Through the Eye's of a Spectrum Living With Autism

Chapter 4: School life and Home life mix

So continuing with our story with how things were during my time in elementary school things were pretty mixed up. The soccoro district kids in El Paso certainly were an odd bunch.

When I went into third grade of course I needed to adapt once more because I moved schools. I kind of had to mentally prepare myself for possibly moving, but little did I know I would be staying in this school till I finished all my grades. And crazy enough, I guess I somewhat made two friends, one of them was named George and the other we'll call him Frank. Surprisingly we met because I chose to sit next to them. These two were actually a ton of fun to hang out with.

Our friendship sometimes would have its ups and downs but they weren't anything to serious. Not to mention I met many other people through them. But I did feel a little out of place with the kids they hung out with. Not you might be asking "how did you feel out of place?" Well, I'm pretty sure kids who are athletic and stronger than me don't usually mix well with a kid who plays video games and watches cartoons.

They all teased me about that kind of stuff, not in a bad way mind you. Some of them got me involved in football, which I actually found out that I'm a pretty decent catcher. But I wasn't really in the best shape in elementary school

Still they got to enjoy stuff like basketball and even football like I said.

All in all, they made some of my days in elementary school quiet nice.

To give a little back story on what was happening at home, my mom had just moved us to another friend of hers house. At this point it wasn't anxiety taking over, it was frustration. It felt that every point of my life we were moving from house to house to house in a never ending cycle.

We stayed there for almost a year but little did I know what was happening behind the scenes between my mom and my dad.

I don't know the full story but thanks to my step-mom, Jenny, i kind of got a good idea what happened.

From what she told me, my dad had been fighting to gain custody of me but everytime he tried she would not give him custody. Then I was shocked when I heard that my mom planned to move me and my sister out of town again and my dad did not want any of that. I guess my mom was having a lot of problems and she just wanted to get away from it all. One day, I guess my mom finally caved in and decided to give custody to my dad. This all happened when I was about to finish third grade.

But yeah, I went from living with my mom to living with my dad who I have to say is a great guy. He worked hard to make sure that me and my sister had everything we needed. I remember moving in with him, I had no idea what the heck was going on. I was picked up from school and my dad bought all my stuff in his truck.

Now of course the first few days of moving in was not that great, mostly because we moved in this apartment on the west side of El Paso right by UTEP. See we all had to lay an extra matress on the floor, so the first few days were a drag.

But we did find a good house later that month, right by my school. It was a nice single story house, perfect for raising a family. And I wasn't upset about the move cause truth be told, it was nice to spend the weekend with my dad at the apartment, but it was not fun to live there. Plus this house had a backyard for our dog to hang out.

And another thing to add, my dad had even signed me up to play on a basketball team at the YMCA. I joined a team in which we called ourselves the UTEP Miners. I know it sounds dumb and cliche but we were all kids and plus our jerseys were orange so it made sense. I pretty much played center seeing as how I was the tallest and I couldn't really shoot well. Don't get me wrong I mean I did score every now and then but I'm pretty sure I got more rebounds and assists than scores.

That was possibly the funniest moment of my life, not only was I hanging out with other kids my age, but I got to be apart of a sports team. And to add to the excitement of this moment, my team won the championship undefeated.

That's right

Now let's switch it up a little bit, and head back to the school life. It was time for me to head in for forth grade, which was when everything my autism was holding back finally busted out of me.

I was even worse at talking to people, I was a lot hyper than before, and when I say hyper I mean I was like a hamster on coffee. This probably made me the most unbarable person of all time. Heck it got on George and Franks nerves.

I mean I couldn't really help myself, I felt like I was being controlled by someone else. And the worse part about it all, it got me bullied a lot more.

Kids would constantly push me around that I resorted to every lunch and recess to just sort of isolating myself. I didn't know what else to do, I mean at times George would invite me to play tag with him and his friends, but some of his kids would tag me all the time. I think it was because back then I was a little out of shape.

To shine some light on the situation, I started getting out of shape around the beginning of fourth grade and that was because i was not eating healthy and taking care of myself. Being that I was out shape, not only was a slow as a snail, but this was one of the things kids would mock me for.

It wasn't nice and all, but I didn't really let it get to me. It would come and go, and I wasn't really a fighter so I couldn't really defend myself. I think the worst of the bullying was when some kid decided to throw a pinecone straight to my southern regions while some kids teased me in P.E. The kid did get trouble so at least karma got the dude.

Most of my days after school would just be me going home, finishing my homework and playing video games. I didn't really have people to hang out with at the time, that is until George found out where I lived and starting hanging out with me which made me really happy cause it sometimes gave me something to look forward at times.

Heck, he even got his little brothers ti hang out too. We would all either play Madden or Wrestling games on my xbox, or we would hang out my computer. Everytime they came over my dad would always buy us pizza so we could have something to eat.

Later at that time, George started inviting his friends over, one kid who we will call Isaiah, and another who will call C.

It was all fun and stuff, but then things kind of came crashing down all of sudden then.