Head Case

 

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For anyone who has ever felt invisible

 

A labyrinth is an ancient device that compresses a journey into a small space, winds a path like a thread on a spool. It contains beginning, confusion, perseverance, arrival, and return. There at last the metaphysical journey of your life and your actual movements are one and the same. You may wander, you may learn that in order to get to your destination you must turn away from it, become lost, spin about, and then only after the way has become overwhelming and absorbing, arrive, having gone the great journey without having gone far from the ground.

—Rebecca Solnit,
The Faraway Nearby

 

I. Beginning

“It'll be no use putting their heads down and saying, ‘Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say ‘Who am I, then? Tell me that first and then, if I like being that person, I shall come up; if not, I'll stay down here until I'm somebody else'—but, oh dear!” cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, “I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!”

—Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland

 

May 2, 2007

Neurology Exam

Portland, Oregon

Inside my stomach it feels bright and cold like those old cartoons where the crow swallows a mercury thermometer and reels around the room clutching his gut, hiccupping in percussive squeals. My purse is clamped tightly under my arm; the gold clasp digs into my armpit. I am with my father—or my mother; I don't remember who drove me and who was at work. I didn't drive myself because I can't; which is why I'm here. I'm not moving to Southern California for grad school without knowing first how to drive, and since I was fifteen no one's been able to teach me how to and no one, including me, has been able to reason out what's stopping me. When I try to drive I get disoriented, overwhelmed, and tired, but doesn't everyone at first? Both parents will be summoned to the next appointment.

I think that my mother was with me. She's the one who teased out the first thread by calling the Physical Therapy Department of Providence Hospital; where we are now, but instead we're in the Neurology Department. When my mother called Physical Therapy asking to speak to an occupational therapist about my symptoms (disorientation, exhaustion, not knowing left from right, not understanding where to place my hands on the steering wheel during a three-point turn) and to schedule an appointment with a driving specialist, the occupational therapist who answered the phone told her that my symptoms sounded neurological. In retrospect this sounds obvious, but of course, in retrospect it all sounds so obvious. In this waiting room, where I am the youngest person by forty years other than my mother because the neurologist specializes in “geriatric assessment,” nobody knows anything yet. We're all sitting together in the cell reserved for anticipation.

The physical therapist recommended that I see Dr. Volt, who is known for “solving puzzles.” The scheduling happens around me during phone calls that are later reiterated to me. I fill out paperwork, sign medical information release forms, mail them to the receptionist, and wait.

This afternoon we wait for half an hour I think, but since I'm particularly inept at calculating time as it passes I can't be sure of this either. The wait feels simultaneously slow and fast; interminable and bound to be over far too soon. I don't especially look forward to being granted entrance to the other side of that door.

This is an experiment for all involved: the neurologist, my parents, me. The previous evidence, stacked in a filing cabinet in my parents' garage, suggests that this is another pointless exercise. The first file (
Testing—Dyslexia
) dates back to kindergarten. There's also middle school (
Testing—ADD/ADHD
) and high school (
Testing—Motor Visual
,
Testing—Vision
). The files are full of my handwriting samples in both print and cursive, my drawings of squares overlapping circles, Scantron sheets, more drawings that I made when a school psychologist asked me to show her what a “happy girl” looks like, what my family looks like; the “happy girl” has wings and wears a crown. There are yellowing copies of worksheets with the prompts “I am good at:” and “I am bad at:”, unsolved math problems, and pages of typed notes from various school district learning specialists. In the file dedicated to my driving issues, there are old failed tests, flashcards, and handbooks. My parents are both researchers. My mother is a librarian and my dad is a philosophy professor; I am their longest-running joint research project.

I imagine a long-running quiz show, led by a host with a fiberglass smile and a skinny mic.
Name That Learning Disability
has been on-air since 1984, when it took me several months to learn how to tie my shoes in kindergarten. It's been running since then, featuring episodic intervals of test bubbles to fill in, blocks to stack in the correct pattern, flashcards to name.

Each round of testing was gingerly posited to me with the same phrasing. “We're just trying to figure out what's really going on.” What's really going on is that I am horrible at math; I don't know my left from my right; I can't judge distance, time, or space, read maps, travel independently without getting lost; or drive. As long as I've had these issues, I've had coping strategies. You may think that I'm kind of odd in that wacky-professor sort of way. I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on straight, et cetera. But you would never realize that as I'm walking next to you down the street, you are leading us both.

The trouble is routine, schedule, structure. This is why the academic world works well for me, part of why I'm headed to grad school in a couple of months. Semesters, breaks, three-hour classes—it's like having someone cut up my year into small little sections with a knife and fork and feed them to me.

The trouble usually starts with getting anywhere on time. From elementary through high school, getting me out the door and off to school was next to impossible for my mother, a daily ritual of exasperation. Finding all of my books, my other shoe, all a mess.

Once when I was in elementary school, I waited two hours for a school bus that never arrived. I didn't know that it was a snow day, and neither did my mom, who had assumed that I'd gotten on the bus. I don't know when a child gains a sense of time, or if this is something that another child would do. I don't doubt that without a watch I'd do the same thing again, today.

One of the great tensions in my life is in the concept of a reasonable amount of time. Wearing a watch should solve this problem, but how long until I should check my watch again? Is it time yet to check my watch again? Should I wait longer? What about now? No, not yet. Because I swear, if I look at it one more time and it still says that it's been only two minutes since I last checked it, I will scream. Right here, right now, I will crumple up and die. The bus will never come, but I can't leave because I have to get to work; still, I swear I am certain that the bus will never ever arrive. It has been two minutes. It has been an ice age. Dinosaurs have been wiped off the planet, human beings drag their knuckles and scrawl in caves, make fire and learn to walk upright, invent the wheel, create and drive cars, go grocery shopping, and still I'm here waiting for the bus. Check the watch: five minutes. Progress. My life is spent either waiting or leaving someone waiting.

Being on time is a very calculated act for me. I have to focus all of my energy on following sequential actions, “I have to shower, then get dressed, then pack my bag…,” and be careful not to get drawn away from the task at hand, or I will lose my connection to time the way a child loses a balloon into the air. I tie time to my wrist; I work hard to stay connected to a world that runs by a clock.

Grocery store shopping or visiting any big block store with never-ending aisles, say Costco, is inviting misadventure. If it weren't for the invention of the cell phone I would be writing this from on top of a ten-year supply of paper towels. I've never been able to keep mental maps of locations, and written maps only confuse me. In stores, especially, I have learned to try to give in to it, to say to myself, “OK, I am about to get hopelessly lost.” I am then free to wander about the aisles of DVDs or vacuums like a toddler. The cell phone is an electronic breadcrumb trail allowing me to wander the endless aisles of a Costco or Target freely, one call away from rescue. It's also much more private than the storewide intercom, the terror of my childhood. Getting lost in the store is not nearly as cute to clerks when you are twenty-six. Now I use my cell phone to call to report my location to my party, and then I stick to my mark until rescued.

The trouble is in touch. I can remember the first time being touched or touching any of my friends. The first time I hugged my college roommate, Miranda, was freshman year of college. We were both heading home for our first winter break. She said, “All right, bitch,” and put her arms loosely around me. It took me a minute to reciprocate. The first time I touched my friend Nathan, some drunken guy at a party kept jokingly trying to twist his nipple, and Nathan kept brushing him off. They were both trying to keep things in good humor, but it was starting to get tense. He and I were in conversation when the nipple twister attempted to strike again. “Cole! Help!” I put my hands lightly on Nathan's chest so that my hands were drunkenly plucked instead of his nipples.

Touch is a very conscious act for me; it means I like you enough to risk negotiating the space between our bodies. My body in space is hassle enough. There's the issue of pressure, of playfully punching a little too hard. Then there's the issue of time; I'd much rather hug someone for too short a time than too long. Touch opens up a mortifying realm of misunderstandings for someone with an out-of-whack internal compass. So let's just avoid it altogether, or let's have a drink or two or three. Touch becomes less fraught when there's an excuse for my fumbling. When I hug my close friends good-bye, they would be shocked to know that it's premeditated.