Wish I'd known sooner

by James
(Alaska)

I had extreme tactile defensiveness growing up (in the 90s); any dry, matte texture brushing against my skin was like nails on a chalkboard and would even make my teeth hurt! Unfortunately included among those textures were paper and the feeling of pencils (especially dull ones) rubbing against the paper.

As a kid I would always get my hands wet with water or spit in order to make the textures more bearable and it made it impossible to read what I was writing. Later on, I only used pens because they were smooth and didn't 'hurt' to use, but I got ink all over myself and everything else.

It made it extremely difficult to work because my assignments would either be unreadable, a horrible chore to push through, or in ink when I was supposed to use pencil. Nothing was ever done to really help me with this even though I described it constantly, I was often dismissed as being difficult and making up excuses.

I did very, very poorly throughout elementary school due to this and other OCD related issues and I feel like if it could have just been recognized, my life would have been able to go in a much more positive direction.

Oh yeah, and at 25 I've mostly grown out of it at this point.