Reflections on an Undiagnosed Meltdown: Masking and Stimming and Crying, Oh My!
The line of hungry and fidgeting six-year-olds snaked into the hall as the scant resources of patience and self-control rapidly dwindled. This daily herding from classroom to cafeteria erupted in chaos and disorder under the best circumstances. Conversations boomed above and past one another as they revived jokes leftover but still fresh from the morning and contrived tentative plans for the imminent recess. I remained quietly seated at my desk, surveilling the surroundings out the window. Usually I had already been whisked to safety from this frenzy, but not today. I sat and looked outwards. The Mother had not arrived yet.
The Teacher observed me covertly and knowingly, her eyes seemingly meant to bestow upon me some unfounded hope or encouragement. She knew that I would not partake in the daily feedlot. This was all routine. But The Mother’s tardiness deviated from the familiarity that I had come to know and need. So these children, in whose eyes I could never quite look, much less discern any clue as to an agreed upon meaning, gaped at me and their blank stares penetrated. They clearly demanded some explanation as to why I was neither absent nor joining them. Collective tensions soared accordingly. One boy, with no malice seeping from his dull eyes, explicitly invited me to stand beside him. I looked away in the hope that if I refused to acknowledge him — attempting to nullify the question entirely — then I might just disappear.
I shifted my legs in my seat. That desk, in so many ways entombing me, remained my last vestige of security. My hands had become moist and so I rubbed them on my shirt and shorts, a sensation that only reaffirmed my imprisonment. My stomach churned and I had no idea at the time that the brain and digestive tract shared nerve connections; I only knew this bodily discomfort as a warning sign that would likely escalate if left unaddressed. Some means of engagement or distraction might quiet this burgeoning dread. If only my body or mind could release itself in some pursuit like recess or television, even mathematics, seeing as The Teacher softened the hard edges of the numbers and their order of operations.
But no, without an immediate endeavor my only recourse was the unblinking sedentary gaze that maddeningly attempted to will The Mother’s already late arrival and sought to forget that I existed within a human body; a cramped vessel requiring continual maintenance. And so began yet another instance where it functioned in a manner to brutally remind me that I was not its master but just along for the ride. I had collected consistent and demonstrable evidence related to this lack of control. This body regularly expelled liquid on nights when I wished to remain dry and transformed into a crematory when I required a temperate habitat.
I began to flutter my fingers under my desk and this unfortunately and predictably intensified into my making two fists and bumping the insides of them together — first contact being made near the wrist — as if to imitate the striking of a baseball by a baseball bat. The silent rattling of sensory overburden quelled as I performed these actions, motions for which I had no verbal explanation but knew deep down were somehow neurologically de rigeur absent any external stimulation.
However, the bat-and-ball motion began to ascend from the hidden and Hadean depths below my desk and was in plain view for all to behold. Though not the first time I had visibly comported myself in this way, this occasion did provide a unique opportunity for my so-called companions to enjoy such a display with their undivided attention. It was an interim period and their focus had previously been solely directed at the forthcoming ingesting of the calories necessary to keep their small human bodies functioning. So this was now the locus of entertainment. Soon others exhibited their own bat-and-ball motions and mayhem swiftly ensued.
The Teacher, aware that now more than ever I needed her edge-softening protection, commendably sought to forge a calm amidst the storm but produced no tangible results. My proximate surroundings mutated into a carnivalesque caricature of my own foibles and poorly concealed irregularities. I would persist in this shell of a body to view several future imitations, crude representations that always bore the disguise of an homage. I sat and looked outwards at what had grown into a spectacle on par with my liquid-expelling nightmares, rendered all the more tragic since The Teacher lacked the requisite omnipotence to return the world to order and The Mother lacked the presence to facilitate my escape.
But at this moment these tiny gesticulators commenced their hungry cafeteria-bound march; Perhaps because I perceived the imminent safety of an empty room following their departure, or because I was simply not my body’s master, the tears began to flow freely as my lack of control became all the more visceral upon being made visible. My wailing at this compact and sturdy desk was my encore, the final scene of entertainment for the crowd that watched me as they bumped into one another while filing out of room. They chose sustenance in favor of attempting to imitate this latest outburst. It was also at this very moment when The Mother, whom I had obviously failed to notice outside the window, now stood in the doorway.
I never did find out what had so significantly delayed her as we walked the hundred meters hand in hand to the shelter that we shared.
I entered and basked in the merciful welcome of an already glowing box. I forgot my tears and forgot my body as someone else told me stories. My fingers no longer fluttered and no spastic motions represented a bat striking a ball. I sat comfortably now, all focus directed at moving images that demanded nothing from me. I no longer needed to flail. The enclosure of the body again flitted away from conscious recognition, losing its harshest features as it had stopped expelling liquids.
And so I did rejoin that herd of satiated and forgetting proto-humans who no longer viewed me with any perceptible ridicule. I ran and played in a group and then The Teacher taught me the things I would need to know if I had any hope of properly conducting myself within a civilized world.
