My name is El Earl.
Since I was five years of age I have not spoken to anyone but my family. I have
an illness that is called "Selective mutism." It is an anxiety disorder,
which makes me scared to talk to people. A lot of the symptoms are much like
autism, yet selective mutism and autism are not related.
I
have trusted very few people and opened up to them. I have been working on a
novel about my life and my condition. It is a story about how I got bullied my
whole life and I dealt with it, but most of all it is a story about how even
though I have this condition I have done so much in life, I have worked, I have
attended university, I have held art exhibitions... This story is for all the
teenagers, adults, and people out there who suffer everyday because they are
different, or because they are bullied for some reason or another. I am hoping
my novel will help people, for every person who reads it and for every person
who feels better or stronger for it and who can relate to me and what I have
gone through, I am happy that I am doing something for people.
I want to self publish this novel, and
then I want to make copes and sell some of course, but also donate some to
schools to have in their libraries. I think this will be a good read for school
students, but also it is not limited just for a young audience. I think a lot
of people will love my novel and find it honest, sad, quirky and most of all
inspiring.
If I do not reach my entire goal it is okay, there are cheaper
self publishing options and I will just do them.
I hope after someone reads my novel
they will notice a lonely person in school, or work or wherever and make an
effort with that person. If that happens then I know my novel is a success.
Why is my novel so important to me? an English
teacher at school plus two university teachers said to me "El one day I am
going to walk into Borders and buy your book" It is sad that Borders does
not exist anymore but I am hoping that what they said comes true true, and one
day they will be sitting on their couch on a cold Sunday night reading my
words.
I have a few publishers in mind and
sussing out the best one. No publishers have read my book yet but one publisher
that isn't very expensive has read a chapter and would love to help me make it
a success.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please tell people about this, about my book. I think my story
may even help people in the medical field understand my problem a little bit
better. I was a very lonely teenager, I had no friends so started to write this
book is what saved me. I had something to look forward to. Years later I went
over it and finished it, and I feel it is the best thing I have written in my
life.
Here is a little bit of my novel :)
Like Robert Frost said in his poem ‘The Road
Less Traveled’ From the two roads ahead, you can only choose one, and you can’t
turn back and take the other, because along the way there are going to be other
roads to choose from. I must have somewhere taken the wrong road.
I
stopped talking…
I
got selective mutism.
Selective mutism is a childhood anxiety
disorder. It’s
much more then just shyness. The child is not refusing to speak because that’s what they want, they just can’t. The child continues to speak at home
but stops speaking in school, and at other social events. They don’t have autism, or a communication
disorder.
CHAPTER ONE
Mid
1997
Age: 16
You’re somewhere in between, a pale
stair,
An ocean way too deep, skies up where
they belong,
Cold sensation on the neck, hard ruffle
in the grass,
Running faster through thousands of
tree’s, as if there’s no way out.
A maze of insecurities, keep going the
wrong way,
Bumping into dead ends, if turning back
which way to go?
A hint of a wind, now it’s gone.
Henna painted arms, leaking from the
rain,
Like smudged mascara, dripping within
tears,
Like a waterfall, throwing a person into
the ocean,
Nothing.
It
is my first period of the day; science class. The science room door is green
with a little glass window on the top of it and has the word ‘science’ written
on it. Every time I approached this room I just want to run away, as fast as I
can in the opposite direction. I imagine the school hallway going all dark, and
have a chill down my spine as if some one in a mask and black coat is chasing
me with a knife. I want to scream.
I
walk into class.
“Seated please,” Mrs.
Brindchick yells in her accent, I can never figure out what accent she has. I
find myself grinding the little bit of fingernails I have left (yes I am a
biter) on the edge of my desk. Mrs. Brindchick doesn’t try to understand me like my other
teachers, she always finds ways to humiliate me in class, and then fail me on
the pure fact;
“I
vill not pass a girl who refuses to speaka to me,”
The
funny thing is she gets away with it.
“You” she pointes at
me directly. I have been in class less then
ten minutes and already she has decided it is time to have fun, purely on my
misfortune.
I
zone back into reality and stop thinking about what she would look like in hell
with the devils and fire and…
“You!”
She
never says my name; it is as if my name is as bad as saying fuck in a class
full of sixteen year olds.
I nod blankly.
“Vhy don’t you start telling ze class vat last
nights homevork readings vere about?”
I pick up my pen and paper and
am about to write, but before my pen can even touch the piece of paper she
interrupts me.
“Verbally.”
I sink into my seat.
“How about you Leslie?” she
asks another student.
That
student does reply verbally.
When I think class can’t get any worse I am in for a surprise.
We are paired up to do an experiment with a partner. I have to do mine with
Mony. She is tall with dark brown hair and thinks she is beautiful, personally
because of her personality she reminds me of a dropped meat pie. Okay that’s a bit mean a dropped meat pie that’s been put back together, there you go.
“You know just coz we are doing this
together, it don’t
mean we’re gonna be friends or anything,” she says
lighting the Bunsen burner,
I nod.
“Like you know if I was gonna buy a
parrot, like I’d
buy the parrot that spoke you know? If that makes much sense? Not the parrot
that was dumb.”
The
word ‘dumb’ rings
in my ears like a siren. I look over at her smiling
face; it is as if she thinks it is okay the way she is talking to me. I don’t know who I fell sorry for more her or
myself; me for having to put up with her or her for having such a sour
personality. Maybe she’s
just dumb? Yes let’s
leave it at that she’s
just dumb.
Sure
I’m different but I know that when people put other peoples down it means that
they see in those other people things they have in themselves. By putting these
people down it means that they fell better about their own lives.
Everybody in the world has
differences however they’re
hidden. Some people may have a toe missing, or something tiny like that, that
people don’t
notice. However with mine everyday it gets in the way. People don’t want to get
to know me, boss’s
don’t want to hire me, people in shops think I’m rude when I don’t reply to
their “Hello how are you?’” verbally
or say “Thanks” after
receiving my change.
That afternoon I sit in my
bedroom leaning against my desk; I am staring at a paperback novel I have to
read for English class, it’s so boring. My hair swings over my face as if it is
a curtain, and my face is the window that it is protecting from the world. A
world, which I am afraid of, why? I don’t
know. I don’t
speak, I barely eat in public, and people scare the hell out of me. There were
things that happened to me when I was a child; however I have somehow erased
them from my memory, they are too painful to face. I may seem different to you
because I don’t
speak, but don’t be
fooled by that I am just an ordinary girl.
Thank
you
El
Earl :)