As a heavily-masked autistic person, it can be really difficult for me to ask for accommodation, even when I really need it. It's especially difficult when the accommodation is prevention-related.
If I'm in the middle of a sensory-induced anxiety attack, then, yeah, I can generally admit that I need assistance. Anyone around me can see that there's something wrong, and that I need help.
But somehow it's nigh impossible to do the same in order to prevent said sensory-induced anxiety attack.
Even before I went nomadic and started taking frequent long train trips, I knew that boarding the train with everyone else gave me anxiety.
It's a lot of people, the boarding process is different at every station, and I've got a fair amount of luggage to juggle. Add in the stress of choosing a seat, gauging whether I'll need to be sharing a seat, stowing my luggage while everyone else is trying to decide on their seats and stow their luggage, being pressed up in a crowd of people with all of their chatter and small-talk and smells and flying elbows and reaching up and around me and “Wow, your dog is so well-behaved!” . . . it's a sensory nightmare.
And yet, every time they make the announcement that anyone who "needs extra assistance" is welcome to pre-board, I hesitate. I don't need assistance, right? I'm able-bodied. I'm not having an anxiety attack yet.
Yet.
Why can't I just admit that I need --- and deserve --- the preventative assistance? That I have an ADA-recognized disability and I count as someone who needs assistance?
It all boils down to masking. I've been conditioned my entire life to hide my need for assistance, to hide the fact that my brain has needs that don't mesh with the way these systems are designed.
My life will be better if I pre-board. If I can take my time finding a seat and stowing my luggage. If I can get settled in before the noisy, fragranced masses descend on the train.
I know that I can prevent the anxiety attack, and if someone looks at me and goes, "She doesn't look disabled. Why does she think she has a right to pre-board?" that shouldn't matter to me. I'm never going to see any of these people ever again.
I'm typing this out at the station in Portland, ME, and as I do so the boarding area is filling up with other passengers. There's a small child shrilly screaming in glee every couple of minutes not too far away from me. I can smell lotions and perfumes and colognes and coffee and food, and my brain is buzzing.
I know if I don't pre-board, it's going to cause me intense distress. So, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to get the fuck over myself, my conditioning, and my need to appear "normal," and I'm going to accept the assistance when it's offered me.
My brain is worth caring for.
EDIT: I’m writing this addendum on the train.
When they made the boarding announcement, they didn’t say anything about pre-boarding. I froze and joined the regular line.
Even when I saw someone in a wheelchair going past the line to board first, I couldn’t bring myself to do the same, even as I starting quietly gasping in panic. I hadn’t been “given permission.”
And woudn’t you know it, I ended up hyperventilating, crouched down to huddle over my dog as she calmed my anxiety, before I could board.
I made it onto the train, but I’m still shaking, tears filling my eyes.
Maybe next time, I’ll be able to do it. Next time, I’ll take care of my brain.