Invisible Disability and Neurodiversity
I feel rather conflicted writing this blog post. I want to share how it feels having very minor and relatively inconsequential disabilities and neurodiversity, but I don’t want to make either 1) a claim of a need for understanding and accommodation from people without physical and mental challenges or 2) a claim of membership in a community that I don’t feel right asking to be a part of. I’m reminded of listening to a radio rant several decades ago on the CBC…I think it was by Gordon Sinclair, but I don’t remember clearly. Definitely an old white male, though! He was complaining that so many people nowadays were demanding special treatment because they were minorities (meaning, at that time, largely anyone in Canada who wasn’t white). His rant was a list of the minority groups he was a member of, e.g. member of the Order of Canada, all very privileged groups, and he was complaining that he never got special treatment for being a minority. I’m sure that nowadays the CBC wouldn’t let anyone get away with such an outrageous stance, but it did strike me as short-sighted and self-centered in the early 1980s. And clearly I remembered it well enough to want not to be like that!
So, I’d like you to know about an invisible disability and an invisible neurodiversity that I personally experience, without trying to claim special status for them. I hope that they give me a glimpse into what people with more life-impacting challenges (invisible or visible) experience, but I don’t claim to represent or speak for anyone but myself.
My left eye can’t focus, so my brain sees with my right eye from the right periphery to the bridge of my nose, and then there’s a blur beyond that. If a student sits in the blurry part of my field of vision, they’ll need to wave rather than just put up a hand, so I can see them and respond. I’m lucky that my eyes almost track with each other, so most people don’t notice. I’ve never seen with both eyes at once and never will. I can’t watch 3-D films, and optical illusions often don’t work for me. The only depth perception I have is monocular. When I walk, I have to focus on the ground so I know how far away it is. When I reach for something, I usually go slowly, watching to see when my hand seems to get close to the object I want to hold. I don’t own a car, though I sometimes drive rentals, and parking is super stressful because I don’t know how far away I am from things.
When I was a child, I didn’t understand my vision as a disability and, looking back, I wish I’d known I could have tried to get out of baseball at school. Baseball in gym was a nightmare every year. I never once hit the ball with the bat, so I was always “out.” I was always bottom of the batting order, so I was always the third out. Other students, and sometimes gym teachers, berated and belittled me for not trying and for not being competent. I had no idea how it was that other students knew when to swing and where the ball was and I didn't—but looking back I understand that there was no time for me to focus on the ball as it hurtled toward me. I still have post-trauma reactions to baseball.
But I can climb stairs, step over obstacles, carry a plethora of things, speak and people understand me, and so on. And I understand how much privilege each of those abilities gives me!
My particular neurodiversity is a kind of synesthesia: I see whatever words I hear spoken… I use the word “see” even though they don’t intrude in my field of vision. It feels as if there’s a kind of tape running through the top of my head on which words appear—black letters on a white tape, serif fount—and, if I mis-hear, I mis-see the word. I feel a need to know how words, particularly people’s names, are spelled, so I can see them properly. This must have developed after I learned to read, but I don’t remember not having it. My favourite fount is Palatino Linotype, and it took me years to figure out it’s because it’s pretty close to how I see spoken words. It was only a few years ago that I realized the visible words don’t happen when I dream, if in the dream there’s dialogue. Don’t know why not.
Being in a classroom and listening to five or six small groups of students discussing something at the same time is do-able…the speech of the group I’m closest to and focusing on appears larger, with words or phrases from elsewhere in the room around it. I don’t like noisy crowds and tend to get overwhelmed. At large social events I tend to go to the edges and find one or two people to talk to. It’s hard for me to watch something with captions because they’re slower and less accurate than my own built-in system.
It’s a small and I think interesting neurodiversity, not one requiring medical intervention or academic accommodation. I was great at Spelling tests. OK, for quite a few years I saw “separate” as “seperate,” and there are probably quite a few words I see incorrectly, especially in French or German, the languages I can listen to and more (French) or less (German) understand. I rarely see the accents in French and never in German—or that double "s" thing.
But overall, I love my synesthesia, and it doesn’t prevent me functioning at my job or socially.
I try to remember that other people may also have invisible disabilities and neurodiversities, but often it’s not something I think about until they tell me. If you’re reading this and you have some, please send me an email at didicher@sfu.ca and tell me about yours!