I’m Steven, a guy in his thirties who thought he was somewhat different to learn later, that later into my teens and twenties,I was reminded I was “the-other”. I lived and grew up in New Hampshire, the southern part for my entire life. I traveled around the rest of the United States, while this state has becoming more intolerable to live in, I still choose to stick and barely survive. I also know New Hampshire is more than just Salem, and there are people likely in harsher situations in where people think this state is, filled of moose and woods.
My autistic disorder is not an identity, but it has become somewhat of who I am. Ironically people are not flinching when I describe myself as “hopeless”. The URL and title of this blog acted as a warning sign if people didn’t pay attention to see the tears, but then reacted too late after hearing the cries.
I just want to be a lego minifigure and hide underneath a baseplate and not be seen anymore. I am already expecting that one one will save me. In the summer of 2024, I went into a deep depression and started to grieve my own future of my present misfortunes of the life I will never have.And I am ready to accept that challenge.
I was never into self-advocacy as a group, but more in into my day to day challenges in day programs for adults. As the system demanded me and my group to be in the community more and more, with the overall community (as well as the younger Millennial generation not understanding us) but yet I really do not relate to my group either. However self-advocacy at least in the last decade has gotten into politics, the state legislature, and overall politics. the messaging has gotten worse, and more and more voices are coming from other groups other than mine.
I feel as I became more open, that I knew I’d be a target. Most of autism in general since about 2020 has become more and more stigmatized than it was even before, and into 2023 and 2024 it’s now an non-discussed topic amongst the experts and clinical world, and that more and more people are intentionally misinformed.
While i have grown, others around me still write me off. I can’t change other’s views, I try to convince them gently and appropriately that people like me do not bite, and many of my group are not found dead in pools or places of water.
The present stage is feeling “hopeless” -and I have to pick myself up as if chose to be different. Because of the rise of ignorance, and the rise of politicizing disability, my role to this day is to turn down the temperature, turn up on the issues by having to deal with the elephant in the room that is the divisive political system of #NHPolitics. Speaking for oneself is not selfish per se, speaking over others, can be, of which I never did. Speaking up for yourself can be used as a weapon, and become a piñata, picking on people for their own gain at the price of your own existence.
I fear the rise of cynicism and overall distrust of any groups of people or policies leads to overall distrust in society. I talk in a more generalistic sense, but there are times I am specific, but do I lump people in, I sometimes do, because I did become so jaded from the little world around me that isn’t moose or mountains, but a suburan world of people who are glued to their phones, their egos, being irresponsible to their “freedoms”
As I enter in my late thirties, I see more and more politicization, singling out autistic males for being involuntarily celebrate, the legitimization of autism-parents having the official say to their autistic child, two of the three are plaguing my state.
I was never over-dramatic of the things I said, and I wanted to be wrong, but seeing the things in just 2024 alone, really says a lot about the future, that I alone can’t change, and other’s do not have a will and a way, because disabilities have now been used for political optics, leaving me to struggle for employment, relationships, etc because intentional misinformation and politicization.
This blog is for my part of the world to have a living record of what it was like, in the early to late oughts, to the twenty-teens to the complete hopeless chances in the 2020s. The whole purpose of the blog was warning signs of what not to do.
I just want to be a lego minifigure and hide underneath a baseplate and not be seen anymore. I am already expecting that one one will save me. In the summer of 2024, I went into a deep depression and started to grieve my own future of my present misfortunes of the life I will never have. And I am ready to accept that challenge.