They Called It Anxiety Disorder. It Was Just Exhaustion From Pretending To Be Normal.
As a child, I was what people called "quirky," which is how adults politely describe children they suspect might one day either run a Fortune 500 company or start a cult.
I hated being touched. Sunlight felt like an assault. Grass was an enemy. The absence of a cat nearby was a genuine crisis. These weren't preferences. These were non-negotiable terms of my existence.
By age three, I could read newspapers to my father like some Victorian parlour trick. The vinyl alphabet stickers on our sliding glass doors had a specific taste I can still swallow decades later. This is the kind of detail that makes therapists write faster.
I've had bad eyes my entire life. My first ophthalmologist appointment was also at age three, not coincidentally the same time I began devouring printed words. Dr. Keith, my current eye doctor, inherited a file on me thicker than the Sunday edition.
My kindergarten teachers granted me access to the ONE school computer, I was the only child in my class with access. I was the lone five-year-old deemed responsible enough for technology, which seems less impressive now that I've watched toddlers unlock iPhones with frightening efficiency.
At six, I was a pint-sized Geek Squad, fixing VCRs and rewiring entire stereos for my grandmother's neighbours; for free, which upset me. Between repair jobs, I'd return to her glamorous apartment to devour Cosmopolitan sex articles and parade around in her stilettos, which made up for it.
I got dial-up internet in 1993 because my mother was pursuing another degree and the University provided “dial-up”. The internet both fascinated and terrified me. A TV. A phone. A portal to another dimension where we could work, socialize and communicate on a new playing-field completely. I was no longer trapped in Edmonton dependent on money, I was living my “FAR AND AWAY” fantasy and staking my claim on the World Wide Web where money and location meant nothing. It was like discovering I could astral project but with more pornography.
My first full meltdown happened at sixteen. Day twelve of a family road trip to Haida Gwaii, I woke up and the world collapsed inward. Crying. Screaming. Then mute. Dissociated. It was like my brain decided to simultaneously run every program at once, then crash spectacularly. Haida Gwaii in a camper van with your family at 16 is intense though, it makes complete sense.
The diagnosis: Generalized Anxiety Disorder with a side of Panic Disorder. This was in the late 1990’s. ADHD was something they only looked for in boys who couldn't sit still and were punching each other on the playground. Girls who were dreamy, intense, gifted and still managed top grades? We were just sensitive. Nobody was checking for the girl quietly reading under her desk while simultaneously planning an elaborate fantasy world based on Leo DiCaprio’s character, Luke, on “Growing Pains” while memorizing the periodic table.
For nearly three decades, I believed my brain's emergency system was simply overachieving.
The most exhausting thing about being different isn't the difference. It's pretending that you're not while everyone keeps asking why you're shaking so much.
In 2023, at forty-four, I told my psychiatrist something was wrong with my diagnosis. I'd always known it, the way you know there’s going to be a third plot twist everyone fails to hypothesize about in the first act…