When I was almost twenty one years old, my parents sat me down and told me something I never expected to hear.
They told me I was born with Down syndrome.
I just looked at them.
I didn’t know what to say.
I thought maybe they were joking at first.
Then they told me they had known since before I was born.
My family knew.
My doctors knew.
My teachers knew.
I was the only person who didn’t.
A lot of people think I should have been angry.
Maybe they would have been.
But I really wasn’t.
I was just surprised.
I kept thinking, “How did everybody know except me?”
The strange thing is that after they told me, nothing really changed.
The next morning I woke up and I still felt like myself.
I still liked the same things.
I still had the same dreams.
I still laughed at the same jokes.
I still wanted to work hard and have a good life.
The only difference was now I knew why some things had always been harder for me.
School was not easy.
Writing took me a long time.
Math was even harder.
Sometimes everybody else understood things much faster than I did.
I always thought that was just who I was.
I got extra help in school.
I had tutoring.
People worked with me one on one.
I never really questioned it.
I thought maybe some kids just needed more help than others.
I didn’t know there was another reason.
When I asked my parents why they never told me, they said they wanted me to grow up feeling like everybody else.
They didn’t want me thinking I couldn’t do something before I even tried.
They didn’t want me using Down syndrome to decide what my life could be.
They wanted me to believe I could chase my own dreams.
I have thought about that a lot.
Maybe if I had known when I was little, I would have looked at myself differently.
Maybe every time I had trouble in school I would have said, “Well, that’s because I have Down syndrome.”
Maybe I would have stopped trying as hard.
Or maybe I wouldn’t have.
I don’t really know.
Nobody can know.
What I do know is that I had a happy childhood.
I never walked around thinking I was different.
I thought I was just another kid.
I made friends.
I went to school.
I played games.
I laughed.
I dreamed about the future.
That was my life.
Finding out didn’t erase any of those memories.
It just helped explain some things.
Now I understand why writing has always been difficult for me.
Sometimes I know exactly what I want to say, but getting the words out is hard.
That can be frustrating.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts.
It just means I need a little more time.
People sometimes think having Down syndrome means you can’t have a normal life.
I don’t believe that.
I have hobbies.
I like learning new things.
I want a good job.
I want to keep getting better every year.
I have goals just like everybody else.
One thing I really love is space.
I can spend hours learning about planets and stars.
I think about how big the universe is and how much we still don’t know.
It makes me excited.
Maybe one day I can help people learn about space too.
Who knows?
That would be pretty awesome.
After learning about my diagnosis, I also learned something about myself.
I realized I had never been living as “a person with Down syndrome.”
I had just been living as me.
Maybe that’s why the news didn’t change me very much.
I didn’t suddenly become a different person.
I was still the same son.
The same friend.
The same guy who likes to laugh.
The same person who wants to work hard.
The same person who wants a good future.
Some people have told me they would have wanted to know much earlier.
I understand that.
Everybody feels differently.
For me, I don’t spend a lot of time wondering what would have happened if things had been different.
I like looking forward more than looking backward.
Life is already happening.
I don’t want to miss it because I’m always thinking about the past.
If there is one thing I hope people understand after hearing my story, it is this.
Down syndrome is something I have.
It is not everything I am.
I still wake up every morning thinking about what I want to do that day.
I still make plans.
I still have dreams.
I still want to keep learning.
I still want to make people smile.
At the end of the day, I am just a person trying to live a good life.
I think that is something everybody can understand.