How Not to Grow Up Neuro-atypical
My personal story
Content warning for emotional abuse
Discovering Who I Am
Born in 1987 in a weird patch of land called Hungary — specifically, Budapest — I found myself coming face to face with my neuro-atypicality quite quickly. I was always “a handful” as a child, but if there was one moment when that changed to “there’s something wrong with this kid”, it was when I was hit in the face by one of my teachers, around age nine. No, not metaphorically. The principal wanted to wash her hands of the entire incident and suggested private tutoring & psychiatric evaluation, plus of course a transfer to one of the “special” schools.
That evaluation came back with hyperactivity and links to ADHD and bipolar disorder. Thanks to what happened over the next couple of decades, those are joined by intermittent anxiety and waves of crushing depression, alienation and a sense of being distanced from people and the world around me. At the time, it was just the excuse the school needed to transfer me somewhere else and avoid a scandal. As a nine-year-old, I hadn’t a clue about my future as a concept, never mind any agency over its direction.
Me and my mind didn’t quite work the way we were “supposed” to, but things around me didn’t work as promised for me either. I was very checked-out in general, hopping from one thing to another mentally. The school I transferred to was abysmal; it was more like being swept into a corner so that society didn’t have to deal with me than a supportive space for people who couldn’t easily fit in. I ended up being taught basically nothing at that school. I learned to read and write…from the letters on a computer keyboard. I learned to speak English…by watching Cartoon Network every day that I could from ages 6–13. I could solve math problems easily because the answer just seemed obvious, but I was never taught how to figure out the answers in the “proper” way.
To this day, pretty much any math problem that can be solved mentally comes to me like the most natural thing in the world. It’s so natural that whenever anyone remarks or compliments me on how quickly I can see the answer, I just feel confused rather than proud. But as the stereotype goes for anyone with an aptitude for numbers, I soon found myself drawn to computers. Computers were precise, responsive — they don’t judge your appearance, they follow consistent rules. I can understand what a computer is “thinking” in a way I can never read from another person. They became my coping mechanism; at my computer, I was safe, warm, had infinite possibilities in front of me; the bleakness of my destroyed education and the constant friction with my mother seemed further away and less painful.
A Nurturing Environment
I’m told it’s helpful for neuro-atypical people to have support, a place to cultivate mental peace and develop as a person, and grow a good self-image. It would have been nice to know any of this growing up, as I never really had access to any of those things thanks to my relationship with my mother. I’m aware that a good parent is supposed to love, trust and support their kid, but all my mother seemed to want to do was make everyone as miserable as she was.
While computers were (and still are) my safe zone, and I would spend as much time around one as I could, this would always be punctuated with “kelj már fel, lusta szar!” (“Get up already, you lazy shit!”). Unless of course, I got up for a bathroom break or tried to actually do something; this would be met with “Mi a faszért nem ülsz le, útban vagy!” (“Sit the fuck down, you’re in the way again!”).
I didn’t really have a quiet space, a private space or a safe space of any kind. We all know the problem of parents not knocking before they come into our room, and mine would often burst in suddenly, in the middle of a screaming match with each other. In general, screaming — screaming around me, screaming at me, and inevitably screaming from me — is a good summary of my overall impression of my childhood.
One of my strongest memories from this time is when I was asked to get some mineral water from a store a fair walk away. I would often go there myself to buy cheap, slightly dubious food as my mother didn’t want to pay for any of mine. They didn’t have the exact brand of bottled water she asked for, so I got the brand they did have for roughly the same price.
It wasn’t the only time she was enraged enough to scream directly in my face, but this ‘failure’ caused one of the most intense rage fits I had seen from her. It was the wrong water, just more evidence of how unreliable and “fucking useless” I am. She’d have no-one to take care of her when she got older, because I “can’t do a fucking thing right”. All this, of course, interspersed with the wonderfully versatile and often absolutely vicious Hungarian cursing system that is the jewel of my native language.
My mother punctuated the end of the tirade by spitting at my feet.
People and Me
It’s hard to separate what stems from this emotionally abusive environment and what stems from my neuro-atypicality. Maybe they’re both intertwined somehow, each feeding in to the other. Discovering more “problems” over the years — whether they were connected to ADHD, some form of autism, bipolar disorder or whatever else — left me ostracized from society, always looked at funny because, though I’m high-functioning in general, people often seemed to think there was just something a little “off” about me.
I had no real connection to society; a support structure from my country that started out completely ineffective and then simply stopped existing when I reached high-school age; a family life full of turmoil and conflict. All together, these things left me feeling like I’m not a real person, somehow — as if 70–80% of myself is just “gone”. I experience flattened, un-nuanced emotions; negative ones, most of the time. It’s hard to ever feel a sense of pride or accomplishment, even I have people around me now that are encouraging and tell me I should be proud of myself. My CV is barren, I’m unemployable, my achievements are few and far between and my future looks very suspect, at least to my eyes.
One great thing I did recently was host a 12-hour charity fundraiser that turned out better than expected. It’s left me feeling like I have some kind of internal ‘weight’ now, like I’m significant in some small way. I have something I can look at and point to that I did; something that made a difference. I’m still skeptical of my own abilities and my own future, but maybe there’s more reason to try now — maybe I can still do right by myself and the people I care about.
I do feel better if I’m able to help people. My past hasn’t encouraged that, for the most part. I was once asked by a Hungarian friend to write a letter in English to his boss, since this friend was in danger of losing his job. It worked. He didn’t just keep his job after that, he got a raise. He was even given some gifts by his boss — exotic wine, Austrian chocolate and an Xbox 360, even though he already had one of those.
To thank me, he gave me a packet of out-of-date microwave popcorn that he had lying around.
It does feel good to help people. But, with my family often having to ration food and sometimes not sure where the next meal was coming from at the time, this was hard to process. I couldn’t help but ask about his plans for the extra Xbox 360. Turns out he was going to take it to his “weekend home”, so he would have one at first home and one at his second home.
For most people, emotions seem to be a process; they go through a range, they move steadily through a natural progression of hues and intensities. For me, most things send my mood slamming straight into a sort of anxious, irritable anger. Part of my ADHD, or part of the bipolar disorder my evaluation all those years ago suggested I have? Either way, anything going wrong often sends me straight to that feeling. If it’s a person who makes me feel that way — even if by accident — it becomes hard to see them in any other light. It’s hard to balance those feelings against any past experience with that person, no matter how positive our previous relationship. These feelings pass in time — usually after a night’s sleep — but sometimes the damage has already been done by then.
Breaking from routine or seemingly small, inconsequential things can trigger intense anxiety spikes. “I need to check the gas meter…but I’m not wearing the jacket I keep the gas card in, so I’d have to take it out of that pocket, and then it wouldn’t be in its pocket”. Moving things — giving them a new place where they “live” — can be stressful. Knocking things over — even other people knocking things over — breaking things, losing things…these can all send me into a spiral of anxiety for a while.
I don’t really understand where a lot of these things come from, except that they’re me. Hope for the future isn’t easy to hold on to, especially when such small things can send me into full-on despair of my whole life. But I’ve been able to do some actual, solid good in the world recently. Maybe there’s at least a chance I can do more — maybe I can discover more about my neuro-atypicality, learn ways to help myself, and maybe that journey can help people out there who are struggling too. Maybe someone will see some of this and recognize a little of themselves. I really struggle with “maybe”. It’s almost impossible for me to go through with anything unless I see certainty, guarantees. But sometimes even a maybe is worth a try.