You're probably thinking this article will be about breast cancer, sexual assault, or domestic violence since all of these things are being talked about around this time. I don't want to talk about something that we always talk about every year. Although they are serious things, I'm done talking about them.
I want to talk about something that no one truly knows about or understands.
Selective Mutism.
Now you're probably thinking "Oh that's easy! It's a person who is shy and just chooses not to speak to people."
You are very wrong.
Selective Mutism is an anxiety disorder. These people are SCARED to speak; they don't just choose not to. Many people with Selective Mutism went through a traumatic experience like a bad car accident, death in the family, or even a sexual assault, and they develop it other time after the experience happened; and some are merely born with it.
My sister was born with it.
When we were young, she would whisper in my ear what she wanted when we would go places. She would whisper in my ear things she would want to ask my Nana and Papa.
I became her true voice.
Something happened when she was in elementary school. She completely shut down in the 3rd grade. We do not know what happened. We have theories. We think she was severely bullied by the students and picked on by the teacher.
But we don't know what happened and we will probably never know.
And I don't care about what happened in the past anymore anyways.
I worry about what's happening now. She's an online high school student. Some of her teachers don't even care about her disorder, and they tell her she has to answer their verbal questions or she gets an F. Yes, we tried getting a 504 or IEP. But there are copious amounts of paperwork that need to be done in order to get one of the two, and we don't have time for that.
Instead, we fight with the social security office. They denied her Social Security Income for her disability. It says on their page that they would accept her, but they denied her anyway.
Because people don't know about this disorder!
We had to go to court to fight it. We won, but that time spent fighting could have been time finding a new doctor to see how she can open up, or finding a new therapist to help her.
Instead, she fights depression and thoughts I can't even describe to you. She fights her eating problems that we are currently learning about. She fights with making a single friend.
She fights herself.
No, this isn't some kind of horrible disease that will kill you in a fairly short amount of time.
It is a horrible anxiety disorder that has her fighting against herself for years to come. No medicine that will treat it. No therapy that works.
Just silence.
With awareness, we can break that silence.
Author's Note:
Ever since I started at Collegiate High School at Northwest Florida State College, I became very distant from my sister. I didn't want to become distant, but because of my part time job and homework, and the fact that I wanted to play video games, I lost touch with her. Going to college at Florida Southern College has also impacted that distance, to the point that we barely talk anymore. I feel guilty for it every day. What I hope to accomplish in this article is for people to understand that any and all mental disorders do not just affect the person that has it; it affects all parties related to them.
And it eats away at you every day.
Almost like a disease that will kill you.
