(Warning: This blog is a long and depressing one. It mentions ableism, self-ableism, self-harm [but it’s not too graphic], swearing and some Total Drama: All Stars spoilers. So, please take care before reading on.)
Just a few weeks ago, I wrote in my one of my blog about my struggles of growing up autistic, the time I masked in high school when I was living in Germany and that by the 12th grade, I had a mental breakdown that led me in a brief dark period of my life. Now, today marks the 10th anniversary since I reached the climax of that period. It’s not a pretty one as I admit some of the things that happened, which lead to the breaking point, was my fault for not being responsible in the first place. That’s after spending the last 3 years in high school of doing work, but not too much work that will drain my energy. Just for it to come crashing down on my face and I blamed myself for it.
Now you’re wondering what even happened in the 12th grade that lead all to this; let me tell you, my friend on why I hated my last year in high school so much.
At the start of the school year in August 2013, I knew there will big changes occurring. I’ll be graduating in 9 months, my family is going to move back to the States shortly after (as my mom’s contract for working for the military as a civilian contractor is about to end around the same time I graduate) and that I need to think about my FUTURE! Yes, my future on what I want to do after leaving school.
Thankfully, I already had plans for that: go to university and get my Bachelor’s Degree in architecture since I enjoyed taking the Architecture Drawing class in the 11th grade and that I like to design and make layouts of buildings and houses. Then there’s the fact that I’m going to take two advanced classes since I did well in AP US History (despite getting a 2 on the AP Exam that I took in May 2013…) in the 11th grade. So, I need to study real hard for not only those 2 classes, but also study the SAT, so I can get a good score that I use to increase the chances of me getting picked in my prefer university!
And that’s where the some of the problems started.
As I mention in that blog above, I never liked to study as I tend to “ace it” and hope for the best. I know some of you who took these advanced classes are screaming at me, saying “why you would do that?” and “that you’ll never make it that far in university, if I continued to do that?”! I totally agree with you with me not liking to study (which sadly continued in university and it wasn’t until I transferred schools and switched my major, is when I finally got out of that habit) and that I should know better.
But the problem is that every time I get home from school, I immediately go straight to my room and NAP as I spend the entire day, masking in order to hide my autism from the neurotypical students at my school due to my fear of getting bullied. Then after I wake up, I tend to do other things, such as eat, browse Facebook and the Internet and daydream about what my OCs are up to. Of course, I did my homework, wrote the essays and do the projects for my classes, as I should. But study? You can forget about that!
While in past, my little effort in studying didn’t hurt my grades that much; but by late September, I end up with 2 Ds’ on my school gradebook site and mom was getting suspicious on why. Like when I was first accepted to take AP World History at the end of the 9th grade, I was the only student with an IEP (Individualized Education Program) at my high school, to get accepted in taking an advance class. So she, my case manager and some of the teachers, had meetings to see how the IEP can accommodate me, in hope I won’t fail. It looks like those accommodations are starting to fail me and mom wants to know why. I couldn’t tell her it’s because I never like to study and hope that I did well in the tests.
This was because to me, I was the “golden child” who never gets in trouble at school and that I have the fear of rejection and embarrassment, anytime I do anything wrong. It was mainly because my oldest niece (who has been living with us since I was 8 years old) tends to get in trouble, a lot. No matter if it happened at school or home, she would always get yelled by mom, which both annoy and scare me as I don’t want to end up like her. It didn’t help that my niece’s mom (my older sister), got in trouble, growing up as well. This caused mom to start worrying that my niece was about to become like her mom. So, I had to be the “perfect role model” for both my niece and mom, since my older sister failed to do.
Such as during my last year in high school, along with not doing (and forgetting to do) her homework and being messy, my niece was starting to get in trouble in the 6th grade for cutting class, which it’s a big no-no if you go to a DODEA school. That’s because if you get in trouble in either school, on base or out in the local economy, your parents will get in trouble too as it’s a privilege to live overseas and the military can’t have their employee’s child go loose like that. And if it continued to be like that, they’ll basically end your contract sooner than plan and you’ll be forced to move back to the States. So to have mom stress out that my niece might be the reason we’re moving back to the States, a few months early because of her behavior is bad; but seeing me failing some of my classes all the sudden? That’s not good.
I know that if you mess up real bad, that when she starts yelling at you as she’s one of the people who can’t stand bullshit and I HATE IT when she yells! It increases my anxiety whenever I hear her yell at my niece for having a messy room and calling her a pig. I never like seeing mom mad, no matter how bad things are and that it tend to leave her in a bad mood. So in order to not make her mad, I try to do anything to please her and stay on her good side.
Such as one time on our trip to Prague, Czechia in October 2013, mom was in a bad mood the entire time as my niece got into deep trouble in school right before the trip. She told me right before we left, that she even thought about cancelling the trip because my niece doesn't "deserve" it! It got worse when we were coming back home and everyone left the tour bus for a rest stop; she yelled and scolded at my niece for being a terrible person! And the entire time mom yelled at my niece, I was sitting next to them when the conservation happened and couldn’t leave! It was a tense trip and had a miserable time because of that.
Going back to before, I was worried that if mom found out the real reason why my grades were slipping, she would chew me out and cause her to yell at me, which I would end up having a meltdown over it. But mom doesn’t like it when I have meltdowns as she’ll scold me for crying, saying that I’m too old for that! So in order to keep her calm, I would tell her it was because of stress and that I would study hard and get help as needed.
I didn’t and my grades for the 2 classes continue to slip to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore. By the end of October, I decided to drop out (I have to have a special meeting with my case manager and some of my teachers over it) as I couldn’t handle those classes for some reason. Like I did well in my AP World History and AP US History, but why not those 2 advanced classes? What I didn’t know at the time was it mainly due to suffering from burnout from the having barley any support in those classes and the teachers there, didn’t do anything about it!
So great, I had to drop the 2 advanced classes and is forced to take regular classes now! So now, I’m considered a “failure” to both the teachers’ and my mom’s eye then! Well, this is not a good sign to go on. But little did I know; it got worst.
Around the same time I had to deal with school and family drama, my special interest at the time, Total Drama, was airing its’ 5th season: All Stars. It’s the season where 13 contestants from the first 2 generations, compete for a million dollars, once more on that infamous island. Now on paper, it looks like the average all-stars season that competitive reality shows (as this show is a parody of Survivor) like to do every few years for both the ratings and for the hype seeing past contestants work with each other. But when it aired, it was the WORST SEASON that the fandom had laid their eyes on!
The writing was bad, they shoo the clowns out early on, flanderization hit some of the characters pretty BAD and the overall tone of the season was dark, TOO DARK! I was devastated as my comfort show betrayed me, around the time I was stressing out about my life! Such as when I found out my favorite character was voted off in episode 3, it brought my mood down for the entire day! So much, I end up recalling the time I wrote a hyperbole for an assignment in my English class, on how upset I was on them getting kicked off the show!
Then there were the forums that I used to browse, where I saw people saying bad things about the show and caused some to even abandon the show in disgusted. I remember reading the forums that All Stars was the reason the show jumped the shark and some wished that it should’ve end at season 1 (aka, the only season that the fandom liked)! Seeing them bashing my favorite show, brought my overall mood down as it was my special interest and now I feel guilty for liking it. So much, I didn’t tell anyone in school about my favorite show or engaged on those forums in fears of getting picked on for liking the Canadian “trash”! Despite that, I continued to watch the show, via bootlegs on YouTube as it never aired in Germany and it was the only way to do so.
But by the time the finale aired, many said it was the worst as there was a controversial scene near the end where a contestant, who has a mental disorder, managed to have it wiped out of their system and to be “cured” from it. This left a nasty taste in the fans’ mouth over it as when I later read fanfics about that character on FanFiction.net, they said to discard what the show did to the contestant as it was both unrealistic and ablest. At least the creators later apologized for what happened as they blamed themselves for hiring a writer, who was responsible for writing some of the worst episodes of that season. And they said that contestant that I mention in this paragraph, is now officially banned from appearing in future seasons due to how controversial they became.
Afterwards, I feel empty inside and start questioning myself as I wondered if that season, will mark the end of my Total Drama special interest as I know it. It didn’t as 7 months later, I end up watching the last season (at the time), Pahkietw Island. I heard that fans said it was a bit better than All Stars, but it was still not that good. And that Cartoon Network decided to air all 13 episodes in a span of 2 weeks, which was a red flag on how they lost faith on the show as both seasons suffered low ratings due to how bad they were!
After All Stars ended in December 2013, things in my life has calmed down. It was strange and I didn’t know why. Was it because it was around the Christmas season, so everyone was being a bit kinder and jollier towards each other? Don’t know, but I know my niece stopped causing problems for a while and mom was in a better mood, so I enjoyed that. Ditto to the beginning of the year as well as I thought things are going to be okay at the end and that everything will be okay.
It wasn’t in March 2014, is when I was start receiving rejections from the universities that I applied back in September for due to my low SAT scores. So remember me mentioning that I didn’t like to study? The SAT exams were one of the few things I didn’t study either and I took the exam, TWICE and it was still too low for them to accept me! Then there was the fact I bashed the two teachers in my advanced classes, who caused me to drop out, in my application essay (which wasn’t a good idea) and that the only club I attended in high school, was the Going Home Club due to being exhausted from masking in a non-autistic friendly environment, didn’t help either! That’s when I started to panic as I fear that I won’t be going to university after all and that I need a backup plan, soon!
Then in April 2014, my oldest niece started getting into more trouble, which means mom yelled harder than before. That’s when I starting to have more meltdowns both in school and at home because of it. I even remember yelling at my niece at one point, for just causing too much trouble and that she needs to get her act together! I think she ignored my advice as back then; we didn’t get along that well and think I’m overreacting over things. Instead, she would try to find ways to push my buttons because of my autism, which made things worse for me. It wasn’t until years later when the two of us made it up as my niece got older and (a bit) more responsible.
May 2014 was when I reached my breaking point. My mind started to get dark and worry that I have nowhere to go. That I wasn’t going to university because I’m failure in life, compared to my classmates. That my niece is causing too much problems for me and mom to handle and it was going to get worst. That the mask I have been wearing since the 8th grade to hide my autism was starting to break. I don’t know what to do and believed that this was the end of my “perfect world” as I know it.
That’s when on this very day, 10 years ago; I took an utility knife from the knife block in the kitchen and cut small marks on my left arm. They weren’t deep, but it still bleeds. Mom caught me doing the act and it caused her to cry again as she yelled at me for trying to hurt myself! I didn’t know why I did it, but quickly knew what I did was wrong and I end up crying as well. I think it was the stress of all the bad things that happened in the past few months, had led me to my lowest point of my life.
Then there was another dark event that led me to cut myself, which I wasn’t proud of and still haunts me to this day. Unlike the self-harm, I don’t feel comfortable talking about it here as it might be too much for some. The other reason I won’t talk about that event is because I fear that someone can use that fact against me if things I do anything wrong (and in general) for whatever reason. I don’t want them to use said fact, which will eventually lead to my (possible) downfall.
After those 2 events happened on that May, things got…calm again. I don’t know why as I thought after the incidents, worse things should’ve happen. But it didn’t for some reason; it’s like all the negative energy that flew around me disappeared after those events happened. It was weird and 10 years later, I still don’t know why.
But I know that after that, I vow that I would never do something like that ever again! I imaged what would happened if I ended up in a mental hospital over that, which will forced me to miss out on prom and my graduation. I hear horror stories on the Internet of how people were treated in the mental hospital. Being autistic would made things worse. Thankfully, I never attempted to do anything else like that again.
As for life in the 12th grade, I managed to get accepted into a university after all! It was the first school that I applied to back in fall and it was the school that one of my older cousins attended to. But the “downside” was that it’s the community college that accepted me as the university was doing a test run, where they have some students taking community college courses, but live on the main campus at the same time, in order to have “true” the university experience. Mom told me that I should be fucking lucky that I got accepted in the first place! Because the thing is, I was planning to take community college as a backup plan as once you complete 2 years there, you can use the credits to transfer to your prefer university and get your Bachelor’s Degree that way.
Even after all that, I thought to myself that I won’t be having anymore breakdowns as I feel like the worst has come. Nope, I have several more mental breakdowns after that.
Like the two in 2016, where my friend from my Girl Scouts’ troop died in her sleep and Donald Trump won the 2016 Election. Like the one in 2017, where I was forced to switch majors at my second university; after hearing their architecture department rejected my portfolio and I didn’t find out about that, until MONTHS later. When Covid hit in 2020, it was where I became paranoid in that I might get my mom killed for going outside, which lead me to not go out that often and I end up gaining weight because of it.
Then when I worked at the toxic job at “a famous pizza chain that I won’t name for reasons” in 2022, which caused me to quit after 5 months after suffering from having meltdowns. When I got scammed when I was applying for a new job in early 2023, which caused me to lose money and that I’m still financially broke to this day. And early this year, when a YouTuber, who got me into LPs (Let’s Plays) and video games, was accused of being a creep and a groomer, which caused me to stop watching LPs and Twitch for mental reasons.
Even when I suffered from the 7 terrible events in the past 10 years, at least it wasn’t THAT bad compared to what happened in May 2014. And when I look at the fading scars that I left on my left arm to this day, I vow to never do that again. That’s because I became wiser and mature as I have better ways to deal with negative energy, compared to what I did in 2014. Even then, I’m worried that my mind might slip back into that dark place and unlike before, it can end deadly.
Still, I hope I never go back that dark period again and get my mom and my family upset again. I won’t do it again.
I can’t.