November 12th, 2009. The day the world crashed down on me.
The actual event that caused that crashing took place the day before, and that is the day I mark every year. On November 11th, the idea of Veterans' Day takes a backseat to that which changed my life. But on November 11th, 2009, I had no idea anything was wrong.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon where I usually lived, but I was thousands of miles away on the world's most amazing class trip ever and it was ten o'clock at night for me. Looking back, I think something inexplicable unsettled me that night, but I can't be sure that it's not some form of hindsight bias, that I wasn't actually unsettled because someone bumped into me in a theater lobby or something.
The next day, the teacher in charge of the trip said he wanted to get us together and speak to us. I thought he just wanted to go over details of the day because there was something on the daily itinerary that was confusing to me and I thought others might have the same concerns. It wasn't until he insisted on a closed room that my guard went up. Something was going on, something big.
We got the closed room. Seventeen of us, not counting the instructor, sat in a room; two were missing still, but by now we all knew something was wrong. A few people were crying; they'd already heard the news from someone else. So he told us. Told us that a classmate, someone we all knew, someone most of us knew well, was dead. No warning. No chance to say goodbye. Just gone.
I look back on that experience now and there's a lot to be said about it. I barely cried that day, a few tears was all. It wasn't until over a month later that I really broke down over it for the first time. If one were to look at the way I was that day, it could be used as an example of how autistic people don't care about the people around them, so much so that they don't even care if a friend dies. But, you see, I did care. I just didn't have the way to express it. I was in shock. But the thing is -- we all were. No one burst into tears the moment we were told. We were too stunned to cry. When one of the latecomers joined us, our instructor repeated what he'd told us. That was when most of the people in the room burst into tears. It just took me a few months instead of a few minutes.
I also understand now that I had to fall apart before I could start to put myself back together. My state of shock wasn't something I controlled, of course, but the breakdown, even if it came a month later, was an essential part of my healing. I'm sure, to the outsider, it looked like I was composed and handling the situation well. But I was handling it by, however unintentionally, not handling it, and that just postpones the inevitable indefinitely until it's dealt with properly. I suffered a lesser, but still substantial, loss this past summer. This one wasn't quite so sudden, and I was able to deal a little better. I cried. A lot. And then, a month later, I was okay. It's a process.
