Nobody's Listening.

  I had this whole monologue planned but I took 2 xanax and it just feel way too tired. I was going to vent in this blog post and just let the world have it, but I forgot everything. What I can remember from my tirade was that  I wish ppl would step back and let me do things on my own, especially in my job. I don't want ppl to interfere anymore. I'm over watching everyone else around me get to grow up and be independent while every time I attempt to do the same it just doesn't work that way and people stop me and say that I can't do it. I am tired of being stuck in this house. I'll probably be 50 years old and still in this goddamn room. 

I'm tired of having all these people who say that they're my "advocates" step in and not let me try things on my own. I want my dignity back, if I ever had any to begin with. This last month has been an eye opener for me, and there have been a lot of fights at home, because I have wanted to handle things myself, but people just don't want to let me do that. They see me struggle and they immediately step in, it's what they've always done, it's instinct for them, but I want them to stop . The fights that have ensued from me trying to express this to them  have  taken a lot out of me. So when I'm not fighting with people or in a xanax coma, I've pimped out Tignation  because when I'm there, I'm not incompetent or ignored and people don't try to step in and do shit for me. I think I might have lost my job because of this very thing, because people can't keep their mouths shut and at least let me try to handle things on my own. I don't think their stepping in is very good for me, because when they do that, they're showing me that my decisions are always wrong and I'm always questioning myself all the time because of it. I can't make my own decisions when I'm not talking to my Macbook, when I do people step in and tell me it's not a good thing and that I haven't made a good one and I should let them do it. When it comes time for me to make a decision without them there, I doubt myself and I turn into the person they think I am. 

I want to get out. I want to go to bars, I want to go on trips, I want to get tattoos and I want to do something stupid, like everyone else has been allowed to do. I feel like  by the time I'm finally able to to do all these things, I'll be too old . I'm not allowed to buy a beer, I came home with a case of Corona one time and I got a lecture telling me about "alcohol is bad" "and I don't need to be drinking cause I could hurt myself" and "that's for people who know what they're doing" and blah blah blah and when I bought some Mike's Hard Lemonade home, I got tons of shit for it, like I had to ask permission to drink it, WHAT THE FUCK?  I'm 25 years old, at most, my parents should have just told me to be sure not to drive. I got invited to a hookah bar and I get told the same thing, can't go to bars, no no no, can't go to those, they're for other people. It's best that I stay here, away from all that. There was a big fight when I tried to walk out the door to that too.  I don't mean to sound like a sulking tween but being 25 years old as I've previously stated and having to live like one is no picnic . It would be nice to be allowed to grow up and experience life, because the life I've got right now is nothing to write home about. It's not even worth getting out of bed for, save for joking around on Facebook and Twitter. 

Some things about me, that I don't mention to very many people *some of this might seem irrelevant but it all has a point so just go with it*

Before 2008, I was just called "mentally disabled" and I can tell you right now that this is not a fun title at all. With that title, you're thrown on to the short bus and you're treated like 15 different kinds of shit but the other kids, it's was hell. I was never given any sort of label before that. I grew up in a redneck berg in West Texas called Lubbock. It's a miserable place to live, very flat and a lot of blowing red dirt.I mean the second you get there, especially around the fall, the dirt that's always blowing around gives you a headache and in my case I often get a nosebleed. I don't know why, I guess it dries out your sinuses and irritates them.  From the time I was born I lived all over West Texas, or the South Plains, as they used to call it on the local channels on TV. We didn't have the best doctors when I was a kid, they did speech therapy to teach me how to talk better. I never started to talk till I was around 3 or 4. The doctors we saw, the ones that claimed to be experts about developmental issues in children always told my mother that I should not be labeled, because according to her version of the story it was better if I was never labeled with anything at all. I spent my elementary school years being put into special ed and treated like shit by my peers, getting beat up and called "retard" every time I went to the bathroom. being pissed on in Jr. High is something that I still have nightmares about. I learned to cope with it in my own way, I started cursing people out and I changed schools when the harassment got to be unbearable. 

Fast forward to when I'm older and wanting to go to college. The first attempt I had at college was when I was 18, like it is for most people, whether they're mature enough for it or not. I can honestly say that I wasn't mature enough at all.  When you're in high school you've got your parents and if need be, the cops to take you to school if you refuse to go, but when you're in college nobody gives a shit whether you show up or not. A lot of people realize this and they don't go. I was one of them, and on my first day, i was going to a Government class, one which I thought I would make a solid A on because since I've got a sister and a father who are both lawyers, knowing the law and our constitution should be in my blood, or so I am told. However, when I got into that room, with it's vast stadium style seating and looked at the hundreds of eyes  that seemed to be fixed on me, I couldn't take it, I walked out. No, I ran. I ran all the way to the parking lot and I stayed there for an hour and a half, my hands, a death grip on the steering wheel. For about 3 years this went on, and when I was 21 I just dropped out of college for good, because the anxiety was just too much.I really wish I hadn't have done that. 

In January 2008 I started getting these unbearable migraines and these pains in my eyes so I went to a doctor and the nerves in my eyes had become inflamed so I got sent to a neurologist to rule out other problems. It was when I was there that the doctor voiced her opinion that I was on the Autism spectrum due to the way I carry myself andI had trouble making eye contact, and I rock back I walk on my toes, and she was the first doctor ever that mentioned the word to us, and told us that I should probably get tested. Thats what started this whole thing and that year I was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum disorder. I was 23 years old. At first I thought having a label was a blessing because the word "retard" which had been thrown at me to hurt my feelings was suddenly deemed politically incorrect. However, 2 years after all this, I'm starting to wonder if this was really the best thing for me. What if this diagnosis did more harm than good and I'm being held captive by it, unable to go out and move on with my life because of that "label". What if the bumpkin doctors in the West Texas were right? Would I have my independence if I didn't get labeled in such a way? I've been asking myself this for quite some time, and have been growing more and more depressed about my predicament since about April or so, whenI turned 25. 

I forgot I had a blog for a while, and while I'm in my semi dazed state I just decided to have a go and write down everything that has been boiling up inside me, to see if the weight of all these hard feelings towards the life outside will be lifted up off my shoulders and I'll feel better, just to have gotten them down on some platform, if only to be seen by no one  but myself.

I'm not just ranting and I don't want the six people that are reading this blog to feel sorry for me. What I do want to gain from this is to make people see how it feels, to see where I've been and how certain things came to be. The greatest compliment that people have given me since I started having my social life on the internet is that they can't tell that I am any different from anyone else when they judge by the way I express myself in writing. What I want to tell people is that I don't think anyone should ever be held back from what they want to do in life because they're disabled and their advocates want to protect them from making mistakes. Life is making mistakes, you can't go through life without it. We all have difficult circumstances in which we need to overcome, and we ware either weak or we are strong based on how we deal with those circumstances, how we deal with our mistakes , and what we learn from them. People who are mentally disabled have the right to grow just like everyone else, and like them, all I want to do is be allowed to grow up.