Sorry for this being sooooooo long. But I needed to say this.
I've had many sleepless nights feeling pity for myself, wondering why I wasn't like everyone else. My parents told me that it was my ADD and not to worry about it. But as I said in my introductory post, the others kids with ADD had social lives, hung out, had girlfriends, ETC, while I didn't.
The doctors and my parents knew right away when I was born that I was not going to have a "normal" childhood. I came one month early. I was to be born on Christmas day, but was born right around Thanksgiving. When most babies are born they cry right away. I didn't. I took about 1hr before I started crying. The doctor also did some routine tests on me in which I scored below normal. But I was alive and breathing, so I guess you could say it somewhat of a start. When I was two months old, my mom took me to see one of her friends who worked as a nurse in a local hospital. Apparently I didn't like being held by someone outside of my own parents since my mom's friend said she never saw a baby get so agitated after she tried to hold me.
The first time I became consciously aware that I was different from others was the magical year of 1983. My parents put me into a daycare center becasue of work schedules, at a local church which was just up the street from where we lived. This was around Jan 1983. After six months I had begun to notice subtle differences between myself and others. Things that the other kids took to liking, I despised, and vice-versa. Asking the others kids to share something always resulted in them screaming "NO!! !!", But I could never bring myself to scream at the other kids. I would always say "you can have this when I'm done", and I would continue on playing. If a supervisor tried to take something from someone and give it to someone else, a struggle would always ensue between adult and child, desprate to keep the toy. But I never put up a struggle, I always ended letting other take stuff from me anyways, despite my attempts to be nice.
That was 1983, lets flash foward to October 1985. I was one month into my public school education. I remember one day I got to stay later than everyone else, all becasue my parents were having a confrence in the office with school administrators. My kindergarden teacher sat at her desk doing paper work, while I had the whole room to myself free to do as I pleased. I remember passing the time listening to Sesame Street records on the record player in the room. At the time I was unaware of what was happening, but my kindergarden teacher had too noticed that I was different from the others. Despite the fact that I was excelling from an educational standpoint, my personality was conflicting with the others students and as a result, I ended up having weekly counsling session with school psycologists for the next 6 1/2 years.
1987 - Second grade. I was headed for a total mental collapse. I was extremely anti-social, had disturbing outbursts of rage, and did innapropriate things in front of the class. The school I was in wanted to send me to Riverview, the districts school for the "challenged" students. My parents refused.
1988 - Third grade. I had a teacher who was patient and understanding, and although my anti-social and trouble making tendancys continued, I didn't have any outbursts and got good grades. The other third grade teacher which I thankfully didn't get, ended up having to go to anger managment classes because of her mean streak with students over the years. If I had gotten her, I think I would have had a total collapse.
1989 - Fourth grade. Teacher's I didn't like + students who didn't like me = Bad year in school.
1990 - Fifth grade. Teachers I liked + students who finally got use to me and accepted me for who I was + medication to help me focus = Good year
1991 - Sixth grade. Teacher I was uncomfortable with, but otherwise liked + Medication to help me focus + Students who were use to me minus one student who bullied me = Mixed year with ups and downs.
1992 - Junior High school. Absolute hell for me. All the people I went to grade school with suddenly turned their backs on me. My differences became glaringly obvious to others, and I quickly became a favored target for bullies. It was in junior high that I started to feel despair for my differences and first began to wonder how and why? I began a search for answers and at the same time, managed to develop complex coping skills designed to get me through the day with as little trouble as possible. And was somewhat successful in my quest, and I even managed to make a friend during those times. Friday Novmeber 13, 1992 (of all days) I was sitting in the gym during lunch when another student called to me to come sit up by him in the bleachers. I found it odd that he would do something like this, and that in the following days, he would exert a great deal of effort to keep in contact with me. But today I understand that he was an NT just doing what NT's do best. Forming social bonds and connections, an idea that was foriegn to me in 1992. At the time I was under the impression that friendships just "happened", and that people didn't willingly spend time trying to form them. Anyways, we were friends for about 9 years. Around mid 2001, he became heavily involved with drugs, (and it was him who introduced me to to drugs) while I was trying to clean myself up, and I ended up loosing contact with him.
I had felt pretty much the sameway through high school and beyond. By 1998 I had pretty much come to accept the fact that I was who I was and I was not going to be able to change it. Every now and then I took my search for answers to the internet, I looked through about a dozen different things, when on Monday June 1st, I stumbled upon a newspaper article about aspergers. I took my quest for answers back to the internet and it was like a dam breaking and all the water rushing out. Everything suddenly made sense, everything fell into place. Today I now feel no pity for myself, I no longer wonder why. I now have the tools I need to understand myself and my differences, and for the first time in my life, I can try to navigate the long hallway of life with light turned on so I can see where I'm going.
Which is the reason for my signature. Your seeing the writing of Scoots5012, Version 2.0
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I live my life to prove wrong those who said I couldn't make it in life...
21 Aug 2004, 1:54 am
