Funerals on a Spectrum

I remember systematically breaking down a brick of Styrofoam to its individual beads making a plastic blanket in the Living Room.

I remember organizing my foods by texture and colors until high school, I cooked for myself so I wasn’t a burden.

I remember coming home from school to see my mom crying, I didn’t know what to do.

I remember being told “You walk like fucking a fairy” by my dad. Luckily I was incapable of understanding metaphors as a seven year old.

I remember being told I had a funeral to go to tomorrow. I couldn’t get over the fact that I had to miss school to go.

I don’t know, what to pay attention to, there’s a thousand people here I have never seen before.

I don’t understand, why everyone is crying. Why am I the only one not crying?

I don’t know her name, I was told it on the drive here but I forgot it when I realized how squash shaped the minister was.

I don’t know why my mother would ask me to go look at a stranger’s formaldehyde ridden corpse. I guess she’s Mom’s Grandma

I don’t even recognize the majority of the emotions that these geriatric patients are wearing.

I think they call is somber or something it wasn’t in the emotional chart that they used to show me as a kid.

I think I can replicate it, sure. But what would the point be? I shouldn’t stand out when the table being used for her body is going to be a part of a buffet line later this week.

I think my older brothers are crying now too. Now, that’s a little unnerving. They shouldn’t be, they don’t know her either.

I think I should be crying, but only because a hundred others are. I don’t feel anywhere close to it.

I think it might be disingenuous if I were to sit here and pretend to cry over a dead woman solely because our DNA matches to some capacity.

It’s just a stutter— I have no physical memory of ever having one, yet that’s the only symptom my family reminds me about

It’s just a stutter— at two years old calculators were my favorite toy. I was never informed that that was atypical.

It’s just a stutter— I grew to like fish because they were one of the few silent pets. I would sit. Any sudden noises made me cry on instinct.

It’s just a stutter— I even organized a funeral because I considered it disrespectful to put something I loved down the toilet. This was the only funeral I’ve cried at

It’s just a stutter— I was kept in standardized classes because they said I was “Gifted”. It wasn’t until I was 16 when I learned the actual diagnosis I was given.

Now the world past and present makes a lot more sense to me. I still can’t perceive somber emotions though.

Now I have avoided Styrofoam out of fear that I’ll be unhinged and ravenous spreading beads across the globe.

Now I still don’t know if my ignorance to my differences was a gift or a curse. It’s difficult to trust my own perception still.

Now I blend in, no one really knows except the special education majors that know how to snuff out the specific signs.

Now I realize that I am simply lucky. There are millions and millions of people that were given the same title as me, but they are incapable of forming a voice.