Liane Holliday Willey - Pretending to be Normal

My friend brought me to the party and did his best to help me fit in, but as a new member of the fraternity, he had other responsibilities. I was largely on my own from beginning to end. I keenly recall feeling like I was a particularly unwelcome intruder who had no business being at that event. I remember struggling with myself, begging myself to go shake a hand or start a conversation, but I could not bring myself to do either. I noticed how effortlessly the other girls seemed to be handling the crowd of young men. I noted too, that they were not shaking hands nor conversing very much at all. They were giggling and laughing and tossing their hair behind their shoulders, gently putting their hands on the boys’ arms, looking totally lost in the limelight of the attention they were getting. I could see their formula but I could not bring myself to follow it. Slowly, the room began to accept some as its own, while it tossed the others aside. I watched as a few of the fraternity members made their way to a couch in a quiet corner or to the hallways that led to their rooms. I saw a few girls smile and say thanks and wander toward the door that would take them home. I remember feeling like a scientist who was curious to see who made it and who did not, but only after my friend came back to check on me, did I realize that I was standing completely alone, virtually twenty feet or more from the small circles and large groups of chatting and laughing people. Only then did I realize that I had been tossed aside.

A month or two later I ran into a few of the girls I recognized from one of my classes. Much to my surprise, they were enthused to see me and interested in talking with me. I recall feeling flattered by the attention, and glad to have their company — the loneliness was beginning to hurt my heart. The girls asked if I would like to go shopping with them, an activity I did not relish, but a date I was happy to make nonetheless. They gave me the time and place to meet them, asking me if I wouldn’t mind driving because they did not have cars on campus. I told them I would be happy to do so, particularly since I always preferred to be the driver. I spent all week trying my very hardest to roust something from my closet that would pass for college cool. I settled on a pair of blue jeans and a sweater, the only real option I had outside of my overalls and the dress I wore to the fraternity party. I thought I looked about as normal as any other student, at least I was dressed like one and that, I assumed, was about all I needed to bring me to a successful day with my new friends.

Finally, the day came for the big shopping event and sure enough, the girls were waiting for me just like they said they would be. We found my car and I told them I would take them anywhere they wanted to go, explaining I never shopped in town much and had no real preference for anywhere in particular. The girls directed me to the middle of the downtown shopping area which kept me from having to admit I found it so difficult to make my way around town. I found a parking spot in no time at all, and after a few attempts even managed to parallel park my car. All was going great until we got out. The girls turned to me the moment we stepped on the sidewalk and told me to be sure to meet them back at the car in three hours. Then they turned to one another, began a new conversation and walked down the street… as far away from me as they could possibly go. I wish I could say I left the girls stranded where they had left me. But of course, I did not.

If this adventure had been a one-of-a-kind trip, I might not even remember it today. Unfortunately, the entire year was pelted with episodes just like it. Most were even more embarrassing and are more painful to recall. I think the real problem laid just below the surface of another of my most mysterious and difficult AS traits — my inability to understand my peers’ conversations. I understood their language, knew if they had made grammatical errors in their speech, and I was able to make replies to anything that was spoken to me; but, I never came to hear what they were really saying. I never understood their vernacular. Suffice to say that, at that point, I was unable to read between the lines. Subtext and innuendo may as well have been birds flying by my window. It was frustrating being unable to break into the thought processes of my peers but I was more upset when I came to discern I never learned from one experience to the next. I kept falling into the same kinds of traps, even after my father warned me it sounded like people were only using me, even after I discovered it was an acquaintance from high school who had stolen my bike, even after I overheard a girl from my dormitory tell her boyfriend I was a fat slob. No matter what I saw or heard, I failed to get the message. I was not fitting in.

When summer break came, I went home defeated and frustrated. My grades were barely passing marks, my sensory dysfunction was turning my footing to mire and I had not found one single person who was like me. If I had, I might have felt normal.

Life at home was no easier or better for me than college was. By then, everyone I had grown up with was on a new track, headed for new goals and futures. I was glad for them, but awkwardly intrigued by their new lives. I did not understand how they were managing to do so well. How did they find their way when I lost mine? What did they have that I did not? Why were they happy and I so sad? Despite all the analysis I gave the matter, I found no answers.

My return to campus the next year was more obligatory than festive. I went back because I loved academics and knowledge and scholarship and research and writing papers. Despite all the rudeness and all the confusion, I went back to study and to learn. And for the most part, I was successful, except when I slipped back into the old pattern, the one that caught me when I was a freshman. The one that had no bright beginning… only a history of brittle endings. Yet when I was strong, I was very strong. And ever so slowly I began to find ways to help myself deal with the struggles I faced.

On a lark, I discovered I enjoyed working with clay and enrolled in a ceramics class for no credit just so I would have a legitimate reason to play with it. I remember the art lab like it was an oasis, especially in the late evening when it was almost always empty. It was wonderful then. It was so still and nice, so calm and uncluttered. And it was engaging. Without the hustle and bustle of other students, I could focus and relax and really enjoy the art.

I could mush the clay and sculpt it into odd little shapes that paid no mind to anything real or recognizable. I did not care if I made tall pitchers or deep dished pie plates. I just wanted to work with the clay. It is the most simple and engaging texture I know.

The art lab was my favorite stop, but the architecture building was a close second. I was enthralled with the drafting classrooms, the slanted drawing tables, the straight edged rulers, the half mooned protractors, the steel compasses and the piles of fountain pens and mechanical pencils. I loved watching the students sitting at their tables, single bright lights focused over their shoulders, as they concentrated on their designs, so riveted and intent. I envied them their tools and their quiet and their skills. I would have given anything to have joined them, but I knew I did not have what it took to draw straight lines and tiny figures all the while contemplating difficult mathematical and engineering decisions that would need to be considered in the design. I wish I had gotten up the nerve to take an introduction to architecture class. It would have been dazzling to use their room and their gadgets, rather like I did the art studio — not for credit or great productivity, but for pleasure and enjoyment.