Keychain Story

The next Disability Blog Carnival has “Story” as its theme. First in college when studying applied psychology, and later at an introduction to mental health recovery I attended at my institution, I learned about a method to share one’s story using one’s keychain. The method works like this: you get your keychain, and explain what each key on it is for and what is important to tell about that particular thing. Below, I will tell my keychain story. I don’t do it in the exact format you’re supposed to tell it, but never mind.

I own two keychains. One contains the two keys to my room on the ward and my wardrobe and cupboard in my room. These keys signify my current life on the resocialization ward of a mental institution. Having keys at all means something to me, in the sense that, at my former, locked ward, I didn’t have a key to my own room and, for this reason, was never sure theat my belongings would be safe or that I could go into my room when I wanted (you didn’t need a key to get out of your room). My room is where I retreat when I feel scared or overwhelmed by the other patients or the general unquietness on the ward. It is sometimes scary there, too, but it is often less scary than in the day area. My room is also where I have all my important, personal things, including my computer, my digital talking book player, and a yoga mat. These allow me to distract myself from frustrations and anxiety.

Being on the resocialization ward is important for me. Firstly, it gives me freedom that the locked ward didn’t provide. Although obviosuly I don’t have a key to the ward, the doors are open during the day, so you can go in and out when you want. Visiting times are also more lax than at the locked ward.

But beyond this, the resocialization ward is the place where I can so far more than anywhere else explore and acknowledge the implications of my disabilities. This doesn’t seem to be relevant to what my keys are for, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be in a keychain story, but this struggle with acknowledging my abilities and limitations is and has always been important in my life. I have resolved, when I came to this ward, that this would be the place where I would stop pretending to have the abilities and limitations other people decided I had, and so far, this has been working out relatively well.

The other keychain is empty. It used to contain two keys, both of which I handed in recently. These keys signify my past life. One of them is the key to my parental home in Apeldoorn. My parents bought a new home in a different province in 2007 and moved there this year. The old home in Apeldoorn for me signifies the time of my life before my autism diagnosis, when I was perceived to be “normal” apart from being blind, and I had to pretend to be “normal” apart from being blind. In the recovery model of mental illness, we are taught that your diagnosis doesn’t define you, but you still have to acknowledge your limitations and live with them to the fullest of your individual potential. I was not able to acknowledge my limitations – not only those concerning autism, but also those concerning blindness – during the time I lived with my parents. As a result, I remember that time as a period of constant overestimating of my abilities and constantly barely keeping up. I left the home in 2005 to learn to live independently.

The second key is of my old home, where I lived independently for three months before being institutionalized in 2007. I was already diagnosed with autism back then, but I had not yet fully accepted or even acknowledged its implications, and possibly had overlooked some implications of blindness, too. It should’ve been clear before I moved there that living independently was not a good idea, but a combination of stubbornness, ignorance and bureaucracy meant that I had to anyway. I lived there for three months with lots of support, but still couldn’t cope. Nonetheless, I’ve given up my home only a few weeks ago, and it still saddens me that I had to say goodbye to the prospect of living independently for now.