an apology

on accountability and unmasking.

August 19, 2024

*Names have been changed to honor the privacy of my former classmates.*

When I was in second grade, there was a student in my class named Cassandra. Cassandra was consistently the worst person in our class at math. I was nowhere near the best. But my high levels of achievement in everything having to do with language took the attention off of the moments when I struggled with math. I was a Talented and Gifted kid - talented and gifted enough with words that no one really paid much attention to or cared that I had to fake and guess my way through math to meet bare minimum expectations. Have you seen those TikToks about us, the Talented and Gifted kids? The TikToks informing us that those TAG programs were actually undercover special education classes for neurodivergent children? Wild, right?

One day at recess, I came upon a group of classmates who were teasing Cassandra. “What’s 8+7, Cassandra? What’s 12-9, Cassandra? What’s 22-16, Cassandra?” they taunted her. Cassandra stood silently, her head hanging low.

I didn’t intervene.

I didn’t get an adult to come stop what was happening.

I froze.

And then, when I realized that the other children had noticed me freeze, I joined in.

Throwing out one single taunt of a question. Taunting Cassandra with one question that, let’s be real, I would have had to work really hard and experience a lot of panic in order to try to answer on the spot myself.

I immediately felt like I was going to vomit.

I felt hot tears begin to well in my eyes as they caught hers, which were already crying.

I slowly backed away, slow enough that the other children wouldn’t notice my absence as they continued to torment her.

I don't think I ever apologized to Cassandra about this.

I’m pretty sure I just swallowed my guilt and let it mutate into shame, using that shame as further confirmation of my underlying belief that something was inherently wrong with me.

Autism Tiktok has taught me a lot in the past year or so, ever since my autistic ex first clocked me and simultaneously got me on the clock app. People on TikTok have helped me to recognize my neurodivergence and offered me reflections of the parts of myself that I thought were just manifestations of my wrongness, my inability to measure up to cognitive, social, and physical norms. I’ve learned that what I thought was my unique combination of failures was actually a collection of common traits of disability that a lot of other people shared. Recently, I recognized myself in TikToks about dyscalculia, a learning disability that’s more common in autistic people than the general population. I’ve done my best over the years to mask how much I struggle with math and the application of math-related concepts. I understand now that I joined in with the other children teasing Cassandra in an attempt to desperately maintain this mask. To mask both the disability itself and the shame that I carried about not understanding it, not knowing why I struggled so much with something that I believed I was supposed to be able to do well because I was ~talented and gifted~. Cassandra was not talented and gifted. I had to make an effort to point at her so that no one would eventually point at me.

I performed ableism, in this moment and others, as a part of my mask, a projection of all that I’d internalized and wielded against myself. I felt I had to be “smart” to be validated. Smart was my identity, the thing for which I was praised. No one in my life, or in the society conditioning my belief system, told me that smart and disabled could co-exist. I sensed that no one would believe or accept that I had any kind of cognitive disabilities, that they would explain them away or tell me to just work harder to overcome my challenges. People in my family took it in stride when I got diagnosed with mild scoliosis in middle school, seemingly able to accept a slight physical disability that would not decisively impact my capacity to blend in and perform day-to-day tasks at a level deemed normal. I sensed that a disability that could potentially impact my chances for academic success, admission to a prestigious college, and a stable, highly-valued career would be rejected as impossible by those around me. Never explicit, always implied. My body knows things that my conscious mind never hears. And my body knew all of this. This intuitive knowing drove me to mask, to abandon myself, to align with violent social, cultural, and institutional norms in a way that led me to harm another person for my own protection.

---

I met Alexis during my first week of college orientation. She and I lived on the same hall. We said hello in passing and sometimes walked to orientation events in the same group during that first week, when we all did our best to find our way together. But I still remember, and always will, the first time that Alexis spoke to me and only me. It was either week two or three of classes, very early on in the semester but late enough that we’d all already witnessed and experienced quite a lot of fuck shit from the men in our orbit. Alexis and I were in the bathroom on our hall one morning, standing at adjacent sinks and doing whatever we were doing in the mirror to prep for our 9 AM classes. We’d acknowledged each other's presence when she walked up to meet me at the mirror, but were otherwise quiet.

After a few moments of side-by-side grooming – how intimate and tender this is, when you think about it – Alexis stopped what was she doing and looked at me in the mirror. I instinctively did the same, pausing to meet her gaze. She shook her head, sighed, and said just one word. Niggas. With a level of disgust, exasperation, and resignation about what we, those of us who dated men, had accepted that we would have to endure and survive of them. An acceptance that I immediately recognized.

Niggas, she said.

Tell me about it, I replied.

And back to our silent co-grooming session we went.

This was the moment when Alexis and I transitioned from hallmates to friends.

Alexis, who was a math genius.

Alexis, who was already out as queer, years before I was able to be the same.

Alexis, who was way more visible and vocal about participating in progressive direct action than I was at the time, even though I shared her politics.

Alexis, who talked openly about her mental illness and trauma, at a time when I certainly could not be open about any of mine. Hadn’t even reached the level of awareness to know them, let alone name them.

Alexis, who, through my current lens, I recognize as a fellow neurodivergent person. Just much less masked than I was.

My body, the part of me that knows things, could feel and sense so much of myself in Alexis. And I was so afraid of facing those things. So afraid of facing my queerness, my mental illness, my neurodivergence, my trauma, the part of me that knew that I was here on Earth to be radical and queer and disabled and gifted, and to come into my authenticity by learning how to give less and less of a fuck what anyone else thought about these things. Sometimes we meet people who reflect the parts of ourselves that we’re not yet ready to face back to us. We often project our internalized shame about those hidden parts onto these people. I certainly did.

Alexis was my friend, and I loved her. We all considered Alexis a friend, everyone in our core group of homegirls, and we all loved her. We all saw the brilliance and the beauty and the light in her. We knew that she was one of one, a person unlike anyone we’d encountered before, and we loved this about her. We loved Alexis, and we also really struggled with the moments when her showing up exactly as she was made it feel hard to be her friend. The things about Alexis showing up exactly as she was that we had to defend with other people. Maybe because her actions had harmed someone. Or because they had led to us feeling embarrassed to be around her. Or both. Even if she seemed totally fine with those actions herself.

I see it now, the internalized ableism that I projected onto her when I allowed and participated in jokes and gossip when she wasn’t around. I see us now, my friends and I, through a lens of both accountability and compassion. I recognize how we did this to try to release some of the pressure we felt from being friends with someone who was that unmasked, that openly herself in an environment that rewarded conforming to white supremacist, capitalist, ableist, cisheteropatriarchal norms of the respectable and affluent Negroes we were being groomed to become as HBCU students. Change the world, but not too much. Go against the grain, but only so that you can eventually prove yourself worthy of having your differences commodified and sold to higher and higher bidders. Do something that’s never been done before, so long as that thing ultimately serves the hegemonic machine and you can be rewarded by being given your very own lever within it to pull. Maybe even the biggest lever the machine has to offer.

I see all of this, as I also acknowledge that there were things about Alexis showing up exactly as she was that we didn’t understand, things that really did make being her friend feel hard for us sometimes.

She consistently flirted with almost every guy that one of us was connected to in some way. A guy that one of us liked, or who liked us, or with whom we’d been kicking it, or with whom we used to but no longer kicked it, etc. This made us feel annoyed and frustrated. It made us feel like we couldn't trust her.

More than once, we would all come back to the dorms together after a night out only to learn the next day that Alexis had gone back out by herself after we went to sleep. Roaming the streets alone, after 3 AM, on foot. This made us scared for what might happen to her. It made us feel like we couldn't trust that she would be okay.

Alexis was the only person to date who had earned an A in a notoriously tough upper-level math course. Not one student in the decades-long history of the class had ever gotten an A. Alexis did, based on her quiz and exam and homework grades. But she didn't actually receive that A as a final grade because she had too many absences. We were all so fucking frustrated with her. Alexis. You are brilliant. You are capable of doing such incredible things. Please, get it together and go to class. We expressed that frustration, to her and each other and other people, instead of asking ourselves, what is Alexis experiencing right now that’s impacting her ability to get to class? What kind of support might she need?

We were young people in the early aughts, and none of us had been in spaces that prioritized being proactive about learning how to understand, support, and resource the people in our lives who were disabled, who were mentally ill, who were traumatized. And we certainly hadn't been in spaces that prioritized equipping us to face these things in ourselves, to accept these things in ourselves, to show up in the world with these parts of ourselves fully visible. The institutional space in which we existed together, that campus, prioritized neither of these things and consequently did nothing as disabled, mentally ill, and traumatized students fell through the cracks. The only thing that my body knew how to do at the time was go along with how everyone else around me, how the institution itself, regarded Alexis, so that maybe I’d be a little bit safer from them regarding me in that way. If I held onto that, maybe I wouldn’t fall through, too.

My body is how I know things. And my body knew that I hadn’t yet developed the internal safety to see myself, ask for what I needed, offer what I could to others with similar needs. My body knew that masking and avoiding all of this, projecting my internalized ableism onto someone else, was the only way that I could survive at that nascent level of awareness.

---

I asked myself a series of questions the other day: Am I high masking because I naturally have a higher capacity to mask than other neurodivergent and mentally ill people, or am I high masking because my body understood implicitly from the start that being high masking was the only way I was going to survive? Is the mask something with which I was born, or something that my body ensured that I developed as early as possible because it sensed how necessary it would be for my survival? If you’ve been here since the beginning, you’ll recall that I’m a both/and bitch. And this, the manner in which I hold these questions, feels like one of those both/and bitch moments.

a both/and bitch

The level of conscious self-awareness that I experience now compared to a year ago astounds me. And I’ve only reached this level of self-awareness through relationship. I’m immeasurably grateful to have developed more internal safety through the relational safety that I’ve experienced in loving and being loved by other people who are like me – queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill, traumatized, disabled, gifted. I’m so much better able to see myself, and prioritize being in relationships and spaces in which I can be myself. My current therapist has helped me to recognize that this, my ability to be myself in it, is a large part of how I can know that a relationship or space has the potential to be a safe container for me.

Relationships and spaces in which I’m safe to mask a whole lot less and, at times, by the grace of God, not really mask at all.

Relationships and spaces in which I can be more and more open about how my disabilities impact me, and what kind of support I need.

Relationships with people who understand that I don't drive, that I won't drive, and who accept this without telling me why I need to, or making me feel like there's something wrong with me because I don’t.

Relationships with people who understand that I need someone else to hang my pictures up on my walls if they’re ever going to be even and straight, because I can’t gauge those spatial relationships accurately. As I’m understanding dyscalculia more, I understand why a scenario like this sets alarm bells off in my body. I feel panic and dread, and a subsequent imperative to mask my panic and dread, with all tasks that require math, tasks that require the use of spatial awareness, tasks that require measuring distances or estimating amounts or keeping track of numbers in any way. I struggle and need people or tools to help me with these things. I have support needs in these areas that I’m only now beginning to accept without shame.

Relationships with people who understand that I feel everything, people who know that this doesn't mean that something is wrong with me but who do know that it means I need a certain kind of care. People who understand that this means there will be times when they might feel frustrated or annoyed or inconvenienced by the care that I need in the moment, and who choose to offer what is in their capacity to offer anyway – because they love me, because they want to offer it, and because they know that I’m worthy of receiving it.

I’m so grateful to have had this kind of care in relationships, and I wish I could have offered this to Cassandra. I wish I could have offered this to Alexis. I wish I could have offered this to every disabled, mentally ill, neurodivergent, traumatized, unmasked person that my younger selves judged. Every person that I allowed to be judged without intervention. Every person with whom I went along with judging in order to protect and preserve my own mask, because I thought that's what I had to do in order to survive. I know now that I will only survive, we will only survive, through connection. Not through judging those who mask less, and not through forcing ourselves to mask more as subconscious self-judgement. We survive through authenticity, connection, and mutual support. We survive through what Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha calls “care webs,” intentional collective formations of chronically ill and disabled people that allow us to envision and practice “ways to access care deeply, in a way where we are in control, joyful, building community, loved, giving, and receiving, that doesn’t burn anyone out or abuse or underpay anyone in the process.”

As I experience more chronic pain in my body these days - pain that no doctor to date has been able to diagnose, pain that seems to get worse and last longer with time instead of getting better - I face my fear of what could potentially become a prolonged and pronounced physical disability. The fear of a disability that I might not be able to mask at all. The fear of a disability that could impact my capacity to perform daily physical tasks. I face the internalized ableism that allows me to feel more comfortable naming my disability as a high masking/low support needs autistic and mentally ill person, and less comfortable with the possibility of one day having a physical disability that can’t be hidden, that I don’t get to choose to name because people can see it when they see me. I name and challenge my internalized ableism for what it is now, in a way that I couldn’t as a child and a young adult. I work to unlearn what I’ve internalized as an act of love for my communities and myself. I trust that there will be people in my care webs ready to meet me in whatever condition of pain, illness, or disability my body exists, as I’m ready to meet them.

My apologies will likely never meet their intended recipients, except perhaps on an energetic level. My family moved across the country about a year after the recess incident, and I quickly lost contact with everyone I knew at that school. I’ve lost contact with Alexis, too, and who knows if we’ll ever reconnect. She left our campus before we graduated, finishing her degree at a school closer to home. We attempted to stay in touch in those early years of separation. Like so many connections born of proximity, it eventually fizzled and dissolved. I’ve heard through the grapevine that she appears to be well these days. I loved her then, I love her always, and I’m sorry.

I apologize to Cassandra and Alexis through writing these words, through looking closely at the parts of me capable of causing harm to others, through making best efforts now to be the most supportive person I can be to the disabled students and colleagues, lovers and friends, comrades and neighbors and strangers that I meet. I apologize and offer forgiveness to myself for the ways in which I betrayed my own heart by betraying others. I know that these experiences have been a part of me learning how to become someone who lives up to my convictions, my values, my depth of care. And when I stumble and slip - because we are humans unlearning hierarchy, and we will all inevitably stumble and slip on occasion - I'll be grateful for the moments when my care webs catch me, name my behavior for what it is, remind me of myself, and invite me to return to connection through accountability.

---

One night, Alexis told us that she was a vampire. An energetic vampire, not a blood-sucker. This was why she went out by herself after we had all gotten back from a night out, she told us in a long email. This was how she recharged. She fed on other people's energy, needed it to survive. The film Van Helsing had recently premiered, and Alexis had plans to go see it with a guy she liked. She dressed for the date in a long black coat and fangs. Everyone who saw her at the campus gates laughed at her. We, her friends, felt deeply embarrassed. Another one of those Alexis moments, another moment of omg, she’s our friend and we love her, but how do we defend this to people who are laughing at her? We don’t know how. Maybe we just have to laugh along.

I didn’t really understand what Alexis meant when she told us this. I still don’t. And I don't think it's my place in this moment to try to assign meaning. I do know that there are likely people who would react to me saying today that I'm clairaudient, claircognizant, clairsentient, and clairempathic the same way that we reacted to Alexis saying that she was an energetic vampire back then. They would laugh and mock me. I know that, and I’m unmasking, anyway.

Can I unmask a little bit more with you?

I'm not a vampire, but…I think I might be a fairy.

Fairy energy has been all around me lately, begging to express itself through me. When I close my eyes in meditation, I see and sense glitter. I see and sense what looks and feels like fairy dust. I see and sense a deep pink energy flecked with shimmering gold sparkles. I feel this shimmer as it moves through my body when I’m in a meditative state. When I’m in any state of peace and ease, really. When I’m feeling my own energy.  

I stare at my closet full of dark and neutral colors, heavy fabrics, grown up pieces, athleisure. I think back to the small child I saw the other day at Trader Joe’s, wearing a deep pink dress - the same deep pink that I see and sense in my own energy - with a poofy tulle skirt. I recall how the child seemed to float through the aisles in her own world, smiling and singing to herself and touching the items that pleased her, as her caregiver admonished her to keep up, to pick what she wanted so they could get out of there, to not pick all that sweet stuff. I recall how I saw that child and saw myself. My most unmasked self wants to purge my closet of the dark, the heavy, the grown up, the dressed down, the fitting in. My most unmasked self is poofy pink tulle. Glitter. Wings. Flowers. Sweet stuff. She’s a fairy. And all she wants to do is sprinkle fairy dust wherever she goes.  

The part of me that is finally accepting myself - my inner fairy - looks back through time at Alexis now. She sees her in her trench coat and fangs. She sees Alexis the vampire being exactly who she is. My inner fairy thanks her vampire friend for modeling what it looks like to live unmasked. She offers her apologies for the learning that I did at her expense, for how my own internalized ableism prevented me from showing up for her then as I would try to now. My inner fairy tells my vampire friend that I’m doing my best to show up for myself and others like us. Doing my best to let myself be as disabled as I am. Fairy tells Vampire that she’s learning how to do this through loving and being loved by people. Fairy tells Vampire that she loves her. Always has - from that shared look in the mirror and that niggas that she uttered - and always will.

And, when I'm ready, I’ll put on that pink tulle skirt and get to sprinkling. I know that some people might call me crazy, and that's okay. People say that about people who can’t perform and conform to dominant norms. I know because I used to say it, too, about others and, deep down, about myself. I can no longer perform and conform the way I used to. I accept that I’m mad, and that I’m not alone. The people who love me, resonate with me, and choose to show up for me want nothing more than for me to be exactly who I’m here on Earth to be. And if I’m a Black-queer-femme-autistic-communist-fairy, that's exactly who they want me to be. If I’m a disabled, mentally ill, and spiritually gifted person, that's exactly who they want me to be. That's exactly the person they choose to love. Exactly the person I choose to love, too.