Excerpt from "A Different Life"

Related: A Different Life

by Quinn Bradlee
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

People always want to know what it "feels like" to have VCFS, or to be learning disabled. It's hard for me to answer, because my life is my life, and it's hard to know what's normal for me that's normal for other people and what's normal for me that isn't normal for other people. What's normal?

I have a really hard time finding things. Like on my NOLS trip, or even when my mom says, "It's in the fridge," and then I go to look for it, and I look around and around and around and can't find it. And then she'll come, and it'll be right there in front of my face. That bothers me a lot. But it may also be genetic. I mean, my dad can't find shit. He's always losing his keys. So it's hard to know.

One of the hardest things for me is when people are asking me to do different things all at once, like three different people and five different things. It's confusing, and it stresses me out. That was one of the reasons I left college, because my work was just getting me so stressed out. Keeping up with a lot of different demands from different places overwhelms my head sometimes. I can't function.

Reading is another obvious place where it gets a little funky for me. It's not that I can't read the words. The problem is that I have to translate what I'm reading into a language my brain will understand. It's like translating from French to calculus. Maybe it's weird that it takes me so long to read, but it doesn't embarrass me. It's just a curiosity.

The truth is that my brain works differently every day. There are really good days and really bad days, and everything in between. But in a way that's what I like about my disability. It's interesting. I don't know how my brain's going to work when I get up in the morning. It's unpredictable. One thing I can tell you is that if I don't get enough sleep, my brain doesn't work at all.

It's like living in another world. I have a hard time remembering the days of the week, or the order of the months of the year. But you see some things maybe more clearly than other people. I always try to keep my mind occupied on other things, not thinking, well, you know, "I'm learning disabled, I might as well not try." I always give everything my best shot.

But it's true that my sense of direction is pretty screwed up. I get lost really easily, just kind of turned around. Whenever my friends will come in from out of town, I feel bad telling them, "I can't pick you up from the airport." Even though I have a navigation system in the car, I'm so afraid of getting lost. My friends probably think I sound like some lazy kid who won't come get them, but it's not that I don't want to. I would love to pick them up. But I'm just terrified of it.

My dad has a little trouble with his sense of direction, too. One time we got on the wrong train in New York, going the wrong way. My dad isn't learning disabled. So how do you explain that?

Over the years, I've gotten more used to it. When I was little and I would get lost, I would kind of freak out. Now I know how to use a navigation system, and can usually figure out where I am. I also realized that I can ask for help. I can drive down to Porto Bello without any problem. It's an hour and a half away, but I don't even think about it. It's so instinctive, I couldn't even tell somebody how to get down there.