I know that’s a wild statement to make so just let me explain because I don’t know where else to say this. But I do wholeheartedly believe it. Generally being kept in a building without any means of communication to those you love with a bunch of loud, mean people you didn’t like and being forced to do things you didn’t want to do would sound pretty bad, let alone for an autistic kid. Which I was. Undiagnosed. And for ten long years I put up with the noises, the people, the lights, the expectations, the burnout, the panic attacks, the separation anxiety, the bullying.
And boy the separation anxiety was so bad. I used to cry and shake for hours my first years in school. It was so bad my teachers knew me as the kid who wouldn’t stop crying for her mom and who had violent breakdowns if left without an adult. And they just let me cry. For hours. For years. Til exhaustion crept in and I went through a depressive episode at the age of 9. I have never been so utterly miserable. I would’ve done anything to get out of school. Anything.
So then of course I hated the kids who didn’t go to school. Whether it was mental illness or whatever I didn’t care, I just hated them. Misplaced jealousy and anger, I guess. Til this day it makes me squirm if someone tells me they didn’t go to school or were homeschooled because the desperate pain starts bubble up again and I can’t stop it. I just change the subject nowadays. But when I was a kid I would cry. And cry. I mean, how is an 8 year old supposed to comprehend that the living hell they were in was avoidable for some, but not for her. It translates to the conclusion that you just weren’t worth saving from it all.
In high school I fell into some…bad habits in an attempt to get people to realize just how sick and miserable I was. And they noticed. But they didn’t do anything. They pat me on the back and told me to go on. I had no will to live. And a bunch of scars that served as no help whatsoever to my condition because my teachers didn’t care and my parents didn’t understand the extent. I wanted out and I cried and begged desperately for it because I was just so miserable but it didn’t do anything.
So I graduated eventually. Began higher education. Left with hyper vigilance, memory gaps, panic attacks and imposter syndrome. It could’ve been prevented. School traumatized me.
I am 16 years old now, going on 17. I’m still in education, of course. But I feel nauseous when going the same routes I used to take to school, I wake up sweating and shaking from nightmares about my experiences, and I still feel my stomach drop when I see people that look like my bullies. I am better now but I will die on this fucking hill because YES. School is traumatizing, or it can be. It fucked me up in my formative years and I will never have normal stress responses. I am screwed over because my brain was spending all its time on either dissociating from the stress or repressing what it couldn’t handle. I have been in therapy. They came to the conclusion that I have complex childhood trauma, partially from everything I’ve just described. So if you’re like me, just know that I see and I hear you. You’re valid.