Μy sunflower lanyard

18/04/2020 Canterbury UK 07:38 pm

Dear Future Historian

Every time I go to the supermarket with my sunflower lanyard it is a completely different experience than without it. I am the same. But the people’s attitude towards me is suddenly altered. No more ‘what’s wrong with you’ looks. No more ‘another immigrant that can’t speak English’ looks. (I stutter when I have social anxiety, and when I came to the UK, I became even more self-aware of my speech, which increases my anxiety to levels that it looks like I can’t even speak English). One could argue about my inadequate level of English, or about the disability aspect of my autism. Yet my sunflower lanyard transfers me to a world that people are nice to me, without minding about my struggles. A world that I am accepted, and smiled by the cashier, and reassured that I don’t need to stress if I don’t have all my groceries in bags before the receipt is out. And the magical key to this Utopia? My beautiful sunflower lanyard, reminding me of my favourite painter, and my favourite Doctor Who episode. What a bliss to be able to walk about the supermarket corridors and take forever to choose which tea bags to get. Sounds perfect, right?

My dear future Historian… you already know the answer, don’t you? Sitting there, with your godly omniscient. Pretending that you will never get an insight into our time. Yet, we both know that you know more than I ever will. (Except if my immortality quest is successful, in which case I am probably the brunet in your team, pretending to study Me, making sure that I monitor the interpretations of my work). You know that the Jews, before the Holocaust, were forced to wear the Star of David, long before they were put in those trains to concentration camps. (Wow, that escalated fast/quickly/unexpectedly).

Yeah, I know. It is not the same. This is not forced upon me. I asked for it. I took a deep breath, and I managed to ask for one, from customer service (I get very nervous talking to people I don’t know, and I always avoid interaction with staff). So, since I got in so much trouble for it, and it makes such a difference to my shopping experience... why do I keep freaking out with the idea that people need me to get voluntarily vulnerable, in order to be nice to be? On the other hand, why do I have to announce my inefficiencies, to feel like a ‘normal’ human being?

Now with the lock-down, it’s crazy. But not just the parts everyone talks about. The craziest part is that I was diagnosed with OCD. A disorder, right? And now the government advice is to do all this... that forced upon me yet another label. ‘Wash your hands all the time, don’t touch anything without fantasising the potential hidden/microscopic enemies, clean the ice-cream box with chlorine before you put in in the freezer, freak out about hygiene in public transport. So now who is the crazy one?

Why should I be the one stepping out, for everyone to see my sunflowers (I love how the lanyard looks), and why we don’t agree, as a society, for people that - won’t be nice to you if you don’t agree to be labelled ‘disable’ - for them to wear a lanyard?

They said on the radio, if you have any thoughts or feelings that make you struggle, if you are depressed or anything like that you should talk about it. People always say that, but they don't mean it. Even if they do, they don't really know how to react to people in need of comfort and reassurances. It is then that need to be educated how to listen. People in need always wants to talk. That is not the issue. The real challenge of the system is how to educate them to listen.

It is the same with ‘laziness’.  Family and friends judge people for not being productive. But if you accept a diagnosis, and (preferably) some kind of medication, then you get support and understanding. Teenagers are punished for their mental health issues. Autistic kids are punished for their meltdowns. Working people are excluded from the ‘brake socialisation’. ‘But don’t feel bad. All that is perfectly civilised, because they can just ‘come out of the closet’, for them to get all the support they need (with the appropriate monitoring that that goes with).

And again, only you, my dear future Historian could tell me, if those sunflowers will end us up in some other, metaphorical (or not!), train to isolation/extinction· or the lanyard will help in autism/mental-health/hidden-disabilities awareness.

I need to go now.

Talk to you soon.

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