids were getting heavy, that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and that in that trance between the conscience that told me “you can’t fall asleep in public” and the overwhelming drowsiness that seemed to crush me, reality would begin to distort. The tiredness would become so profound that I would even confuse the shapes of things before my eyes, seeing things that weren’t really there or weren’t what I thought I was seeing.

I always enjoyed being with my friends, but it became so difficult to handle this. Of course, I was discouraged. I felt frustrated and wanted not to go anymore. In any case, I sought to understand myself with the tools I had then. I took lighter days before having a meeting with friends or joined them when the activities were earlier (although I didn’t understand why I would get more tired than my friends). Over time, bars became fashionable around 6 pm, and that was great for me. I also began to know myself better and understand when my social battery was about to run out; I would immediately disappear in a taxi. Some coworkers even joked that I was Cinderella and that my car would turn into a pumpkin at 12.

In each stage of my life, the worst time is when I deny who I am, and the best time is when I embrace who I am. Denying difficulties is not going to make them disappear; however, when you know yourself more and better, you can take care of yourself and respect your needs.

 

By Yamila García

People often tell me that I know how to do many things. I am not sure if this is something I became on purpose or not. On one hand, I always thought that other people treat you well when you are somehow useful to them and that was for me almost the only way to connect with others. On the other hand, I was never good at communicating, so it was better not to ask for help but to work on anything I needed for myself. I tried to become efficient and resourceful. That was conscious. However, I also had to learn how to do many things independently just because asking for help meant interacting with people, which could be more exhausting than learning by myself.

I know that these kinds of relationships based on my utility to others are not ideal nor fair to me. However, far from seeking the ideal, sometimes it was just about making it work and not looking so “out of place” in society. I always accepted my differences but I understood that as unfair as it sounds, if I wanted the respect and recognition of my peers, I had to be useful. Well, useful or entertaining, but considering my abilities, being useful was the only option for me. Observing the world as I did, I saw that relationships were often based on the usefulness of one party and a need of the other, or the admiration of one party and the desire for the attention of the other. I know these are not the only ways but they looked like the less complex at a point in my life. So I went with “useful” and I tried to be that for the world around me. I thought, “If every time someone says something I know about that particular topic, they will think I’m interesting or smart, or at least not so weird.” I feel bad for my younger self now. I know I don’t have to do this anymore but now again, it is a kind of mask that we, neurodivergent use to hide what doesn’t fit into this society. How do we differentiate who we really are from this mask we’ve used for so many years? That’s not easy, at least for me. I’m still working on figuring out who I am and what I had to be just to adapt to this world.