Through the Eye's of a Spectrum Living With Autism

Chapter 11: Not a small School Anymore

As I continued through high school, things got a little easy for me, not just with learning, but with the kids around me.

Don't get me wrong, I still got teased and made fun of for what I did or how I acted, but some of the kids had the courtesy to leave me alone. There were a few times where I would be pushed to my limit and break down, but there was a good counselor there named Mr. Garcia who helped me out whenever he had the chance.

Rather than be like any other counselor who would most likely try to just calm you down or tell you "just stay away from them" Mr. Garcia would do whatever he had to just make sure these kids would leave me alone. He would set up special anti-bully speeches for classes and encourage others to stop bullying in the school. Although not many kids even paid attention to them, it felt good that he was there to lend me a hand.

And of course I had Brittany and David to help me out as well, but in a way, I felt bad always feeling a little down in front of them cause I felt like I shouldn't have them fight my battles for me. But they still helped me out through out it all and I appreciate everything they did to make me happy.

I think the worse I got it was in my gym class, that was the class I dread going to every day when I was in high school. You talk about being put in a class room full of idiots, this was a class filled with crazy, psychopathic jackals. These kids went haywire all over me, there was no way to avoid them.

Although I was getting back in shape thanks to Jenny, I was still little out of shape, so kids picked on me cause of how I looked. Don't get me wrong, it did get to me, but after a few days it began to ignore it, all it became was a annoyance that could be pushed away.

The gym teacher was a cool guy though, and he did make sure I had someone to hang out with during free time, which when we had we got to choose to do whatever sport activity we wanted. Sometimes we would play some basketball together which was a lot of fun.

And if it weren't for having to take P.E classes I would've never gotten to meet another person who would become a good friend of mine, her name was Jewlianna. She had come to Eastlake near the end of our first semester, and I guess she was new to El Paso cause her parents were military. I met and talked to her the first day she came into gym class and she was really sweet and nice.

She did seem a little shy around other students in the class, seeing as she was new to the school, I told her she would get used to them and sure enough she did. She began to talk with the others in gym and I was real happy. She began to make friends and we would hang out and make small talk every now and then. Truth is, at the time, I thought she deserved way better friend or friends than me seeing I was a pretty social awkward guy.

I know it seems like I'm putting myself down but to be honest I was quite a handful seeing as how my autism had still not developed yet. Besides, I would later hang out with her more with Brittany but that I'll talk about in another chapter.

When freshmen  year came to end, I began to think to myself a little. I was thinking of why I wasn't doing some of the things that high school students were doing those days. No, I don't mean idiotic things like smoking and drinking like a bunch of idiots, I mean stuff like going to parties or hanging out at places.

At this time, I began using Facebook and when I added certain people from my school, I saw them posting things of themselves hanging out with their friends and doing things like going out for drives, or having bonfires. I'll admit I was a little jealous of them, I mean here they are having a great time with all their friends and I'm stuck in my house watching YouTube videos and playing video games. Oh yeah, I had a blast.

I just kept thinking to myself why I wasn't doing some of things that I always wanted to do, when it hit me like a ton of bricks, I was communicating with anyone and asking to hang out. But how would I be able to, I mean my autism made it difficult form me to interact with other people so it would be a little challenging for me to do any of this.

So or course I began trying to improve my social skills once more, cause if I was going to stop kids from teasing me and talk to other kids I needed to make sure I improved my social skills.

When sophomore came, the school became a little more crowded because of the third class of freshman coming in. Now we had Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen in our school. This was a problem because of course of my sensory overload, I did not like being in crowds. I had to adapt to this and just grow used to it, which only took me a couple of weeks. But still to this day, I do not like being in large crowds.

And with the school having more students, construction on school began. Like I stated in a previous chapter, the school had not been fully constructed yet, so they began to build other parts of the school to connect to the gym and the Orchestra/Choir/Theatre building.

So this was pretty cool, cause I was watching as the school began to expand and if I was lucky I could be there to see it complete.

As I began sophomore year, things were pretty stable at times but nothing stays stable for long, because for everything that seemed to go good for me in high school there was always a problem waiting for me around the corner.