The ongoing saga of advocacy running amok
2008 – Final weeks
Nearly a dozen weeks into the New Year, things were going to hell and a handbasket, but the teachers didn’t understand anxiety and behavior issues because they were not a “therapeutic program”. For them to think they need to be therapists or emotional councilors should look at themselves for allowing chaos at all costs as the only way to grow. Between Mass. February Vacation to March 12th, was nearly 3 weeks away; staff just wrote it off as another business day in the office.
Without repeating too much of that history, the involvement of the “transition coordinator” was literally my responsibility playing email and phone tag and trying to get someone to show up on a January day in 2008, no less than 2 months to my graduation. Is this what “self advocacy” really means?
Ironically other threats such as “we won’t be here after your 21st birthday” was also repeated. I say “threats”, because the manager type was drilling it down to cause panic to learn to cope. Some people I have spoken to have rightfully said that at this point family members should be supporting in that transition. Well unfortunately, my family was dwindling and my cousins that were the closest were not available, as a result just feeling so alone to begin with.
March 12th, 2008 (Graduation Day)
The 2nd full week of March was unforgettable. The week started if you were reading Page Six when Page Six was a section in the New York Post at that point a few pages close to hard copy’s page 6 – New York State’s Governor Elliot Spitzer being caught screwing with a call girl, later got the nickname of “Client Number Nine” of how he was identified in the sting. My graduation day was in the middle that week (also a 1/2 day for teacher training which was really a way to end it) and Friday the announcement of Bear Sterns of insolvency was the start what the Financial Crisis would happen in six months to the day. March and finance is an oxymoron… don’t let naysayers say otherwise I probably started in LEEP a 1/2 day student and nearly 18 years later, my last day of school was several hours.
Other than being legal to drink, this also was my graduation date. Years later in the NHFSC planning committee meetings, a family member explained how a graduation process is, for all the typical students who graduate in June, the transcripts are prepared within weeks around mid to late May, so any student of any type, receiving “the diploma” is a near real-time process, for someone whose obsessed about processes.
For me it ironically occurred when I was on school vacation just a few weeks before. However I had to wait to receive the diploma when June came. Regardless of that guaranteed process of a 3 year advance notice of the said diploma, I feel it didn’t make any difference whatsoever with work or other hopes I don’t want to get into the politics of IDEA or how SPED undercuts performance, or what, I didn’t feel enough to receive it – clearly at the time and today. I felt like there wasn’t enough work or effort. Not even a few years after, I really felt this emptiness if dropping out was still worth it or going to “school” for work. To be blunt, the outcome was still shit. Even if people who worked at the time who are still there, would deny that as a fact. That alone says a lot.
Much to my classmates chagrin, they didn’t know my last day would be weeks before. I didn’t say much about it starting in September, because i felt like I was counting my final days of being captive in a school program that I wasn’t the most happiest. It’s almost as if my IEP team was also settling with the lesser of two evils.
Not to be spiteful but the last days with management and staff was awkward at best, one was the program manager coming to me in her “Mommy-mobile” because her kid was chronically sick. Maybe it had to do with her bitchin’ about her second born repeatedly to her staff pals with students in earshot?
While i never got kicked out or had an SRO escort me like a workplace in lieu of a security guard, something in retrospect was don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out even when it was so far from what it was, with the goodbyes, hugs, etc. I never want to relive those memories again.
2008 – Days Turn to Weeks, Turns to Months, Supports “Fade” to Black.
In some of my regrets, I really should’ve gone no-contact as I was no longer their supply, and as a result their “resource” was far from that.
The transition to adult services started off rocky, and in reality I have not been the same since. Other than a horribly run area agency; the state’s Department of Health and Human Services really dropped the ball too. With actual factual data from the state’s Education Department, their Oracle database known as SPEDIS (the Special Ed Information System), the special education students with “significant disabilities” (aka people with ASD) would be aging out and somewhere else people would be aging in.
My job trainer at the time and I clicked very well to the point she was my natural support until 2022 where I cut the ties, because I felt drained. 15 years… jeezum I feel for every contact I have made in my lifetime, that I have gone beyond the “2 year rule” and actually have a relationship that lasted.
When so many people were waiting for services (and just a few years before, the the legislature made it a policy to ensure a fast track minimum of 90 days) so many of my peers were in limbo for a minimum of 18 months, or a year and a half, and so many aged out between 2007-2011 to say the “first wave”. And while I aged on an even year (New Hampshire is a biennial budget system) to say there was no funds for the upcoming fiscal year starting in July was to be bullshit.
My therapist used to do case management and families were pissed off while the infamous area agency had “flat screens” in their office digital displays just installed the summer before claiming they had “no funds” and that no other funds could be used in lieu of state funds until it was funded for.
The whole Vocational Rehab was a song and dance, and I just flirted with the agency to show that I was looking into despite knowing that wouldn’t work. In recent years VR has been severely gutted.
Later on I realized despite the importance to work, a balance was necessary, while in 2025 Generation Z (Gen X’s offsprings) are often made fun of for being whiners and not wanting to work… is that really the case or is there more to the story?
The impact of leaving the out of district program continued to haunt me for a number of years, even when I relocated across the Merrimack, and for a number of years. Perhaps I realized I either had the choice of working myself to death, or wanting to have a life, but no one would respect both, but had to choose one or the other because of the society’s views of my group. There is still a number of antidotal inexperiences cookie cuttered work programs with another 15 years I realized I myself was a lost cause, and my dreams was another’s delusion. In short the impact outweighed unintentional consequences.
The next part of this series was the fortunate experience of what many people like me were punished to go through; and a new decade to start anew but with complex challenges. That’s for another day.
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