Through the Eye's of a Spectrum Living With Autism

Chapter 2: Moving States

So in my last chapter, I mentioned that I was about half way through 1st grade, I got word that I was moving to South Carolina. Before the questions start rolling in about where in South Carolina I moved to, let me just stop all of you reading and say I don't know where I moved to, I was about seven when this happened. But regardless, I moved to another state and my autism really got out of control, I had more panic attacks on the moves and I was really depressed, probably because I had to leave a lot of family members behind to live in a place that was completely unknown to me.

The reason for us moving was because of my step-dad, who was actually a border patrol, had been given a temporary transfer there, according to my mom. I was to young to understand at the time so I'm pretty sure that's why she didn't tell me. I've never sat in a car for that long in my life, especially with four people sitting in the back.

That's right! Me, my sister, step-sister, and step-brother had to sit in the back of our car crammed the whole trip. To go a little off topic, this wasn't just a one time deal, for the whole time my mom and step-dad were together, we all would cram in the back of the car and it was so uncomfortable. I mean just imagine how uncomfortable it is for a poor little boy being squeezed by three teens, It's not a fun thing.

Back to the story at hand, when we arrived to South Carolina, the whole world was a lot different to me. I was so used to seeing palm trees, gravel, cacti, and dirt. Now I saw grass, trees, sand, and a whole lot of sea. This was certainly not Texas. So when we got there, I noticed we drove through an area of where we lived, where the houses, let's just say were scattered and looked pretty run down.

We actually lived next to the ocean which was pretty cool cause we got to go and hang out on the beach when we first arrived. It was certainly an experience for me, being pushed and pulled by waves was something that was thrilling and exciting for me, but I'm pretty sure those words are the same. Whatever, anyway, back to the house, inside was complete garbage. We all slept on a couple mattresses for the night and all I could think was "Is this how I'm supposed to live my life like from now on?"

Thankfully, this was not true. I remember we moved from that crummy place into these apartment like houses. How can I describe, they were kind of like apartments, cause they were all small, but everyone who lived there had their own parking space under where they lived and we had three bedrooms instead of just one. I'm pretty sure someone will read this and give an answer, but nothing I can do about that. This place was cool and all, and surprisingly all of our furniture was there, so I had to guess our furniture was being moved to this place, so that's why we were stuck in that ugly old house for the night.

One thing I'm kind of embarrassed to write about is that while we lived in South Carolina, I could not stop crying about leaving Texas. My family didn't seem to understand why, and even as a young seven year old boy I knew for a fact they kind of wouldn't get it. You see, I only had family in Texas and no where else, so to leave everything behind just at the snap of a finger was almost impossible for me, and I have a higher than average memory which made me remember everything back home. I left my grandparents behind, my dad, my uncle, everyone and it was not something for to easily let go of. Eventually it went away a bit, but it was still festering inside me.

But back to the place we lived in, even though the place was nice and all, there was one problem to the place... spiders, lots and lots of spiders. See, I'm a little arachnophobic and I can't stand certain spiders. Luckily the worst we got were "daddy long-legs" knowing those spiders can't possibly bite you. I think there were so much because we lived near a little river and it was really moist there.

While we lived there, my older siblings came across these cool looking apartments that turned out to have a public access pool which gave us something to do sometimes. The pool was really big and it had this really long bridge of it that my step-brother loved to jump off of. I'm surprised he never got himself killed from that.

And a little something random, this is where I learned how to play Marco Polo. I know you don't care about that, so we'll just get back to the main story at hand.

We lived in those place for what I believe was about three weeks or so until we moved to a nice rural area, that was right by the sea. I'll tell you this, I was moving a lot in this place and it was not helping me. Every new place just bring me more stress, once I finally adapted to a place, we moved and then I had to adapt to a new area again.

The good thing about this place was that we settled down for the remainder of my stay there, so within a couple weeks I finally managed to cope with it.

About the time we moved there, it was finally time for me to head to head to school and finish my last half of 1st grade. The school was kind of strange and the kids were all different from what I was used to. They were all a little bit more aggressive and defiantly more out spoken, but the good thing about them was that they were a little more friendly surprisingly.

I even made my first friend there as well, too bad I can't really his name after all these years, which really bugs me. He was a whole lot of fun, he invited me to his house and we would play games together. When I found a friend who liked video games, it really made me feel a little accepted. Before I even knew I had autism, video games always felt like they were my gateway from the world and they bought me to a place where I felt like no one could really judge me. You see, even back then, I was still socially awkward and some kids would still see me as a weird person, so to find someone who shared my love for video games was a rare thing me back then.

The live in South California did come with not only a sudden realization, but something that has become a difficult thing for me to overcome even to this day, and that's my fear of Thunderstorms.

To give a little summary, It was a rainy day and I was upstairs in my room that I shared with my step brother and I could hear the rain outside pounding on the roof and window. Then out of nowhere, there was a loud bang of thunder and my house began to shake like crazy and I began to scream. Not due to the rocking but because the thunder was really loud.

It began to get louder and all I could do was cry and scream cause the noise began to hurt my ears. Even to this day I can not stand loud noises sometimes. I mean I've gotten better of holding my anxiety at bay in certain situations but it's still a constant problem that I've never told anyone until now.

When I finished 1st grade, the biggest shock in my life happened, we just got word from my mom that we were moving back to El Paso, which made me jump for joy. It was good to know I would be back to the city my whole family lived in, but of course it was hard for me to say goodbye to some of the people I made friends with in South Carolina.

But of course, it was another chapter that came to an end in my life. And speaking of chapters, now we come to the real struggle in my life: Realizing I was Autistic and learning to adapt.