(a story from my childhood)
[Cn. medication, medication side effects, hallucinations, doctors, childhood disability, otherness]
When I was at Infants School, I was diagnosed with right frontal lobe epilepsy and put on regular high doses of anti-convulsants. These drugs gave me a whole host of incredibly strange side effects, including hallucinations, fugue states, and increased difficulty when learning social skills. The doctor that had put me on these drugs told my parents that I was too disabled/divergent for main school and that they should send me to a SEN school. He also told them that I wouldn’t function without these drugs, and that the side effects were a small price to pay for the problems the meds were fixing.
My parents, with the incredible and committed support of the local teachers, decided to send me to main school anyway. I was placed in the main class space, but often taken off to the side to do separate activities. My sense of myself was as an outsider. Everyone acted like I wasn’t a normal child and therefore I would never live a normal life. And ‘normal’ here also seemed to be synonymous with ‘fulfilling, successful, fruitful’.
In many ways I was seen as a ‘poor thing’. My future looked incredibly different to the kids I stood in class alongside. I had to leave school to go to hospital appointments. Anything I did that was even vaguely like ‘normal’ functioning children would be applauded as if it were an almost impossible achievement. I fell asleep in class, didn’t understand how to connect with others, struggled to write, had terrifying seizures and hallucinations at night, and was constantly haunted by a great sense of loneliness - that my peers would never understand the reality I experienced. In my ‘dreams for the future’ worksheet I found years later, I saw that I had written a disturbing piece about how I wanted to go to an island where no one had any eyes so that I couldn’t be seen and could finally live in peace.
During year 2, we had a class on disabilities and long term illnesses. I felt recognised by this class, and excited by the idea that these people (including me) were important contributors to society precisely because they functioned differently. Released for a playground lunchbreak, I ran out onto the tarmac, suddenly ignited by a sense of purpose. I decided to make a Special Club for those of us that existed outside of the norm. The first four of us were a badass gang made up of myself (epilepsy and dyspraxia), an autistic boy, a boy with diabetes, and another kid with asthma. Suddenly we felt the opposite of weak, our otherness felt powerful. It was our magic.
Unexpectedly, some sudden magnetism started to form around this group… and before I knew it, more and more people wanted to join. I decided to extend the group to include people whose family members experienced disability or long term illness - ‘my brother’s disabled!’ someone said, ‘can I join?’ I thought about how having a family member with a disability was also a unique experience that many may not understand. So I said yes.
More kids flocked towards me.
‘My dog has diabetes, can I join?’
‘My mum has migranes, do they count?’
Before I knew it, the whole playground had racked their brains to find a connection in themselves and their lives to someone that experienced disability or long term illness… And somehow the Special Club of those that felt othered by society, had become the most popular group in school.
The magick of this happening, as I look back on it now, is that even as an extremely young child my soul’s purpose was beginning to reveal itself. I have always desired to gather those that are categorised as ‘different’ from ‘normal’ and co-create with them a space of empowerment and self-love. That day, I felt like I was making a team of superheroes… its just that their special powers were a bit subtler than ultra strength or the ability to fly.
That day, I also somehow, within only a few hours, temporarily recalibrated the entire social fabric of normalcy enforcement… such that everyone was celebrating their connection to diversity instead. And something about that, in essence, is what I work to create with my online spaces and facilitation groups.
I am building a network that supports, cherishes, and develops the gifts of being unique.
Because we are special. And what we experience is a beautiful expression of nature’s diversity.
We are the ever-evolving constant innovation process of the universe in motion.
“So come all ye roaming [Others], and together we will shine.” - Fairport Convention