How To Fall Behind In School Without Really Trying

When I was in school, I was - for all appearances - a completely organized, excellent student.

I had your quintessential plastic pencil box, holding all my tools (an eraser, a pair of scissors, a pencil sharpener or two) and a color coded binder so that each subject had its own section, thusly dividing them up so they could be easily found and worked on at any given moment. I had a bookbag in elementary school and I was an avid reader at the high school level so I constantly was carrying books far too big for a kid my age around at all times. To any teacher who just took a simple glance at me, I was the perfect student. Unbeknownst to them, everything I ever did was performative. Except the reading, I really was a bookworm, but that's neither here nor there.

See, the way I saw it, the teachers wouldn't hassle a student who seemed so well prepared. And, for the sake of transparency, for the first half of my school career, I actually was a pretty solid student and did fairly well in all subjects except math, given that I have a legitimate learning disorder surrounding it. It's called Dyscalculia, you can look it up. It caused me hell for most of my life, and continues to cause me hell even to this day. Anyway, this isn't about that. So, while the color coded binder, the supply box and the bookbag (which was a personal preference, I have always had a bad back so I didn't like putting too much pressure on my shoulders) all gave off the appearance of a student who was way more capable than I actually was, it was in fact a ruse.

Girls are performative to begin with; ever since we're little we're told that if boys tease us then it means they like us and that we always have to smile and look pretty and be polite. And while I certainly came of age in the 90s/early 2000s, in what one could easily call the "girl power" era, girls were still fairly considered "better seen not heard". Besides, I didn't want to be seen or heard, I wanted to be completely ignored, so I learned how to mask and blend in. It's something autistic girls do. This way, I was ignored, and no teacher ever really gave me much grief. The thing is, this almost performance art piece ruined me, in a sense, because I never learned to not be performative. To this day, I try and stay as organized as possible, whether it's my work desk, my wardrobe or my bookshelves. It's all simply a lie, a mask to seem well organized, when really what I'm keeping at bay is how utterly disheveled inside I actually am.

Prepping kids for perfection creates imperfection from all the stress of potential failure, and the shame that comes with it. And some of us, like myself, can't handle either one.

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When I got to middle school, my schoolwork was in shambles, my bedroom was a constant mess, my hair was in knots and my wardrobe consisted mostly of plaid flannel and baggy slacks. I was finally the mess outside that I was inside, and the inside was just as easily visible. I was constantly in and out of therapy, I was on and off multiple medications for multiple issues and I was absolutely in love with a girl in my band class who played the trombone. By this time, I also had switched from a bookbag to a rolling backpack. While they were somewhat in style, at least among the "uncool" kids, I actually had a genuine reason for using mine, which was that same reason I had for the bookbag. My poor back. The bookbag, while cool, still used a shoulder strap, but the rolling backpack didn't require much effort beyond pulling it behind me like luggage at an airport. Thus, I decided it'd be a better choice to pull the enormous, unnecessary and wildly out of date textbooks that they made us carry at all times.

Of course, middle school children being the absolute worst of all kids, they used to kick the everloving shit out of rolling backpacks, and mine was not exempt from this. It took all kinds of beatings, day in, day out, and once again I was reminded just how even something as simple as a backpack was physical evidence that something was wrong with me. That it was something I should be ashamed of. By this point in time, I was too messed up emotionally to even attempt to mask and fit in, and the best I could hope for was that the other kids would find even lamer kids to harass instead of me. This time, my rolling backpack was not organized, either. I didn't have a fancy pencil box, I didn't have a color coded binder, and I certainly didn't have a clean backpack. It had snacks buried at the bottom, enormous novels on top of that and stinky gym clothes on top of textbooks. And my home life wasn't any better. My bedroom, which I was constantly harangued about keeping immaculate, was completely destroyed day in and day out.

Some of this was because I was, again, too sick to clean it and keep it clean, but I also would come home and destroy my room out of sheer stress and unhappiness. I would rip it apart, because, despite being a girl, I was incredibly violent and often hurt myself in the process. A lot of that could, once again, be traced back to my autism, but who's to really say.

Prepping kids for perfection creates imperfection from all the stress of potential failure, and the shame that comes with it. And some of us, when we finally shame spiral into failure, never really get back on track.

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By the time I got to high school, I had no chance in hell of making it out of there alive. It was clear to those around, the few friends I managed to find and my parents included, that I was on a path destined for suicide. I was still in the closet to pretty much everyone at this point, and my schoolwork was in complete shambles. There was no saving that, but there might still be some saving me. Except the people I needed to save me didn't know what to do, so I had to do it myself. By the middle of my sophomore year, I came home around Christmas break and flat out told my parents I would die if I continued going to that school. With that out in the open, they agreed, rather hesitantly, to hire a tutor for me and find a different school I could go to. I was still on and off medications and going to a therapist who didn't really care what I had to say, and by this point I had all but recognized my burning queerness for what it was, even if I was still too scared to be open about it.

At least I'd finally done something, and stopped pretending to be so organized.

But the thing is, you never really stop pretending to be organized once you've started to live like that. It's innate, it's just secondhand, it's now a part of you. I couldn't rid myself of it, and so I still pretending in many ways to be organized, even though it was so very clear to all around me that I wasn't. Everything I was, everything I was considered to be, was said to be "bad". I was mentally challenged, I was on medication and in therapy, I was a lesbian and a failure at school. It was a different time, these weren't things to be proud about back then. These were things you hid, or tried to at least. Even back in 2006 or so it wasn't medieval times, but it certainly wasn't the way it is today. Now kids talk openly about their therapy and pride themselves on being on medications and are in love with their queerness. These are great, for the record, I am so pleased this has changed. I'm so happy that these are things we can be open and proud about.

But everything about me, from as long as I can remember, whether it was not being able to read until 3rd grade or having to use a rolling backpack to help alleviate my back pain, was always said to be a bad thing. Something negative, because the world is built on perfection. Super models are air brushed into thinness, shamed into dieting, and even then told they aren't perfect when voted the sexiest woman alive. The nicest cars cost millions of dollars, the best clothes are made by top notch designers and the most sought after colleges are the ones that you have to give an organ to go to. Perfection, organization, has made the world impossible to live in if you do not fit that criteria, which I clearly did not. The pressure, the stress, to be that perfect was crushing and it did wind up crushing me, pushing me to multiple suicide attempts.

When it boils down to it, failure saved my life, because it proved to me that being perfect was what was hurting me.

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I am a fraud. Even today, while recognizing my shortcomings or openly admitting my faults and flaws, I am still a fraud. I'm still about 95% performative. Everything I wear, everything I say, it's an act. It's not that I don't like my wardrobe, because I do, and that I don't believe the things I say, because I do, it's more that it's what's expected of me. People say me and think I'll be a certain way, so for every person I wind up interacting with, I try and fulfill that caricature of me they have in their head, unless that caricature is of me being a total unapproachable bitch. I mean, I am that, but I don't want to prove them right, so. It's much easier to fall in line with what someone believes about you than to try and get them to believe something different, at least for me, because it takes all the pressure off me to convince them otherwise and, frankly, people are rarely convinced otherwise.

I still try and remain organized and well dressed, well spoken, well read, culturally enlightened and all around well maintained and prepared when honestly this couldn't be further from the truth. But it's what I need to do in order for the world to take me seriously in any way, because the world so highly values perfection in all manners. While it's certainly more socially acceptable to be a mess now, I can't bring myself to do it. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. I've lived my life this way for far too long. I've been a fraud so long I can never be real again. But I'm okay with this, I really am, because at least I know who I am, while the world only gets to think it knows me.

And people say there's no privacy anymore.