My Private Pain

A tiny, insignificant voice
lost in a sea of voices.
One small, insignificant face
lost in a sea of faces.

Ignored…hated…violated

You watched, you saw,
yet you turned away,
pretended not to see

Stripped of my dignity
…my pride
Right there, right in front of you
Why?
Why did you pretend not to see?
Why did you hide?

You could have saved me…

It bugs me sometimes. Thinking back on my childhood, remembering comments made by parents and teachers. I can’t help but wonder why no one ever DID anything about my situation. Especially my teachers and my mother.

I blame lack of know-how on why my mom never did anything with me until things exploded beyond repair. But teachers, bus drivers, people that saw me being abused mentally and physically, they stood there commenting on it to one another and they never once did anything about it. I walked off the bus covered in baby powder and the bus driver didn’t even look twice. The camera picked the whole scenario up, did the kids that did it get punished? No! Teachers gave me a weak grin when they saw the tears rolling down my cheeks from being teased, hit, tripped, laughed at. Did they do a damned thing about it?? Did parents get called?? Not a Once! I watched other kids get punished for teasing other kids, but the kids that teased me. Never.

Teachers would comment on my odd behavior to one another. The fact that I spent the entire time on the playground running laps instead of playing with other children. Yet these concerns never came up to my mom. At that point in time I made straight-A’s, that’s all that mattered.

My mom watched me line up toys, and categorize and rip paper into tiny little shreds. She watched me shy away from everyone. She commented on how I covered my ears at every loud noise. She knew there was something up with me, she admits that she knew something was weird but hoped I’d outgrow it.

Why didn’t anyone say anything to anyone?!!?? This is the one thing I’ll never understand. No one ever tried to help me.

I saw psychiatrists for my eating disorder and for depression, but even they had no answers.

I had to wait until I was 21 years old, depressed, scared, lonely and fed up to find out that I have a fucking communication disorder.

The damage has already been done.

Granted AS is a relatively new diagnosis, it wouldn’t have even been considered in the 80’s when I was in elementary school but that’s not my point entirely. Someone should have at least stopped the fucking abuse. Someone should have taken the anti-social, clingy, depressed 4th grader to a psychologist, not waited until the now depressed 5th grader suffered from severe anxiety and started threatening suicide.

Did you know that the vast majority of people with AS also suffer from depression? The reasons are the same, or similar to my own. Socially, we don’t fit in, yet we want to. We are teased and laughed at. This can be prevented.

Don’t ignore the signs…don’t do what my parents did and say “oh, she doesn’t have any friends now but she’ll grow out of this”. Don’t ignore when your child comes home crying every day and begs and pleads to stay home from school. I doubt very many parents would ignore that, but obviously, mine did. I still suffer from it, from depression, I hurt myself sometimes and yes, sometimes I still want to die. I’ll be honest…it crosses my mind more than once a week. Could I ever go through with it? Not now that I’m married and living with 5 beautiful kitty faces and an adorable little puppy face, no, I couldn’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s alright.

It has taken me years to get the point where I can be honest with myself. Years to get to this point where I can write about this shit and get it out of my head. And I’ve got a long road ahead of me, full of writing and thinking and crying, a long road to travel down undoing the damage people have caused.

Don’t ever turn your back on a child that’s hurting on the inside…ever.