Through the Eye's of a Spectrum Living With Autism

Chapter 7: New Day, New Problems... Everyday!

When I stepped into middle, I previously thought the problems in elementary school would go away when I arrived there, but each time I arrived there I would have new problems to come towards me.

Kids all around me would look at me strangely at every turn, and not the "This guys from another planet" look, the look they gave me was more like "This guy has every disease known to man." And lets not forget that because of my techniques on handling my anxiety and controlling my hyper active disorder kids found a way to use that as a way to tease me.

Every day I got home on my first year of middle school, I would just sit in my room and ask "Why are kids like this, did I do something wrong?" Of course I could never could find the answer to that question.

My dad would tell me "Some kids are just not raised right. Their raised to judge people who aren't like them. These kids are just the perfect example." It wasn't the right answer but of course he wasn't wrong. It was the only answer I had to my problem and I just had to work with it.

After that talk I had with my dad, I contemplated the reason why, in my opinion , sixty five percent of the parents in that school raised their kids to  be like this. Actually, scratch that, why there is a lack of parenting going on there. The fact that parents possibly knew that their kids were treating me and students like me like this would've made you question what these parents are doing with their kids.

People need to understand that kids are only influenced by two things, Their parents and their kids. Now I'm not saying I'm absolutely right and that what I'm saying is complete fact, it is purely my opinion. If the parents act horrible around their kids, drink, smoke, or even act inappropriate around their kids at such a young age, then the kid will try to act like them. If a kid see's their parent treating someone badly or insulting someone for no reason, the again, their kid will think it is perfectly fine to do the same.

And of course I brought friends into this, because if it's one thing I know about certain friends it is that they always use a thing called "Peer Pressure." These kind of people will pressure into doing something that's wrong while trying to make it seem cool. And the worst part is if you don't do what they want, then suddenly your weak and uncool.

I've met too many people in middle school that loved to do this to me. A good example of my encounters with people are not specific, but just mere situations where I had that problem. One good story were a group of kids when going to hang out at Marty Robbins back then, and to get there they would always use their so called "shortcut" which was climbing over a fence with a "City property: Do Not Trespass!" sign and sprint across the way to get to the park. The path was through a long stretch of desert through these electric wired towers. They would persuade me to do it and quit being a wimp. Instead, thinking with my head, I would always take the long road and not take the risk of getting caught.

These kids always had new an improved ways of bringing down my self esteem any way they could, if it was calling me names, and constantly beating me up, there was always a way. Kids always resorted to calling me "freak" "weirdo" and all sorts. One time a kid took a bag of chips I was gonna eat at lunch, and ended up crushing them in his hands throwing them away.

And the beatings consisted on kids punching me in the arm when I walked past them, or kicking me in the shin. Personally, this in particular didn't bother me, because I could always keep away from these kids that did this by taking alternate routes to my classes. The words however were really the big problems.

The names got worse and worse and even worse every single day, until someone in class told me the worst insult I ever heard in my life. It was a kid who I don't even remember his name, but we ha to work in groups in my English class and of course be it that I was a very hyper active kid, I was little jittery and talkative, and this must've gotten on my group members nerves. After class had ended, one of my group members decided to confront me and throw big time insults at me like "Dude why don't you ever just shut up, no one cares what you have to say. And you talk way too much." I of course just kept telling him to leave me alone and back off, I even offered to work with another group.

That's when the worst thing anyone ever told me in my life hit me, this guy told me "No one will let you I their group, no likes you, you're God's biggest accident to world, that's what you are." And just like that I felt like a spear just shot right through me, I couldn't believe someone had told me that.

Of course, I scoffed at the guy and walked away doing my best to ignore that comment. On the outside I was unaffected by his comment but deep down on the inside I was going crazy with shock in depression. "Is this what everyone thought about me, or just that jerk?" I kept asking myself that over and over in my head.

When I got home, I sat in my room all by myself playing my PlayStation 2 while my dad was out running errands and suddenly what that kid said came back to me. I remembered pausing my game and just sitting there, and then I began to cry. It started off as sobs, then turned to wailing, I kept yelling in an empty house "Why does everyone hate me?!" I just couldn't get how one person could the mindset to tell some that. I sat in my room for what seemed like five minutes and began stop crying, I wasn't  sad or depressed anymore, but wasn't eased or happy. I had nothing but pent up rage from being bullied and teased.

I made a vow from that moment to "Never Trust Anyone." Yeah, I was that mad, can you believe it. I would now make it my goal to never make friends in my city of El Paso, because I kept telling myself that they would see who I truly am and make fun of me for it. They only two people I could now trust was my friend Gianfranco and my autism teacher Lori Ray.

This would help a little bit, any person that tried to say hello to me, of course I would just wave at them. But if anyone I didn't know tried to talk with me, I would tell them "I would like to be alone for right now please" or if they tried to sit with me, I would politely get up and just walk away.

This was not a good idea but it was the only idea I had at the time. But the biggest shock would come on my last year of middle school, which actually became a somewhat decent year for me.