Staff Reflections
All I Ask...
Poem by Anonymous
“We’re all a bit special,” she says.
I finally got the courage to speak—
to tell them my life has taken a strange twist.
“We’re all a bit special, we’re all on the spectrum,” she says.
Do you not know how that sounds?
To take what is real,
to take what costs me everything—
and wrap it in a ribbon of casual cliché?
“We’re all on the spectrum,” he says.
Does he not realise what that means?
Does he not realise—
No. Scratch that.
“We’re all a bit special,” he says.
Well, does he not get it yet?
Why, oh why, do they not see
that these words—
they take away my being?
What people don’t get
is that when we forget,
or when we seem a little bit…
strange?
It’s not quirky.
Not random.
Not some kind of perky.
It’s that we are masking so hard it that it hurts.
It’s that when we get home,
we crumble in pain,
we fall from the skies and hit the dirt.
And still get up.
Again, again and again to face
“Everyone’s a little bit ADHD,” they say.
Like it’s a personality trait.
Like it’s a colour you choose to wear for a day.
Well, actually? That’s me.
I don’t know what it’s like
to be breezing through this place.
I do know the discrimination I face,
trying to claw my way
up this “Ivory Tower”
Or even hang on to that slippery wall…
And who knows?
Maybe I’ll make it.
Maybe I’ll get there.
In an hour.
Or a year.
All I ask
is that you listen.
That you hear.
That you stop and think:
Maybe life’s been hard for her.
Maybe they’re fighting battles
just to be standing here.
It’s not a quick fix.
We need understanding.
We need support,
Or maybe— just maybe
just give us our standing.
By Anonymous