My name is Mychelle, I call myself a professional teenager sometimes as a joke but later in this story we’ll actually see why that’s kind of true. This story starts in 2017 when I transferred from my University back to a Community College.
After transferring, my goal was to try to make money and have a career because being in your 20s and not having things figured out is judged pretty harshly. I saw my core friend group living their lives in relationships, going away to school, moving out of state, working decent jobs and even having one of my close friends die. All while I was going through a pretty traumatic situation with someone and being diagnosed with Crohn’s shortly after that started. I moved around a lot and was away from my friends but we were still close and when we all went to do different things, I went to AU to see what I could learn there.
I was still healing from Crohn’s Disease surgeries and near misses, and also trying to cope with the experiences that came from that journey. I wasn’t sure if my life was going to be anything that I dreamed but instead just me being sick and living at home because I couldn’t take care of myself financially and kept getting sick. I believed that all of my friends were going to surpass me to where I was left behind because I was such a late bloomer at a lot of things and still am. I was afraid that I wasn’t ever going to “launch” into life because of arrested development. It was an insane amount of pressure when I just wanted to take my time and figure life out at my pace but I felt like I was always playing catch up with everyone else. I felt and still fill sometimes that I’m missing the mark of who I was supposed to be in everyone else’s minds, or how I was supposed to act based on my age, or what family members wanted for my career versus what I was gifted to do or even simply, what I wanted to do and how I saw myself. So, I figured out what “regular” career I wanted to do that would be something that could hold my attention and be fun. I decided to go with IT based on a conversation I had in one of my last classes at AU before summer break.
I was an audio tech major at one of the best schools in the country, and also making a name for myself in the local music scene and further. Something I dreamed of doing and had worked on since a child, and the battles I had with Crohn’s & mental health were the things that were helping me make a name for myself finally, and it did a lot of good for others. I’ve been obsessed with music since a baby and while hospitalized and even in a nursing home at one point, all I did was put plans together to release music and wrote until I couldn’t anymore.
If you knew me you know music/entertainment, basketball, and ninja turtles were my life, but no one knew I liked computers or the stock market either and later those things would give me new life and help me on a journey I was going to take. I registered for school in the Help Desk and IT programs and decided to play basketball there since I didn’t get to try out at my University like I planned. I didn’t really think that my life would go on another rollercoaster ride because I was coming off of one by being in remission with Crohn’s after a 4 year journey and things before that.
Once school started I was a machine. I worked out everyday, and was still performing solo and with my group. I left the scene in 2017 to take care of my mental health and to deal with something I knew would continue to affect me if I didn’t try to get justice for myself - especially if I were going back to where things happened and I was correct. Even with all of that I was excited to be able to play basketball and worked hard for it.
My first year on the team I was injured and misdiagnosed before the season started. I was a red shirt until I was cleared but instead of having bursitis and patella issues, I actually had a meniscus tear and an issue with my L5 and found that out at a basketball game when our trainer told me as I came to the bench that my season was over before I could even practice fully let alone play. After all of the PT and unnecessary treatments I took to be healthy to play I was upset. I was out for the season, and also going through a legal battle with someone that was involved in more shady things than I knew but I managed with great support around me.
That case took a toll on me and the end result was no arrest even tho it was clear that it should have been, but when it comes to sexual assault and stalking etc., the law isn’t the best. I lost that battle in the summer of 2019 after the season ended, moved from home, got a job at school in the IT department, battled some things, and worked my way back up to playing in the fall until another assault happened that made it hard to play basketball because of where it took place. I still tried and really impressed our head coach in workouts and we were all excited for me to play and things started to feel ok. I pulled my groin in training which caused me to miss a week of conditioning right in the middle of my run progression to get back on the court. I took this as a challenge so I increased my workouts when I was able to and got ready for pre-season.
The day before pre-season practice, I was working out on my own and hit my head into a wall doing a handles exercise. I hadn’t eaten that day and I kept working out but when I drove to the store, I almost threw up in the aisle and knew something was bad. The next day I was diagnosed with having a concussion and sat out of practice. Then followed a lot of depression and suicidal ideation, which led to a meeting with my coaches and athletic director and staff to sit me down for another season to focus on my mental health and my head and be a manager. I felt like I wasn’t worth anything once again, and that no one understood how I was feeling. A month later in October, I got hit by a pickup truck in DC leaving therapy and got whiplash and hit the side of my head on the window. It wasn’t that bad of a hit I didnt think, but it did cause some damage to my head on top of the other one. I spent the next year rehabbing 2 head injuries, moving to my own apartment instead of the basement I was renting, and then Covid happened which affected my recovery a great deal and I never considered that until one of my doctors mentioned it in a session.
The rest of the year was dedicated to getting me back for the next season and rehabbing my head. I was struggling but doing better and in speech therapy to help with my memory executive functioning. I was also able to be more physically active and was still driving even with a time limit. I just wasn’t able to work because I couldn’t handle it like we thought because the job I had was masking my symptoms since I was only training people when I returned, then Covid.
I had some issues mentally and physically after the first two concussions and we were still working through them but I had reached the 1year mark in my recovery in October 2020. Then in November I slipped and hit my head inside of my kitchen cabinet trying to get cereal. It came after having a great day because I was in a day trading program and “saw the light at the end of the tunnel”. I was doing more at basketball practice and would have probably been able to play in 2021 had that not happened but it did and life was different. It still is but it’s getting better, just slower with OT, PT, and every other therapy you can think of and dr lol. I won’t lie and say that the last year hasn’t been devastating because it has. Losing so many things that I love or having those things postponed until I’m better whenever that is, to all of the changes happening in my head and body to just the world around me. It’s isolating but it came with blessings too.
Prior to that accident, I was looking to get evaluated for Autism Spectrum Disorder because I had been misdiagnosed with BPD in 2017 thanks to the meds I was on and some social issues. I knew something was different and it wasn’t that. I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD which makes sense but there was something else going on with me developmentally not just related to trauma and because of a TV show I watched, I looked up Aspergers and then put it to bed. During my neuro-exams for the first 2 concussions, I was officially diagnosed with ADHD (I was said to have it as a kid but never got tested because of the stigma in poc communities) and other things that were pre-existing as well as those caused by the first 2 head injuries. In finding that out I looked into ADHD and ASD thanks to a co-worker on the spectrum who also thought I should be tested and helped me understand the links between the 2 disorders and their presentation in girls versus boys. After my then therapist denied me for testing because of her step son being on the spectrum and me not matching the profile that he has, she eventually sent me to someone I had worked with before in the practice that could do my concussion therapy and also test me for ASD and TBI stuff. I was starting the process of testing and told my friends when the doctor I was working with also agreed on me possibly being on the spectrum. I was so ecstatic and validated even tho we didn’t finish the testing yet. I was just happy to be on the right track and wanted to tell the world. The world means my friend group, who is like my family.
My friends were cautious and concerned about me jumping the gun, but it hurt because their concern felt like invalidation for something I had been working to figure out a lot in my life and I just wanted them to celebrate with me and learn with me. I was finally getting to see why I was different, why I did things later than other kids my age, the things I liked and how I saw the world, so many things but the biggest being me having a hard time launching. I had to remember that they came into my life in my last 2years of high school and not as I was growing up, so they just weren’t aware of things and they also aren’t doctors, they’re people that love me and don’t want me out here trippin. They also were trying to understand the changes I’ve been experiencing with the injury as well as not being able to mask anymore because of it. The signs were there tho, I mean who writes a pamphlet or booklet to their friends in a long email titled “Get to Know Me” or the other quirks I had. Not to mention my memory is scary accurate and losing some of that with the injuries was a lot.
I went through a lot of ups and downs with the latest head injury from not being able to drive right now, needing assistive technology, having a lot of mental changes and physical symptoms, needing more help to be independent for now, and doing it all in a pandemic. Life was changing and I couldn’t keep up with trying to understand why certain dynamics in my life with routines, friends, teammates, work etc. were changing or why the world was so different. There were more misunderstandings when I would communicate with people I trust or me not understanding them. I had a misunderstanding with one of my friends that I’m super close with in January and it broke me in so many ways. It hurt to be misunderstood and not really understand what was happening with them or me. To be seen negatively in their eyes, for them to be hurt by it, and how they thought or felt about me was a lot and it still bothers me because I don’t understand some things about it, but I learned so much from that experience. It actually was something that helped with me getting diagnosed based on the level of misunderstanding that happened and some of the things they said about me and how they viewed me and the situation. This led me to explaining how I see the world, looking at the breakdowns I was having, and more.
From there, I was meeting with an Occupational Therapist for TBI treatment and independence and their observations about me being a sensory seeker and their previous work in mental health and working with autistic kids helped us even more and I was provided more tools. The more I opened up, the more answers I got. The more I talked to people in the ASD community online, the more I understood. The tests I’ve taken, the research I’ve done so that I can help others in my life and/or them help me, my level of intelligence, things about growing up and the differences between the head injury and life before it was all helpful. Now, I know that I have ASD which was previously called Asperger's syndrome (Elon Musk announced that he has it on SNL but that's not the correct term anymore), it explains so much about my life and is a confusing but pleasant relief to have a name and to know what to do.
Hitting my head so many times seems to be the best thing to happen to me other than my faith because if it hadn’t happened, I don’t think I would have gotten the help I needed right now, with the things I was battling internally about my place in the world, and the things I see and feel that weren’t trauma related. I was becoming free while having to stay inside.
One of the biggest things that I’ve struggled with was the battle of my chronological age and my internal age. People only see what the number is, and associate things to a timeline and if it doesn’t fit, either something is wrong with you medically, or you’re immature and need to grow up, when that is not always the case. People that are autistic tend to have that same issue where they never “act their age”, a phrase that triggers me so much because I’ve heard it even as a child and couldn’t fix it. With autism, it’s a developmental delay, even in those that have less support needs and appear “normal”, or “high functioning” (this is not a correct term to use), that’s why Autism doesn’t have a specific look even tho media may say otherwise. It’s also not an intellectual disability, it’s your brain being made in a different way and processes and understands the world more uniquely than society. It has different effects on different types of autistc people. The thing with me tho, we thought it was just trauma related because I’ve gone through a lifetime's worth of really bad S!%t and I'm still young. That is believed to be the reason why I was missed, as well as my culture, and being a girl and lack of resources. Until now.
I’m intelligent, my special interests are pretty “normal”. I love the stock market and my need for routine and structure is provided by the market because it’s pretty structured and has many patterns that I can recognize and the fluctuations keep me interested which is good for ADHD. My ability to hyperfocus and learn things fast (I call it a superpower) helps with my trading and other things. My love for basketball and lifting weights/working out gives me sensory input that I need when I’m overstimulated or need input. I can jump, run, hit, fall, move around on the court and in the gym and losing that for the time being has been rough but if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to break these things down and understand why I do them besides love or interest. Writing lets me be able to philosophize in a safe way and where I feel the most “adult” versus when I talk or text or go non-verbal and shut down. Always being in school was something that gave me a consistent routine until Covid and without out, things began to fall apart, but we needed that to happen too. Rapping and performing are where I feel at home and can stim freely and be comfortable until I have to get off stage and mingle in overstimulating environments that are also ptsd triggers but I had to go through the things I did in the music scene and experience them to get my answers. I am childlike, not childish, but childlike and regressed and I had to go through the traumas that added to that regression because once I grew out of certain things, there were more things left that I couldn’t “fix”, and that was necessary in order to point to the things that were naturally there. I had to go through the things I did with friends, teammates, groupmates, etc so that I could tell those stories in order to fit into the bigger one that’s my life. There are so many things like that in the past 4 years that have led up to this and I hope that by sharing, it brings light and assurance to someone else's life, that things will work for our good. My life and the things I have questioned are getting answered and all came in a package that would probably break someone else, but it was a gift to me even as painful as it is or confusing as it is, it’s a gift that I’m grateful for.
Life has a funny way of giving you what you need in the most unexpected ways. Embrace it.
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