An Adventure in Normality

I often wonder how strangers view me. I imagine it's something like this.

Okay, so the hair colour is wishful thinking.  Additionally, in my own mind I look far more awkward and far less desirable, but I'm trying to shelve the Beaver of Half-Truths for now.

I try not to give too much thought to how strangers view me. On the other hand, acquaintances, friends and people who have the ability to make an impact on my life are much more important.

I love people. I'm recovering from social anxiety disorder, and actually being able to socialise is a recently discovered joy. I cannot describe how freeing it feels to have an open conversation with somebody, despite how difficult I still find it.

Presenting myself to other people, however, does not come without its perils.

I sometimes wonder how acquaintances view me. I imagine it's something like this.

Developing a closer relationship with a person involves filling in a lot of those gaps.  It may seem like I tend to focus conversation on the distinguishing parts of my life, but if I don't explain the context of my words and actions then I risk being misunderstood. I risk being perceived as lazy, rude and a liar.

We all make assumptions. It is easiest to assess a social situation (and, from an evolutionary perspective, to judge if people are dangerous), if you have a 'standard' model with which to compare others. The issue is that if I asked most people, out of context, to imagine the standard model of a human being - it would probably look a lot like this.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't describe me. If people try to gage my personality by matching me up to those traits, then I come off pretty badly. More pressingly, I come off as incredibly boring.

Imagine we live in a world were everybody owns a unicorn; it's your mode of transport, it's your main source of support and you're its companion. At the age of 5, as oft happens, your unicorn turns into a dragon. I'm sure this is a scenario we can all relate to.

People generally don't have a problem with dragons. They're a bit afraid of them, because they are so used to unicorns and  have heard that dragons can be unpredictable, but social acceptance is on the up. There are also laws in place to make sure that dragon owners aren't discriminated against.

Still, you feel lonely, and as if your identity as a dragon owner is invisible and invalid. You are made to feel like The Other; as though you are not only a deviation, but a deviant.

You are alienated from peers.

You are alienated from learning.

You are alienated from the media.

You are alienated from popular opinion.

This is why we need women's and black history months - because white men are disproportionately visible throughout taught history.  This is why we need LGBTQ pride events - because straight people have never been told they should feel ashamed of being straight. This is why we need 'reasonable adjustments' for disabled people - because the able bodied live in a world that was built with them in mind.

It's not the fault of the D-Os that all the parking spaces are for unicorns. It is not unreasonable to request that parking spaces cater for all mythological creatures.

Speaking as somebody who has grown up with white privilege, I used to think that the best way to tackle racism was to be 'colour blind'. I would go to great lengths to describe the physical appearance of a person without mentioning skin colour, and would try to view all people through my own lens. After all, I am human, my experiences are human experiences, therefore other people must be coming from the same human point, right?

I now realise that by doing this was white washing all the experiences of black people. I was assuming that my lens - my white lens - was the neutral human one.

By not viewing black people as black people, I was, by default, trying to view them as white.

Black is not a dirty word. Likewise, disabled is not a dirty word, neither is gay, or fat or skinny or female or trans or any other adjectives humans apply to themselves. They are merely descriptors, providing a explanatory short-cut for how we relate to the world. Of course it would be nice to think that, one day, we will no longer need to label ourselves. Until then, it's important to show the world that these varied identities exist  - and that they are no less valid. Let's celebrate our different normalities rather than celebrating conformity to this idea of a 'standard' model!

Occasionally wonder how my friends see me. I hope it's something like this.

I am all of these things and more. I won't dilute my experiences. To let others assume that I am anything different - to transmogrify myself so that I can be understood next to the 'standard' model - is to do me a disservice. I am not putting a horn on my dragon and banning it from breathing fire. This is my normality. What's yours?

Yours uniquely (just like everybody else),

BT

An Exceptional Adventure

Greetings dear reader, it’s been a while!

The last three months have been spent as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital. My life has consisted mostly of putting on weight, working out a healthy way of relating to (and consuming) food, and gaining insight into my mental health problems.

When I was admitted, there were many forms to fill out, and many boxes to tick. Generally speaking, the nursing team are good at dealing with eating disorders – which you would hope, considering that is the specialism of the ward. Some members of staff, however, struggle with the fact that very few people are Just an Eating Disorder.

This what I imagine the secretary was thinking when dealing with my admission:

After explaining for the umpteenth time that, yes, it IS possible to be anorexic AND mental AND crippled AND queer, you begin to feel abnormal in an environment in which abnormality is standard.

Literature on anorexia excludes any mention of gay women or disability, and the majority of medical professionals automatically conclude that I’m heterosexual and healthy. In the context of hospital, my urges to over-exercise aren’t seem as problematic because power-walking for twenty minutes doesn’t constitute ‘excessive exercising’ if you’re otherwise healthy. My digestive symptoms have also been marginalised because it’s not considered possible to find eating challenging due to physical AND psychological reasons. And divulging ethical vegetarianism in an Eating Disorders Ward is tantamount to declaring you only go to gay clubs because you "enjoy the décor", while maintaining that you're straight - everyone doubts your motives.

The attitude of compartmentalising different aspects of a person, at risk of missing the obvious, isn’t unique to mental health services. It’s hard for some doctors to realise that not all difficulties in life can be treated in the same way, even if they impact on one another. This is the experience I had upon visiting my GP, aged 12.

Having a chronic illness, especially one which is often dismissed or trivialised, plays havoc with your mental health. You are constantly primed to defend your experiences as genuine, and to prove that you aren’t to blame for the pain, exhaustion and discomfort. It makes you doubt yourself; your thoughts, your feelings, your perceptions of reality. Combined with separate, but just as problematic, mental illness and it's a struggle to be understood - or even acknowledged.

For these reasons, when I attempt to explain the rationale behind my decisions, I end up in tangled in a ball of thought-wool. Take this example:

Now take the same example, this time with the thought-wool unravelled and knitted it into a scarf of bullet points.

I have been invited to a competitive, all-female, erotic bake-a-thon by a medium close friend. I like friends. I like cakes. I'm also not adverse to all females, competitively erotic. However, there are a multitude of reasons why I might decline the invitation. Here are a select few:

• I might be doing something important in the days prior to or after the bake-a-thon which require me to rest. If the baking is done standing up, or the pornographic batter takes several hours to become firm, cakey buttocks, then my stamina probably won’t be sufficient.
• My pain, fatigue, nausea, brainfog and other levels of discomfort may be too high to tolerate the stimulus and activity. Even if I make it, then my symptoms may worsen as the day goes on and, as everybody knows, competitive bake-a-thons are a little pointless if you’re not able to witness (and eat) the end results.
• I may experience a dip in mood. And by dip, I mean huge nosedive. Imagine a tub of emotion-salsa the size of a Boeing 747 and you’re getting close. Falling into the Guacamole of Depression stops me enjoying every simple pleasure, takes away motivation to contemplate doing anything, leaves me unable to tolerate any forms of merriment (and/or gateaux-based innuendo) and usually ends with me hoping I, or the world, would disappear.
• Being around food is an enormous struggle. I could potentially spend the entire event denying myself penis cake, or continually nibbling on sugar nipples. In turn, I would either get frustrated that I couldn't enjoy the food, or I'd feel awful for allowing myself to eat too much. It is unlikely that food, weight, eating and disgust at my body would leave my mind at any point.
• Social anxiety often leaves me crippled with worry about making conversation, behaving appropriately and potentially embarrassing myself, (the opportunities for which would be reasonably large when faced with edible cream-filled genitalia). I have around four ‘safe’ people in my life that I feel comfortable spending time with and, regardless of how much I enjoy the company of other friends, I find socialising primarily with one person incredibly intense.
• I would far rather bake boobs than six-packs, but most situations only consider those of a heterosexual inclination. If I’m not in the mood to be ‘gay and proud’, then I would end up feeling isolated and obliged to conform. I am yet to put testicles in my mouth, and I’m not keen to start - chocolate sprinkles or no chocolate sprinkles – but I’ll do most things to avoid drawing attention to myself.
• There is too much room for failure in a competition. Even without the explicit competitive nature of the bake-a-thon (explicit in both senses of the word) - and even if I won - I would still feel that my work was terrible compared to other competitors. I have low enough self-confidence as it is, without adding ‘recreating the Karma Sutra in marzipan’ to my ‘things I'm crap at’ list.

If I wake up in a homophobia-free, anxiety-free, depression-free, illness-free world then of course I would go… Acutally, if such a miracle occurred then baking rude desserts would be at least 6^th down on my ‘To Do’ list, but this is of minimal significance. On the day of the bake-a-thon, I would almost certainly experience each of the above elements, and if one issue worsens then everything else is thrown out of balance. I either wouldn't have the mental capacity to push past my physical symptoms, or I wouldn't have the physical capacity to rationalise my psychological symptoms. And prejudice, sexism, ignorance, homophobia… they all need a certain amount of energy to challenge.

It’s hard to explain the above without confusing somebody or making it sound like a list of excuses. It’s also hard to find somebody who realises that I can’t be judged by the same criteria as Ms/Mr Average. I can say with some conviction that my experiences of being treated as Just an Eating Disorder are not unique in this environment. Or any environment, for that matter. Because, if you listen to the Platypus of Reason, you’ll realise that there is no Ms/Mr Average.

Upon consideration, I think I could tolerate being a Box Ticker if it didn't mean constantly being reduced to a single, isolated box. I am rarely seen as a complete sheet of paper, let alone a human exercise book; one full of lists, charts and the occasional diagram (not included in this blog for reasons of personal decency). When the platypus was first discovered, it was thought to be a joke, a melange of animals sewed together. I feel for the poor animal, and I, like the platypus, aim to be seen as more than merely an anomaly.

I want my figurative beak to be recognised alongside my metaphorical beaver’s body, and I don’t want my egg-born young to find life more difficult simply because they don’t fit a preconceived idea of what a mammal should be.

I have another three weeks left in hospital before I am discharged, and when that time comes, I shall demand to be seen as a whole person. I vow to embody the Platypus of Reason - and I hope the world will join me.

Yours without exception,

BT x