Through the Eye's of a Spectrum Living With Autism

Chapter 3: A Spiral into Anxiety

This chapter is going to have a bunch of crazy unexplained answers in my life, so slap yourself awake and pay attention cause this is going to be good.

My family had just been given the word that we were moving back to El Paso, which was kind of great news for me. Now I know I said I was a little bit upset that I was leaving South Carolina, but like in the previous chapter, I was always crying because of the fact I was leaving my family behind in El Paso so I was so happy I was going to see them all again. I mean, I made some friends in South Carolina but truth be told, it didn't feel like home.

Funny thing is, when we left, it felt like the shortest trip of my life, I mean come on I was so excited to get back home. Soon enough we did, and it was time to find a new home. Sure enough we did and we moved into a nice looking cul-da-sac on the west side of El Paso right in front of Franklin High School. Really nice place and a nice backyard to play in.

However things didn't really look up for me once kind of got settle down in that place. My step-dad and my mom would start to constantly fight with each other. There would be constant arguing between the two every few days or so.

Then just like my mom and dad, they both ended up getting a divorce.

Yep, that's right. I've seen two divorce happen to my family. First with my official family, then my step family. What rotten luck, am I right?

So this led to us moving to these apartments on the mountain side of North El Paso right by transmountain. They were nice, the cool thing about them was that had a great view from the living room of North El Paso, it was so sweet.

When we moved here that's when I went to this school called Dolphin Terrace. I real fun school which my aunt actually worked.

Here's where some laughs come in this story, everyday after lunch, I would go to my aunts classroom and just hang out in there whether she was teaching or not. Man oh man, I must've bothered her so many times going into her class, but can you blame me, I'm anti-social and socially awkward. These are two things that should NEVER mix.

I did get along with some people, but at this point of my life which I believe I was eight or nine, my autism was really showing now. I was fidgeting a whole lot, I had a horrible time keeping eye contact with people, and let's not forget the whole trying to talk with other people. This felt like a never ending episode of fear factor, I had to do some of the things I feared the most.

My aunt introduced me to a very nice teacher down the hall of her class room. She saw a lof of potential in me saying that I was a nice and smart kid. She introduced me to her son who was a student there as well, and we would hang out a lot after school on the playground.

When i was nearly finished with the second grade me, my mom and my sister moved down to the east side of El Paso, and of course anxiety was hitting like a ton of bricks.

At this point I just couldn't handle it, every five or so months was us moving house to house to house. It was driving completely crazy. I never had time to just settle down in one area and just stay in one school, and I had to keep losing some of the friends I had.

Keep in mind, this was at the time there was social media but the only thing popular was myspace and I didn't know how to use it. And I bet almost eighty percent of you don't even remember myspace.

Back to the moving part, we moved in with one of my mom's friends which was close to a school called Myrtle Cooper, which would later be the school I would go to.

We stayed at this place for another few months and I got to say I possibly had the coolest room out of all the houses I lived in, especially for a kid my age at the time. I had a nice big room with a tv and my very own computer. Of course I wasn't allowed to go on it without permission but me i didn't care I would still use it so that I could keep myself at ease.

Now we get to the time I entered into myrtle cooper elementary, a school I would actually stick with and not move from in a few months. This school was whatever to me. It had its decent times, but the kids there were definitely complicated, and remember this sentence cause it's going to come up again in the future.

I had it real hard this time with my autism now. Get this, back then I didn't want to talk to people, now I just couldn't stop talking, the old switcheroo. Gosh I must've gotten on a lot of people's nerves.

But one thing I should definitely add was this was the period of my life that I could not make any friends, or if I did make any friends they certainly were a little mean to me. What I mean is, I feel some of the people were only nice to me because I had some of the things they wanted, but we will get more to that later on.

When attending this school things were definitely different for me, the students were pretty much trying to act like middle schoolers. Talking about drugs and dating at such an early age, I must've walked into the twilight zone. I could not for the life of me relate to these kids, I was just a boy who liked watching cartoons and playing video games. And ironically, this is what got me made fun of.

The bullying because of my autism did not come till about the fifth grade, but during third and fourth I was made fun of for watching cartoons and playing video games, that's right. The comments I would get from these kids were stuff like "That's stuffs for idiots and babies" or "you need to grow up and stop acting like a kid". Yeah, let that sink in and tell me what you think.

But I wasn't entirely innocent at that time. I kind of tried to act like all the other kids, but it was because I wanted to feel accepted and nit feel outcasted. And of course I would get in trouble and they wouldn't, they were pretty much pros at not getting caught.

But remember, we're just getting started, you've only heard about two percent of the story. There is more to come of this.