- The doctors diagnosed me with alexithymia, or the inability to express your feelings.
- They figured that I was too young, my symptoms different from Asperger's syndrome, and my other developments didn't show signs of autism.
- It's not necessarily that I was unable to express feelings, but more that I was unable to identify them in the first place.
- The doctors all said it was because the almonds inside my head, the amygdalae, were unusually small and the contact between the limbic system and the frontal lobe didn't function as smoothly as it should.
- Fear is an instinctive defense mechanism necessary for survival.
- The only silver lining, the doctors said, was that my intelligence wasn't affected despite having such small amygdalae.
- Researchers at university hospitals proposed long-term research projects on my growth, to be reported in medical journals.
- But the doctors were met with a flat refusal from Mom, who was already sick of them.
- She also didn't like that the doctors saw me as an interesting specimen rather than a human being. She had given up hope early on that the doctors would cure me.
- And so Mom, like so many other overprotective mothers, made a declaration that was both unconvincing and cliched.
- Mom spat on a flower bush in front of the hospital building and said, "Those hacks don't even know what's in their own goddamned brains."
- She could be so full of swagger sometimes.