I wonder sometimes how we managed, once upon a time. And I’m not being obnoxious, really, so please bear with me.
~ ~ ~
Bobby is shown time and again how to spell certain words, and he never remembers. His teacher tells him he’s difficult and slow. He grows up believing that.
Donald never looks anyone in the eye. He sits and draws pictures of trains all day, unresponsive to his teachers. They shuffle him off into a special class if there is such a thing, or just to the back of the room. It is an unspoken truth that the poor boy is going to be an ignorant burden all of his life. He might wind up in an institution someday.
Mary is sometimes withdrawn. She seems skittish and prefers the solitude of the library or her bedroom rather than parties with friends. She cries a great deal and gets agitated far too easily. Sometimes, her agitation is disruptive to her family. The physicians prescribe opium to soothe her. She is soothed and eased and if her family misses her former sporadic moments of playfulness, they believe the trade off for her apparent peace is worth it.
~ ~ ~
My dad is dyslexic, meaning he has a visual perception problem that scrambles visual signals and their interpretation. He was considered to be mechanically, not academically, inclined and shuffled off to shop classes at school. He helped raise horses, he built cars and cabinetry, he became an ace mechanic.
My husband is dyslexic. He was considered “slow” in school and placed in remedial classes thirty years ago. He didn’t know how truly smart he was until he married me (and I am serious) and found that my mom - who was a vision therapist - understood his reading difficulty. My husband had learned to enjoy reading IN SPITE OF dyslexia. His IQ is very high. He just didn’t know it. He kept moving on with what he had.
My son is autistic. Twenty, thirty years ago, he would have been considered to be a problem child. A behavior problem. I might have been shunned as a poor mother, an unresponsive mother (for autism used to be attributed to distant, hands-off mothering) or just uncaring for my son to be so nonresponsive to some aspects of normal human interaction.
I know people (multiple people) who have psychiatric disorders. Manic depression. Bipolar disorder. Clinical depression. I cannot speak to the first two, but having been clinically depressed I can say that no one knew I really was that messed up, in my own life. Even those closest to me were ignorant of how far into a suicidal, depressive spiral I had gone. I chose not to tell people, because I refused to have them feel sorry for me. I refused to ask for help. I acted, every hour of every day, as if it was all “fine.” I do not feel this is the best path, but it worked for me because I insisted it did, and because my God was near me always, giving me escapes I only barely comprehended even as I took advantage of them.
Fifty years ago, there were no terms for the other disorders. Those who suffered them did so in ignorance. They were “nervous” or “delicate” or “difficult.” Families worked around them, making excuses. They had no labels for what ailed them, so the problems were left nameless. Frightening, but something to be lived through because there were no alternatives.
There were no alternatives. It is like living in a torturous prison for some folks, I know, so for a long time people JUST DID. They just…did.
We have choices, now. There is help. Therapy for visual perception issues. Therapies and medications for autism and its manifestations. Medications and treatments for psychiatric disorders. I am relieved that there are options. Thankful. Still, part of me always takes my imagination back to an era, not so long ago, where people just had to manage, you know? Sadly, painfully, they had to manage. Without understanding, without support, without reasons, without excuses.
I read a lot of historical fiction and I seem to find my imagination wandering to well-known characters. For example, I think Mary Bennet, of Pride and Prejudice, might have had Asperger’s Syndrome, a manifestation of the Autism Spectrum Disorder. But she didn’t know that, so she simply comprehended that she was less inclined to be social than her family. Her feelings were hurt constantly, since she didn’t pick up on normal social cues. She participated with quotations adapted from other sources, because that was all she really felt she COULD contribute, you know? Yes, maybe I’m stretching, but still.
I think of people I know and am grateful they were born now, not then. Still, I wonder how it would have been, once upon a time.
