Of all the obstacles I’ve faced in the world, the biases, attitudes, and assumptions of others have hindered my progress and held me back the most. This has been true for me both before and after my NeuroDivergent awakening.
Throughout my life, there have been frequent assumptions about what I couldn’t do and could do, and I have been punished, mocked, shunned, and scolded when I fell short of those expectations.
The other kids knew I was different, and so did my teachers.
It started when I was very young, in elementary school, when my peers first saw me as “other,” mocking, bullying, teasing, harassing, and even striking me because I was (to them) “odd,” “strange,” “wired,” and “a freak.”
I tried to “tell an adult” about my bullies. However, my teacher was no help. Apparently, (according to my teacher) if I wanted the other kids to leave me alone, I should simply “act normal” (something I didn’t know how to do). My teacher said that if I changed my behavior, the other kids would leave me alone.
What did she mean by “act normal“? From my perspective, my actions were perfectly normal.
While my teacher’s definition of “normal” alluded me (and she wasn’t amused by me asking what she meant by “normal“), one message came through to me loud and clear:
The teacher would not intervene to stop my bullies because my teacher believed the bully’s actions were a justifiable reaction to “my behavior” and that I disserved what they were doing to me. My bullies would not be punished or asked to change their behavior, and I was assigned “blame” for triggering others to react badly to me. This moment started my life on a dark path.
From that moment on, I believed wholeheartedly that if I wanted to be treated kindly by my peers, I needed to change myself to be worthy of their kindness (a message that became wedged and twisted within me).
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