#experience in a bar. they are so fucking loud for the autism and I don’t really like to dance much ect

[bigfishthemusical]

>_< ok whatever going with my friends to the gay bar to see a show and then we are staying out tomorrow night and I’m going to be so brave and after I’m finished I will become a recluse and not speak to a single person for an entire month. No one should perceive me ever.

[beerecordings]

if your still doing requests, can you do something of Autistic jackie being accepted even with his autism? I just need a pick me up. Today was rough. sorry if yiur not accepting requests. Feel free to ignore me if you arent. Sorry i didn't explain this the best.

Aww, of course I will try writing something for a friend who has had a rough day. Please remember though that I am not autistic, and I don’t like to write stories that are too much about Jackie’s experience - I tried to focus more on Jameson’s actions than Jackie, but I’m not sure exactly how it came off, so if I made a mistake, please correct me!! Also I wrote this in like twenty minutes so hope it’s good lol. That being said, hey, I hope you feel better soon :( let me know if you need anything, okay? You can always hit me up. I hope this helps at least a tiny bit. Love you, Nova.

“You don’t like it when I touch you, do you?”

Jackie stills, his body tensing.

He pauses the movie on the bed before them.

“I’ve noticed. I put my hand on your shoulder and you draw away. I grab your hand to get your attention and it’s like I stung you. You don’t hug anybody and no one hugs you.”

Jackie’s hands tug his zipper up, down. Up, down. Up, down. He can’t seem to meet Jameson’s eyes. He never does, really.

Jamie reaches out to set their hands close together, but does not touch, does not touch. Jackie nearly jerks back - and then, relaxes.

“It’s okay, of course,” Jameson adds quickly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply - ”

“Are you sure?” chokes Jackie, his voice shaking like Jameson’s never heard it shake before. Startled, his little brother stares up at him, worried now.

“Sure, course I’m sure. I didn’t realize… sorry, I didn’t realize it upset you this much.”

Jackie clears his throat and stares down at his hands, his eyes wet with tears. Distressed, Jameson clicks his tongue in a low, steady rhythm, soft and reassuring.

“Don’t want you to think I’m… I don’t know.”

Jackie sniffles and wipes at his face, doing his best to straighten up in his seat.

“Messed up,” he finishes roughly, biting down hard on his lip.

“Oh,” forms Jameson’s mouth, sympathetic now, gentle. “Of course I don’t… I would never…”

“I know, I know,” chokes Jackie, covering his face with his hands. “I know, you’d never, no one ever would, but they do, you know, they do, and I know I act - act wrong sometimes, you know? And I know it’s weird, and I’m sorry, if I could do all that stuff - hug you and touch your hand and stuff, if I could make you feel better I would but - ”

“No, it’s okay, it’s okay!” Jameson sits up, throwing off the blankets to kneel at his brother’s side, his hands demanding attention. “It’s not wrong just because it’s different!”

“And I have freak-outs and I cry like a kid and I hate it when anybody touches my stuff and I’m too loud, I know, I’m always too loud, and now I’m talking too much, I always talk too much, I’m really sorry, I’m really sorry, Jameson, I don’t mean - ”

“Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.”

It’s a steady, tangible sign. In, out. In, out. In, out.

And for a long time, they just… breathe.

Jackie’s rubbing the collar of his hoodie against his mouth. Running his hands along the soft fabric. The weight of it sits heavy and reassuring on his shoulders. He fixes his eyes on Jameson’s hands -

In, out. In, out. In, out.

- And he lets himself rock gently back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut, afraid to see his newest brother’s reaction.

Click, click. Jameson requests open eyes and Jackie obliges him, looking up to find his hands held up.

“Is it just skin?” he asks.

“Nnnhg.” Jackie grunts and shakes his head. Words are hard. He tries to sign instead. “Lots of feelings are bad.”

“But with touch, is it just skin, or should I not touch you at all?”

“Oh.” Jackie sits up straighter, rubbing at his reddened eyes. “Mostly just skin… sometimes I like the pressure of someone touching me through my clothes.”

Jameson nods, assessing.

And then he is pressing forward, just gentle, just slow, and he puts his warm heavy head on Jackie’s shoulder, and sits there, in silence.

“Like that?” he asks. “That would be okay? It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t make a difference, however is easy for you. I would never expect anything from you that makes you unhappy, of course.”

Jackie is smiling at him, his cheeks flushed. Fuck, but he loves this new kid, this new kid Jack gave him. Fuck, but he loves this kid.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, reaching out to flick a strand of hair out of Jamie’s eyes as he draws back. “That would be okay.”

“Just no skin.”

“No skin. No. But I love the pressure, with the weighted blankets and shit, sometimes I just want to be like - fucking crushed, dude. I just want like weight, like - yeah.”

Jameson regards him carefully, still considering. Three weeks old and already such a little professional, such a little friend.

He gets to his feet and darts out of the room.

Startled, Jackie blinks after him. Did he scare him off after all? He didn’t mean - he wasn’t trying to - he just wanted -

And then Jameson is scampering back, a big smile on his face, and Jackie bursts into laughter to see him absolutely covered in every blanket he could yank out of the laundry cupboard, including an extra bed cover, and then he is plowing into his big brother and tackling him onto the mattress, giggling as Jackie yelps and reaches up to grab him, squeezing at his sides through the blanket and flipping him over to pin him down, shoving his face into the blankets up close to Jamie’s face and nuzzling in close, close, laughing and tickling him and throwing him back onto his chest, so that Jameson is one huge soft weight strewn across his stomach and shoulders, heavy and comforting and whistling out a melody of reassurance, smiling at Jackie.

“So like this,” he double-checks, scooting up higher on Jackie’s chest. “This is okay for you.”

Jackie’s laughing too hard to speak. “Yeah,” he nods, rubbing at his face, squishing Jameson’s arms beneath the bed covers. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Jameson grins, self-satisfied, and curls up better on Jackie’s chest, grabbing the laptop from the edge of the bed and pulling it close, so they can both see. “Good. Finish the movie with me?”

“Mm-hmm,” grins Jackie, beaming at him. “Yeah, good, finish the movie with me. We haven’t even see Frodo get caught yet, we got a while to go.”

“Hey! Spoilers!”

“Oh, don’t you pinch at me!”

“Don’t you pinch at - ow! Jackie!”

“Haha, such a little dork.”

“Just hit play! Ow!”

He laughs again and squishes JJ close, pressing the space bar and snuggling down in their blankets as the two little hobbits continue their way up the stairs. He feels warm, and not just cause he’s got a little brother and a mountain of blankets on top of him. And maybe it’s just skin, maybe it’s just the way that they touch, maybe it’s just one tiny accommodation for a single topping in the sundae bar of presentations that Jackie always feels like someone else loaded up for him, but fuck - fuck, he’s glad this kid is here, pressed up to his chest, like the only thing that matters is this - Here is my brother, and here is the best way to show him I love him.

“I love you,” says Jackie. He can feel his heartbeat if he holds him close enough. “I love you, Jameson.”

Jameson nods sleepily, tucked back against his chest, smiling. “Love you too,” he says, in signs Jackie learned just for him, and he’s grown to understand that the emphasis with which he signs the words is special, is certain, is true.

They’re both understanding each other better every day.

[ribbit-zar]

Same violence, different place

The last few days made me realize how fucked up every single country is , and pay no mind I know that America ( the politics and government) is rotten since the day I was born, it’s something well spread in my country due to our horrible past experiences and ongoing struggle ( no, I’m not from Iran, the US fucks up more countries that just Iran ).

What I’m about to say may sound insensitive or triggering for some people, but please, try to think from my shoes , my perspective and consider it thinking out loud- because it is: I’m just sharing my thoughts since I felt this needed to be shared.

Ever since the BLM movement started I was shocked day by day at how fast it spread worldwide like a tidal wave, and I was happy yet at the same time concerned since if it spread so much that means that those protests in all of those countries stem from the same unfair treatment, take Brazil as an example, the president is slandering the protestors, threatening to prosecute them and calling them thugs just like Trump did, and what’s worse is that he’s dealing so badly with the corona pandemic he’s threatening to withdraw from the WHO . I mean wtf?

Yet what is making me write this is an incident that happened around the time George Floyd’s murder occured, it was the cold blooded shooting of an autistic young boy by police on his way to his special needs school. You haven’t heard have you? Of course. Again not that Back lives movements don’t matter , it’s just that there has been the same thing going on for the past 60 years, yet no one made a movement this big against it- not that I’m blaming anyone, it’s understandable since shamelessly Arabs who are supposed to be the first one to take action are not and if they are , it is only a small part of the arab world, and sometimes ironically non-Arabs are the ones who are protesting more that the actual Arabs, and I thank them.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/jun/05/israeli-police-killing-of-palestinian-leads-to/

I’m talking about palestini kid Eyad Al-Hallaq and many many others who are killed daily, young kids shot brutally by Isreali forces on their way or back from school. If you google ‘Palestinian kid shot’ you will get news upon news, all articles posted DAILY, which share the same injustice like black people all around the world. Don’t get me wrong , I’m very very happy that people are speaking up! Fighting for justice! And do you know why I’m happy? Since finally America’s government has shown to the world it’s real ugly face, the hate and violence it is built upon .

If you follow Palestinian news ( like I do) and then see the police violence happening in America, you would not be able to ignore the barring similarity between their movements and way of choking the protest, and turns out my and many others doubts were met with the truth that many police forces are actually trained by a HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATOR Isreal

https://peoplesworld.org/article/israeli-forces-trained-cops-in-restraint-techniques-at-minneapolis-conference/

If this link doesn’t satisfy you as evidence, search for your own source as this issue was brought up in 2017 then again today as police brutality and ‘knee-on-neck’ move was high-lighted as a signature Isreali police move against Palestinians.

The whole point from my train of thought that I’m trying to convey is that: it has always been two main great evils in the world :the Isreali and American governments, where one terrorizes the middle east and the latter the world. I’m not denying that Russia, China or North Korea are not great evils, but they are not the greatest. It all stems back to the hate culture which Isreal is built on and America supports ( again, as governmet) and so we have come back to the same two main enemies in the Palestinian and black lives case, I’m not denying that each country is horrible in it’s own territory, but when you look at the bigger picture and political forces leading the world, you can see that these acts of hate only exist since there are instigators , and big ones as well, which are two entire world forces that flaunt this. Again: China and Russia also have great racism against many immigrants and races, but they don’t flaunt it or publicize it, which is bittersweet in it’s own way : bitter since this injustice is hidden and it is then the worse kind of injustice and sweet since it is hidden this action doesn’t spread and isn’t ’normalized’.

I might have gone off topic and ran around in circles in the my rant, but I hope that at least you take the good stuff from this text and open your eyes to what is happening all around the world since, as hard as it is to believe ALL related.

[scato006-blog]

Searching for a title and feedback.

New to this, would appreciate any feedback. 

All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2019 Stephanie Catozzi

My mother’s hand squeezes around my infantile one, small, petite, and plump even for a 12-year-old. I feel the cold, hard shaft of the metal handle, the gun weighty in my hand. My mother’s breath, laced with Bacardi rum and stale Marlboro lights, coaches me to squeeze harder, my tiny fingertips biting under the pressure and turning light purple at the tips from being held so forcefully.

“You have to hold it like you mean it, steady.” She coaches.

“I don’t want to,” I whine, almost silently.

               The wind kept biting my plump cheeks, and I felt my legs, bare in the November air, tingling and pocking with cold bumps.

               This has become a routine, my mother getting intoxicated or high, and taking a sudden interest in her children and choosing the worst time to suddenly teach us some life skills. My brother, with his autism, is too heady a project to undertake. So, it is me, who at 11 pm is hauled from my kitten covered sheets and dragged outside for an impromptu lesson on protecting myself, undoubtably due to some loosely based on a true story Lifetime network film where a girl, most likely Tori Spelling, is victimized.  

               Thankfully, she loses interest surprisingly fast this time, and when she loosens her grip on my hand, I am able to wrestle past her, knocking her to one knee as she curses and I bolt back into my bed and lock the door. She staggers in and pounds for several moments, calling me names, before I hear her door shut and know she has passed out.

My mother hasn’t been quite right since my father died. I see her leaving often to doctors’ offices, complaining of ailments ranging from pains to depression and anxiety disorders. Her pills litter the tops of our 80’s style maroon kitchen counters; every consistency you can imagine from syringes to tiny multicolored capsules. In the mornings, we see her guzzling down the liquid medications, never using the tiny, clear ridged top that is supposed to serve as a barbie sized measuring cup. Instead, she uses that as a pseudo lid when she gets too inebriated to remember where she put the child proof cap the pharmacist carefully clicks into place. Her arms are littered with pock marks from needles. Some self-inflicted and some from all the blood draws ordered by her physicians. She has become obsessed with this idea of teaching us how to protect ourselves since my father passed. Which later I will realize is terribly contradictory, since the basis of most our inflictions come from her blatant negligence.

               It isn’t until I start having sleepovers with girls outside my neighborhood that I will realize this isn’t a normal occurrence. I spend time with girls whose parents bake them cinnamon buns in the morning slathered with extra crystalline icing, whose mothers collect little figurines cased in glass cabinets without fingertips smeared on them and father figures who go off to work, kissing cheeks instead of backhanding them like the other dads in my neighborhood would do. It’s a foreign world to me, and oddly, it makes me surprisingly uncomfortable to be in such a serene environment. Almost mundane as wild as that may seem to some. Beige. I always notice this common color scheme in these safety net homes, everything was always varying shades of beige from the carpets to the placemats to the sheets. Beige everywhere.

               In the morning, it’s as if nothing has happened, as she bustles around the kitchen getting my brother’s routine down to match the Velcro pictured descriptions that are supposed to help with his over stimulation. I can tell there is something tangible and tense in the air, the blatant ostracizing of me from our tiny family unit. I will learn later that it is due to embarrassment over her own actions, but in the moment from my young perspective, I have somehow failed her.

I gather my things, my teal Jansport backpack smeared with pen marks and patches, and dig in the back cabinet, shoving expired bags of chips and soup out of the way to find a long lost granola bar and walk out the door, pausing before turning the silver knob to look back slightly out of my peripheral at my mother to see if she pauses at the sound of me leaving. She doesn’t.

The bus stop holds a sense of comfort for me, knowing that I will be headed to the one safe institution I have in my young life, school. There are rules, teachers, consistency, and scheduled mealtimes. I know what is coming and when. I know what is expected of me and it isn’t laced with alcohol and substances, or parties in my home with strange men who grab in places they shouldn’t and burn your arms with their cigarettes when you try to yell in protest for someone who is too inebriated to come to your rescue.

Teacher’s take special interest in me, I must exude some sense of chaos at home, my behavior is mildly disruptive with chattering to my fellow neighboring classmates, often causing my desk to be moved adjacent to the teachers to curve my “social butterfly” antics.

Years later, I will run into my favorite English teacher, Ms. Mueller, and she will subtly hint at the signs of abuse she saw from my rumpled clothes to my bruised arms and vacant expression from exhaustion. She will tell me of a time she went to my mother’s store, at the height of our home tsunami during my high school years, and the words heatedly exchanged between them. From that point on, in school, before I have this knowledge, I will choose to spend an hour every day after school with her and be exposed to various forms of literature. She will bring books with her and give me deadlines throughout the year, hoping to keep me driven and expand this world I escape to through books.

Oddly enough, my thirst for books came from the very person I was trying to escape.

In fifth grade I had a teacher I absolutely loathed. It was truly, the first person I had a deep hatred and resentment for. I remember the feelings of rage and a craving for the demolition of our high-ceilinged classroom. Ms. Symzick was a small, petite woman who would prance around her classroom in various shades of loud pinks and magenta, shouting in her irritatingly shrill, chalkboard scraping screeching voice. She had a serious inclination to class favorites, and those favorites tended to be the children of affluent parents she co-vacationed with in the Bahamas and Jamaica, frequently referencing scuba diving explorations and inside jokes she had created with the kids poolside while they showed off their attempts at underwater hand stands. She accused my indifferent attitude towards her and my inability to pay attention to her reading “out loud” to the class on comprehension issues. My mother responded, in typical Tammy fashion, and greeted me that afternoon with a stack of VC Andrews books. Her philosophy was that I needed something to read that could hold my attention in a mildly traumatizing way. Make the book risqué enough for me to care, and it would cure my non attentive approach to active listening. It certainly worked.

While my classmates were reading books about bridges crossing into Terabithia to conquer exciting pretend lands, I was obsessed with mentally trying to connect the incest family trees of wealthy families stuck in attics, toiling away pasting together paper flowers to create gardens. I craved reading about these fucked up families, and was elated to find that not only where the books thick with small font which meant they lasted longer than my classmates small flirtations with literature, but they also were in series so I could follow these families for generations. I would blow through a book a day if it was the weekend, absorbing finally, every comma and black small printed letter flowing into my mind through an osmosis of obsessive reading.

I sit next to Holly and hold her hand under our jackets in solidarity. Holly has the same house as I do, which is baffling and comforting for my young mind. Her brothers shout and throw things in their drunken rages, blaming their parents for their adult failures and losses of custody over children. Her father sits on the couch, sleeps on the couch, drinks on the couch, argues from the couch, he exists on the couch, never intervening. When he would winded from yelling, he would clutch a small, metal vile necklace he always wore. I would learn later it contained a single pill that would melt under his tongue because he was prone to panic attacks from his time in the military.

Holly will sneak into my room, late in the night, when things get bad and she climbs into my bed, cold hands and feet pressed against my calves for warmth. She rustles under my sheets and presses her perfect little bud lips against my cheek and snuggles into my neck and falls asleep fast, just as our thermostat registers the drop in temperature from the window being pried open for her to come in and the furnace clicks on, as always, I fling my leg out from under the blankets, so as to not wake Holly and soak in some cool air as her body heat radiates against my own. I love her and want to protect her, as she is the only one who has ever expressed a kindred likeliness to what I experience behind closed doors. She protects me as well, when my mother opens the door slightly to see if I am awake or when she is under the influence ready for another “life lesson,” she will always close the door and slither away when she sees Holly’s body next to mine.

Holly knew about these moments, in the dead of night when my mother would make her way into the room. She was the one who saw the handprint makes in shades of black and blue, purple then fading to yellows and lime greens. She would take my arm, and lay her hot, brown palm slowly and softly on top of the blue and purple marks so gently, brushing the tops of the soft baby arm hair then would turn over, as if nothing had happened. It was the act of acknowledging, that would transition into acts of protection. She knew if she was there, those marks wouldn’t appear. Holly became an ever-present staple in my life, it was truly as if she was holding me together, fastening my frayed edges to keep them from being burned by my mother and faceless men’s lighters.

This is my day to day, and night to night. The seeking of comfort in concrete things and people outside my home and struggling to find a purpose outside of myself.

Years pass, the same abuses remain constant, even after the school nurse contacts my mother over concerns she has when she sees my bandaged fingers from a screaming hot iron. The difference is the older I get, the more I learn to fight back, slick mouthed and learning to block hands quickly with forearms. I develop the internal switch, for numbing and hardening emotions to dispel any sense of misery or hopelessness, I don’t allow myself to be vulnerable around her and show any form of pain or exaggerated anger. I treat her with complete indifference, which in her drunken, high moments causes absolute meltdowns. Her emotional levels skyrocketing due to inebriation, and my disconnect growing more profound with each outburst. I start to want more, more than these walls and house. I want to sleep peacefully, quietly, and safely. A concept I had never visualized for myself that I thought was coveted for children with two parents and yards without brown spots and littered with dog feces.

I sit, at 15, in my English class, the scared space I have carved out for myself. Ms. Mueller, walks past, having just kicked Gary out of class for shouting at her.

“Dyke gave me a F,” he rages after we are returned our midterm grades.

“Out!” Ms. Mueller declares, stunning me at how she so gracefully and passively dismisses him and his hate slurred words.

As she passes back to her desk, I feel a blue piece of paper get slid under the flesh of my forearm. I slide it under my notebook, I can tell through its delivery, she doesn’t want me to attract any attention through receiving it. She looks pointedly at me, and when the bell rings I rush out to see what it is she has slipped me.

She knows I am not happy with her today. Ms. Mueller detests Holly. There is this just under the surface acknowledgement that they don’t address one another, ever. Holly feels Ms. Mueller is trying to come between us and take time I should be spending time with her and instead am choosing to spend it reading, which is the most boring thing in Holly’s mind. Oddly enough, Holly has detention or make up tests almost every day after school, so her time wouldn’t be spent with me regardless. Holly is known to have her behavioral issues, shouting at teachers and authority figures much in the same fashion as her older brothers do to her and her parents. It is a cycle that has already began its inheritable rotation.

               “She’s not good for you, you have too much inside you for that one.” Ms. Mueller had told me suddenly, interrupting me reading silently beside her while she worked on the summer reading list for the class, and my own which had easily an extra fifteen books added to it. At the time, I didn’t really understand what it was she meant.

“Too much inside me? What the hell?” I thought. I glared defiantly at the top of her head, wishing I had the nerve to reach out and rustle her short, cropped hair out of its artfully tousled with hair paste landscape just out of spite. She didn’t look up, nor acknowledge my anger filled face, and after some time I set my mouth in a taught line and kept reading. Leaving that day without saying a word when our hour was up.

I open it up and see it’s a flyer, for some summer program called Upward Bound and kids interested in colleges. I had never imagined myself being on some pristine collegiate campus. That was also reserved for the cinnamon bun kids whose parents showed up to every sporting event, cheering them on from the sidelines and pumping their fists in the air, visualizing college scouts coming with hefty scholarships and grants. Not for me, who begged for rides to and from practices, relying on my grandparents for transportation sparsely, so they wouldn’t see the state of our house. My mother would always get angry when her parents came to drop us off, always insisting on coming in to survey the

damage in the house from holes in walls to dirty dishes crawling with critters and cats licking dirty pans for burned egg pieces.

I folded the flyer in half and hastily shoved in under my stack of books on the bottom self in the locker I share with Holly. I am always the bottom shelf, to take my lacking height into consideration. She can’t see it; she will lose her mind. I know this, our codependency has blossomed into a full relationship of unhealthy proportions, two emotionally crippled humans attempting at something far too adult.

I wait, as always, for her to come meet me briefly, and she does. Angry brown eyes, jet black hair, browned skin from her native American heritage, and slanted eyebrows. I forgot she was angry with me from this morning when I pulled my hand away from hers when Kim snatched the jacket up that hid our weaved fingertips.

“Mr. Mason is such an asshole,” she huffs slamming her books in the locker, standing on her tip toes to launch them to the back where we hear them ding as they hit the metal back.

“What happened?” I ask, gauging her temperance to see where we are at. Holly drives the emotional state of our relationship; she being the more volatile of the two of us.

“He gave me detention for missing all that homework,” she huffed as she slammed the locker shut. “I just want school to be done already, I hate it.”

I watched her stalk off, wordless, now definitely wasn’t the time to broach the subject of an academic summer camp that focuses on colleges. Holly was not interested in anything remotely studious, let alone something that would separate us for an entire summer.

I watch her turn the corner of the light seafoam green colored hallways, waiting until I can be sure she is completely out of sight before slamming my elbow into the door right above the turn lock, causing it to pop open, a little trick Tommy showed me last year when he had this locker. I hop up on the toes of my sneakers and grab the flyer out from my Roman History classes textbook.

It is in that moment; I realize I don’t want to stay closeted with Holly and hide holding hands. I don’t want to stay in a home I feel constantly threatened in, showing all the scars on my skin and inside of my flesh. I don’t want to be stuck slinging burgers at the diner down the street, or as a cashier at the grocers. I don’t want to struggle against the New England seasonal depression of grey skies to salt crusted and frost heaved roads. I don’t want to be tied to this place where I feel like a hamster on a spinning wheel, never moving forward and back, just in one constant place.

The flyer announces the meeting is today, in Ms. Mueller’s classroom of course, but an hour after we usually meet. I know Holly has detention, so if there was ever a time I could go and take a glance at what this whole thing is about, it is today when she will be occupied for a definite set amount of time.

I watch the clock anxiously for the last two periods, bouncing my leg in anticipation, choosing to focus more on the seconds hand than the other two since it moves at such a faster pace. Holly isn’t in my last two classes; they are AP and she is sequestered into the more remedial ones where they mostly watch movies instead of getting lectures from young teachers who still feel they can make a difference and impact our lives.

Ms. Mueller is at the door, leaning against it with her arms crossed, her cuffs folded up at the elbow, creased slacks and pointed shiny ebony dress shoes, almost as if she was waiting for me. Now that I look back, I think she was.

“Well here she is, take a seat.” She gestures to the open door.

I look in and see every seat is filled mostly with kids from other schools and a couple familiar faces of girls I have barely exchanged two words with. I slide into a seat near the door, resolving that if I need to make a quick getaway, I will at least have an easy shot to the door. Ms. Mueller positions her chair in the doorway; it’s like she can sense what I am thinking and gives me another one of her pointed stares.

A young man with a lot of vigor and energy and radiant brilliantly white smile bounds up to the front of the room. I will learn almost immediately that his name is Craig when he finally stops bounding around and announces who he is, that he went to Bates College, and dives into a lengthy description of what Upward Bound really is. There are other individuals up there as well, all standing in a line with various colleges strewn on their tee shirts and sweatshirts: Colby-Sawyer, Keene State, UNH, Plymouth State, are some of the names I spot.

The program is a six-week summer session that focuses on preparing students for college and even offers opportunities to take college level classes that can be accredited. Six weeks on a college campus, right in my hometown, sleeping in the dorms, going to classes, they even offer sporting events and excursions to local spots for day trips. It sounded too good to be true.

I looked around the room and saw most of the kids had that same look as I did, clinging to every word. “Give me an escape, please. Tell me I won’t fall through the cracks and be left right here where I started.” Their faces all seemed to say.

Craig took the basic Q&A after his dialogue of wonderous academia enchantment and promise, everyone asking the same things I was wondering. I wouldn’t raise my hand and attract attention to myself, no way.

I saw her then, Jodie, sitting with her hand up to ask more about the sporting opportunities offered, field hockey specifically. She sat with her blonde hairspray scrunched hair, long eyelashes and friendly, wide open blue eyes. I was amazed at how drawn I was to her instantly, like she was the bright glinting Christmas tree of hope in contrast to Holly’s darkness and shadowing pessimistic outlook on life and humanity. There was also this underlying feeling emanating from her. She was wearing adidas snap pants and her field hockey jacket, I knew without knowing, I knew she had the same attraction to females as I did. When Craig answered her question to her satisfaction, Jodie thanked him, and I saw her sign the sheet to enroll and receive more information. I watched that sheet for the rest of the presentation and when we were wrapping up, Ms. Mueller caught me at the door, the sign sheet in her fingertips.

“You forgot something,” she stated, a black pen in her other hand, held out to me.

I stepped aside, opening my mouth to let out a string of excuses, all based in fear and simultaneously worried that if I failed at this camp, I would disappoint her.

“Don’t.” She held up her palm that held the pen. “Sign the paper.”

I realized in that moment; this was my chance. I was on the edge of something, a choice. I knew what I would lose, and I quickly sobered to the reality that what I stood to lose, didn’t outweigh what I had to gain.      

So I made the choice, to take a chance, put the pen to that blue paper, and signed my name, choosing to take that chance, choosing something so much bigger for myself than I could have ever imagined and taking the first step to end the cycle that would have ensnared me just as it did many others. It even would claim Holly in the end, leaving her to browning pine trees, closeted and affairs in secrecy, the shame and impending alcoholism, cursing from her couch just as her father did.

[clusterfuckautism]

Hi! So my first post here...

I’m making this blog for a few reasons; I wanna be more open and positive with my autism; I wanna learn more about mine and other autistic experiences; and I need a safe space to vent so so badly.

Today I had an awful day. To be blunt, most of it I spent in a brain fog, crying and lying in bed motionless. I just feel so shit and useless because my job is taking everything out of me. I work 5 days a week, usually 8-10 hour, shifts behind a bar in a pub. So that means I’m constantly socialising, scripting, sometimes it’s really loud and I have to deal with customers being assholes. I feel like a naive baby but sometimes it’s too much for me.

I really feel like I need to do something else, I’ve been there for nearly a year and a half and I’m miserable. On the surface it probably looks like I’m coping well, I’m being trained on more skills and I’m working efficiently but when I go home I feel so wiped out that I can’t do anything else with myself other than recuperate. Sometimes I can handle getting some things done like seeing a friend/family, walking the dog, doing laundry but never consistently and usually to the detriment of some other task/need. 

My problem is I’m terrified of change and I feel like I would be losing out on so much if I quit; my income (I live at home so not too urgent but that’s another post entirely); my friends there; and my routine. I just want to do something with myself that makes me happy and doesn’t leave me feeling exhausted and depressed, but I don’t know what the fuck else I would do. I don’t want to go from one taxing job to the next. I just wish I could be told what I would be good at so I could get on with it. I feel like I’m going nowhere with my life, I feel like it’s not worth living.

I have a past of appearing to be coping well and excelling at something (mostly school/college situations) but really cracking underneath and eventually falling into a hole and not being able to do anything. I realise looking back that I was dealing with autistic burnout and I really don’t want it to happen again but I don’t know what to do. I want to be independent and support myself but I can’t and I feel useless and I hate it and myself.