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Present Day
“Allow me to give you a very warm welcome.”
It’s strange when you think about it. The English language. And I mean proper English – I’m not even counting how strange it’s been made by those overseas wankers who bastardised it. No offence, I quickly, mentally add, just in case anyone can somehow hear my thoughts.
How can the dean of students be giving me a warm welcome? The way she says it is like she’s physically handing me a gift, one which has somehow been heated to be warm. It’s both odd and weird. It makes me uncomfortable.
My nose crinkles in distaste. I don’t like it at all. I hate the way people never say what they mean, or mean what they say. Not me. What you see is what you get. Or rather, what comes out of my mouth is exactly what I’m thinking. I have very little filter, apparently. But even being told that rankles me. I’m not a water jug or an extractor fan or even a car. No filter.
“Let it go, MT,” Summer, my bestie, whispers to me. She knows me too well. My quirks. My eccentricities. My ‘condition’. She’s the only one who gets away with giving me a nickname, shortening my name to MT. I’ve learned to tolerate it. From her at least.
She digs me in the ribs, and I shake my head in exasperation at her. We’re chalk and cheese – another phrase I hate. What does it even mean? But somehow our friendship has worked for the last fourteen years, so I guess it will survive a few more.
It was a big decision, choosing to go to university together. I will always worry that secretly Summer may have wanted to go her own way and get some distance from me, but she’d never admit it. Hence how we’re sitting here together at Santa Catalina University, being ‘warmly welcomed’ by the dean of students, who has in fact given me no welcome gift whatsoever.
We’re a long way from our home in the U.K., but Summer’s parents were SCU alumni and they desperately wanted their one and only child to follow in their footsteps. I just sort of tagged along for the ride. My parents don’t give enough of a fuck about me to care about letting me move more than 5,000 miles across the globe. I guess when they decided to name me Malia, some of the many meanings being ‘wished for child’, ‘beloved’, ‘exalted one’ they hadn’t anticipated that I would be such a massive disappointment. I guess ‘sea of bitterness’ ended up being much more fitting.
I’m drawn back into the room by the noise, the buzz of everyone around me. It’s all very distracting. I shoot Summer a pained expression, and she gives me a sympathetic nod in response. Relieved to have her blessing, I slip my earbuds in and use my smartwatch to start my relaxation playlist. Although, I have to seriously debate just how smart my watch is. I have an IQ of over 130, and a piece of metal and plastic on my wrist is somehow considered ‘smart’? I’m not convinced.
The second the opening bars of House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ pounds into my skull, the tension begins to bleed from my knotted muscles.
I can’t abide crowds. Or new places. New people. Strangers. Noise. Touching...a lot of stuff really. Even as the room falls silent, everyone avidly listening to the dean, I cannot tune everyone’s noise out. It’s like an internal itch that’s just out of reach.
Now, metaphors and idioms I may hate. But I love a good simile. When I struggle to express my thoughts or interpret the world around me, drawing comparisons really helps.
My parents had me tested and labelled, before promptly discarding me as less than the perfection they demanded.
Autistic.
Some people like to say that everyone is a little bit autistic – maybe that’s true, it is a spectrum after all – but I don’t think I am. My brain just works incredibly differently to everyone else. It manifests itself in a similar way to a lot of autistic traits. But that doesn’t explain the rest of it.
The hearing voices in my head.
No, I’m not Schizophrenic (my mother had me tested, many times). Actually, I’m not sure if that particular negative verdict was a blessing or a curse. I’m sure she would have loved to have an official excuse to lock me away somewhere, but unfortunately my actual diagnosis would just label her a monster if she did.
I guess I don’t hear voices in my head per se...more, I can hear the thoughts of everyone around me.
And it fucking sucks.
Yes, I know that sounds crazy.
And that also fucking sucks.
Nervously, I bite my thumb nail. It’s so distracting. I want to concentrate on the dean’s words – annoying metaphors and platitudes aside – but I can’t.
Sighing audibly, Summer reaches over and slips her hand into mine, giving me a reassuring squeeze. Again, she’s about the only person in the world whose touch I will tolerate. It helps a little, but not a lot. It’s always hard in new places, around new people, but it’ll get easier with time and familiarity. I hope.
I switch my music to white noise to try and drown out the shuffling sounds surrounding me and attempt to focus on the dean’s false platitudes.
I really do try.
But someone arrives late and kicks the back of my chair as they take the seat behind me. Unamused, I turn to glare at the person who’s just catapulted me forwards. I’m met with a hard ‘zero fucks given’ stare. He doesn’t apologise or even look embarrassed. His unashamed arrogance severely detracts from the beauty of his perfect bloody face.
“What?” he snaps when I fail to turn around from my twisted position so that I can stare at him.
“You kicked me.”
“No I didn’t.”
