No person I am inspired or is aspired to and nothing makes me happy.

Why?

Because autistics traditonally are not supposed to be happy or be inspired. We are supposed to live by a specification sheet, or in simple terms be judged and perform to what the DSM defines my group. We aren’t people, we are cans having a damned label slapped on us, whether its literal or not. It’s the stigma that enables that literal label slapped on people like me.

I made a really stupid and naive decision to follow the “normal” people in Londonderry, some people I knew on and off since elementary school. The price? Didn’t get funding for nearly 16 months after my 21st birthday and was put on that infamous “Wait List”

I’m going to give Londonderry in general a bad name (despite knowing a lot of people in power in that said community) – they are a “world class town.” It’s a stepping stone community. The rural town of farmers were forced out by the rich Caucasian people, whom always look down at the rank and file class, if that can’t be sinful enough. The stupid Marching Lancers go all over the world and look down at anything in their own community (such as a ribbon cutting of the Airport Access road, one of the competing communities did the marching ceremonies a few years back.) The mostly rich Caucasian parents, mostly Baby Boomers, didn’t keep a close leash on these kids. Any dream, they were entitled to chase after. Any! No joke! And a vast majority of Londonderry High School graduates in the entire decade of the 2000s (I’ll go out of a limb and say 96% out of the thousands)  are not living anywhere within the borders of the 603 area code. These goddamned hipsters think they are too cool for this little state, and I guess I saw something of these rich caucasian brats, but couldn’t verbalize beyond just “snotty people” about a decade ago.

In their defense, many of these kids were bright, some were very skilled in STEM even before there was an acronym. Some of the kids were artsy, some were techie. And I thought well since I was techie, and artsy and wrote well, why can I compete? Well, I always sucked in sports till I was about 18 (if that wasn’t a clear sign of a “pervasive developmental disorder”, then I don’t know what is…)

I never discounted myself. I did feel uncomfortable when people would be so surprised to see how “smart” I was. To this day, I still don’t know what the barometer, if people really expected anyone with an autistic disorder to be completely idiotic or obscenely intelligent. By no means was I “faking it” ether, I was just trying desperately to fit in. Now I’m almost hitting 30, I’ve given up the idea of fitting in.

* * *

Back on “inspiration”. There were few groups of people that I thought it was worth learning from and to aspire their idea of dreams. This included normal people and even people with severe disabilities. I learned one day at the campus of my out of district program was learning something of AP classes and this individual was in a wheel chair. Then I had that friend with alleged case of Asperger’s then my normal “Ltown” friends.

It wasn’t till I was about 20 where I ether had to play dumb, or literally limit my dreams to the “spec sheet” known as my official diagnosis in the DSM IV (since this was 2007 afterall.) Being too optimistic was another bad choice. Looking normal at the largest “area agency” in the state was apparently politically incorrect or I insulted the mission of the organization. (This is the same place I wrote earlier that had fancy office furniture and cloud based computer systems (before there was a “cloud” and a Meridian 1 PBX, with an employee count of 300 people, of only a few would be end users – all with some publicly funded way, would imagine…)

On the interest front, I never am confident of saying what I like. Often because I like what everyone else doesn’t like, and the other’s likes are not the same as mine. If you want to put this into flippin’ perspective, I don’t gel well with my own demented peer groups! So don’t go there with the stereotyping “Steven, go check out a peer group!”

The interests I like do not logically match up to other people like me or even normal people. It makes me look very dare I say odd?

But the other biggest error that I think haunts me to some way, was reaching out to one of the most tight to the right conservatives begging to fund the Medicaid waivers (i.e. the day services) for the wait list. I was overly optimistic. I looked back at it and said How can I be so positive and ask for funding? The liberal psychologist I’ve referred to also would become one of the most negative influences. That was why I fired her and will try to revoke her license myself in the future. I’ve shredded that letter and still retain a Word copy on a file server due to very strict compliance rules, since someone in society needs to keep everything….

I’m not the brightest person in the room. I do come off stupid, and ignorant at times. I am not smart enough to be in college, and if that I could do a 4 year in 8 years. I couldn’t handle the “tolerance” of the local colleges, because they’ll tolerate an illegal alien over an illegal-hypehenated-alien (i.e. I think I was conceived by aliens from outer space type of alien.)

In other cases, I am too smart as well. I know too much of everything and that doesn’t look well in the optics front. I must retain a perfect image 99.999% of the time, because oh my gawd, if I make a mistake, I’lll always be remembered for the error, not the strengths.

When I transferred to another area agency upon moving out of HelLtown at the end of 2009, I’ve tried to move forward. But the scars from the first years of adult life have continued to haunt me.

I do blame a lot of this on a broken support system that didn’t favor the individual, and people having their own political agendas of where I wanted to go. I never ever, heard “be yourself” or “normal is overrated”, I had to “conform” and probably “assimilate” to the normal peer group. I bet 50 years ago, they would literally put a gun to my head. Where did all this hard work go indoctrinated by “Doctor” Teresa Bolick, SAU 12 and GLEC alI go? Nowhere.

Do I want to be writing this kind of stuff on a personal site focusing on my somewhat aspiring profession? No. Because allegedly “my heart” (supposedly  that is a synonym for a “gut instinct”) says it wants “to do the right thing” but the brain is telling me something else. And the brain is telling me to stay on the safe side of living in my house for 18 hours a day, and avoid doing anything “big” since “dreams” really don’t exist.  It’s all illogical in world that was indoctrinated to me there is a right and wrong; black and white with no gray matter. I was programmed to be a person like a spec sheet. I was not supposed to be a human at all. I’m a robot. I’m whatever the DSM says, if I am mentally retarded then so be it.

* * *

(On a side note, I’ve tried to seek additional help, basically a very, very informal “re evaluation” to see how broken I am. I’ve tried to see a genetic doctor, and is denied by my stupid healthcare plan; I’ve tried to meet with some doctors for a psychological evaluation, but that was a backoffice nightmare – they have more people in the back office than doctors themselves there! Then there was another doctor up on the other side of I89 that was recommended by the genetics doctor. I haven’t stepped forward till I got enough information if that doctor is crooked like the aforementioned one off Exit 6 in Nashua. )

When all of this is said and done, I think the conformation that my future has been shattered will come true. And as an autistic to say his life is a tragic burden, cannot be understated enough!