Façade

I do well at faking it in social situations. What I do is expend my energy on hiding my deficits. I pretend to be normal. Then when I am home in private I collapse. The exhaustion and pain just overwhelm me. I do well in short bursts, but hiding problems only works socially. It is the very abilities that I am disguising a lack of that are needed for work.

That’s also why I look good on tests: they are short, they are guided and they are very limited in scope. In other words, the tests that I have taken are not the real world.

I think that it’s pretty common for people in my situation to act this way. I am disabled (and relatively new to it). I don’t want to be. I particularly don’t want people who know me to see it. I can’t hide everything but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Hiding things becomes a habit, and is especially a problem when talking to doctors. If you hide stuff from a doctor they can’t help you. But it becomes second nature. It isn’t just accommodation to work around problems, it’s trying to disguise the fact that the problems even exist.

Some of it is self-denial, but it is also a mask to hide the disability from others. It’s also a problem because I don’t look disabled. So, looking able-bodied and trying to act normal makes me look relatively normal so even though I am disabled I don’t look it so I look like I’m trying to fake it or something. That’s a problem.

I don’t want to admit that I am permanently disabled. I want to believe that I can recover fully, even though I know that there are some injuries, for want of a better word, that will not heal. I don’t know if this makes sense. I’m trying to say that I try to hide who I am so the world will think that I am who I was. I suppose that until I understand and accept who I am the world never will see the real me. I don’t think that I am comfortable enough with the reality to expose myself to the world that way. Not yet.