The last few days, I have been turning a rather frightening concept around and around in my mind. It is:
I am trying as hard as I can.Over the years I have been told, and told myself very often, that I am lazy and should try harder, that my intelligence means I can do anything, anything I want, if only I want it badly enough. Only lately have I been realizing that trying itself is a limited resource, that a person can only try so hard before mental and physical reserves run dry and willpower fades.
The idea that I am actually trying as hard as I can seems like blasphemy. Apparently I have built myself a little religion that consists of telling myself, "You could do more. You're just being lazy. Just wait until you
really buckle down." Apparently, in my little religion, I am omnipotent; only I'm not using my full power.
I do not let myself do any less than the best. If I don't, I feel like I'm failing everyone--everyone who let me have another chance after I was kicked out of college for failing and being crazy; everyone who might, like me, want a second chance; all the other autistic college students who want the same chance I've got.
Last week was finals week for me. I'm studying biomedical engineering. I want to become a rehabilitation engineer and design technology that will make it possible for people to do the things they want to do--especially, technology that people can use to communicate, because communication is the one thing nobody else can do for you. I had a research paper, and had been allowed to pick my topic; so I decided to research the design of AAC technology for autistic people. It was a fascinating topic--in fact, right in my area of special interest. And yet it took me a whole day to get started doing the paper, another half a day to get past the outline, and another day and a half to actually finish it. I had a lot of lapses of concentration, a lot of trouble pulling my thoughts together into any sort of coherence.
I was already exhausted from that paper when I learned that I couldn't get an A on my chemistry class, no matter how hard I tried, because my test scores were too solidly in the "B" range. And for a couple of days, every time I tried to study, I ended up crying. Then the day of the test, I finally managed to study. It was a very odd feeling, knowing I had to get a 57% on the final to drop to a C, and could not possibly get an A, and studied for the test anyway... It was a foregone conclusion, wasn't it, that my final grade was a "B"? But it just felt like I had to--had to do it because otherwise I wouldn't be fighting. I simply didn't want to go down without a struggle.
You know it's getting bad when I'm starting to use combat metaphors.
By the time I got to my anatomy final, I was so tired I barely managed to study at all. I guessed at too many of the questions. I might have messed up my grade in that class, too. I don't know how many times I ducked into odd corners of the school (I have them all mapped out) so nobody saw me bawling like a six-year-old.
So why do I feel I have to get "A"s? Why isn't a B good enough? It should be good enough. I'm taking what people consider to be difficult classes, even though I'm barely at a full-time course load, and plenty of people get B's on those.
I've got this internship for the summer; 40 hours a week of lab work, partnered with a professor at my university. And of course I have to do well at that, too. A lot of the other interns seem to be very intelligent. Half of them are going to be doctors. More than a few started taking college classes while they were in high school. And here I am, twenty-six years old, with a record of failing out of college altogether and being given this precious second chance I just can't pass up.
I'm afraid that if I let myself slip at all, it'll be back to D's and F's and "Withdrawn".
I'm afraid that if I don't do well, my mother will end up in a nursing home when she gets older and needs help because I won't be able to pay for someone to help her, and I'll feel horrible because I can't let her live with me and still stay sane.
I'm afraid that if I don't do well, people will think that people like me can't do well.
I have to do well because if I do, it will prove that giving people second chances is worth it.
I have to do well because I won't get any third chances, and I know it.
If I do well, it will prove that autistic students can succeed, and don't have to become non-autistic to do it.
I have to do well because if I don't, who will invent the technology that I might be able to think up, that might help a lot of people live their own lives instead of somebody else's concept of what they ought to be?
I feel like so much is riding on this... why me? Why can't the world pick a better person, someone more confident and capable, instead of someone who cries over a B and worries that if she slips up even the least little bit, it will be back to failing grades and hospital rooms and Haldol?
And then I feel even worse, because why in the world should I be so important? It's a horrible sort of pride, to think things couldn't possibly get better without you.
Insult to injury: You know what's on the sticker glued to the window of the office about two doors down from where I'm supposed to work?
CURE AUTISM NOW.
Yeah.
Somebody should spray-paint some swastikas and burn some crosses and complete the collection.
I always used to comfort myself with the idea that I really wasn't trying as hard as I possibly could, that if I
really, really wanted to, I could do whatever I set out to accomplish--that failure was never going to happen unless I allowed it. I guess I know better now. I might fail, despite my best efforts; and my "best efforts" might include, sometimes, not having enough concentration or willpower left to put out much effort at all.
Look at it one way, and that's a sort of peaceful thought--the same sort of peace you feel when you've set your battle plans and you're either going to win or lose and there's just the actual fighting to get over with before you can see which it will be. But the other way, it's a horrible fearful thought, because it means that my life, which is the only one I have to spend, may end up being wasted--
without my being able to do a thing about it.
It may be just that I'm idealistic and I have set much too high a value on myself. Maybe it doesn't even matter if I succeed or fail at making some dent in the craziness and evil of the world... but that's even worse, because that means that my life is automatically wasted, no matter what effort I put out. If I truly believed it didn't matter, I probably wouldn't think life worth anything more than just counting time until I ended up as just one more cadaver in the anatomy lab.
I can't accept that. It has to matter. It has to be worth
something, however small. I have to make some kind of impact, and it doesn' t matter if I'm the only one who knows I've done it. People's lives should matter. Nobody should have to live a life and leave the world unchanged.