Hello,
Permit me to introduce myself, I am Arthur Nonimus (expanded phonetic of Anonymous). To understand my user name you must first understand a little about the person behind it.
Let me start at the beginning. My Mother and Father were 'happily' married before I was born, and when my mother became pregnant she expected that to continue - however thing don't always go according to plan. During pregnancy many relatives died, some due to age while others due to suicide and my father got scared, envisaging being stuck with a child and wife until he died he ran to the bed of mist mistress before marrying a second woman with whom he had my sister. However when he left he tricked my mother into thinking that all of the money had gone (really he secreted it away into various bank accounts) and left us with only the shirts on our backs.
My mothers’ profession required that she move from place to place and as such she had to sell the unit her father had left to her. Not knowing much about taxation laws she took to money and invested all in a property in our new home town after she was granted a permanent position. The Tax department however was not unfamiliar with the laws and informed her of the Capital Gains Tax and promptly presented her with a Tax bill for over $50,000. Arrangements were made to pay it back over the course of several years. This coupled with the mortgage repayments left us with very little to live on, although my mother would have liked to get me the best of everything we had to make do with the bare necessities. This would lead to trouble later on.
At pre-school my teacher identified my AS traits. However Aspersers was unknown by even professionals at the time and so my mother discounted it - I could talk and interact, how could I have Autism? In grade one I was surrounded by children from lower-middle class families, high enough on the ladder to be in with the cool stuff but low enough on the ladder to be totally intolerant of anyone who was different. Not only was I 'Different' but I was also dressed in bargain basement clothing, didn't have the latest toys or thing and didn't buy lunch from the canteen. To make matters worse I would often freeze like a wind up toy that had run down and it would take a teacher to come up and shake me out of it, without memory of the incident I would continue as normal This placed me squarely in the bullies sights, from that day on my school days were made a living hell. By the end of grade one I had racked up the big trifecta of Physical, Psychological and Sexual abuse at school. Grade two saw the bullying turn more physical as I was already the tallest and strongest in my grade. My fights were legendary at the time, when they happened. Often it would take the form of hurling abuse or taking a long run up and ditching hard objects as hard as possible at close range before running away laughing. Grades three and four continued in the same manner always getting worse until after an incident where I was nearly hospitalised my mother had enough and demanded that I be transferred to another school - something that was not permitted at the time.
It was also around this time that I began to fall ill to a mystery illness. It started off slow and then continued throughout the years to become so bad that I tried to kill myself to get away from the sickness. The doctors took eight years to figure it out and fix it. The next few years of school were completed with this undiagnosed illness complicating matters.
Once I had started at the new school I started to gain acceptance, however when another child from my previous school turned up several weeks later he told the new bullies (in a bid to become accepted - it didn't work) everything about my past. Armed with this knowledge the new bullies started where the old ones had left off. I completed grades four though seven with constant physical and psychological attacks at the same time as having constant illness and pain. High school although offering so much promise turned out to be even worse. At my previous school I had been the tallest and strongest which afforded my some measure of protection, this protection however was lost to me now. Continuing bullying followed along with several fights all the while my mystery illness got worse.
Finally I could no longer leave the house and I was placed into distance education home schooling. As my illness got worse I finally snapped and tried to kill myself - unsuccessfully - and had no other choice but to continue to battle on although my sprit was all but destroyed. Finally the doctors figured out the illness and operated relieving years of sickness and pain. I finished school via distance education and entered technical college, but the years of abuse bullying and illness were too much and I had to take a year off to sort things out. During that year I fell into a deep depression and tried four times more to kill myself. Finally when I managed to claw myself back from the edge enough I accepted professional help. It was during the initial consult that I was first given a name for what had silently disabled me for all those years. In short order I was diagnosed and I started to get my life on track, I don't say back on track because I never really had a track to get back onto.
No stranger to hard work or difficult struggles I applied myself heart and soul to learning what I missed, because of my Aspersers, growing up. Over the next couple of years I sorted things out in my head and began making leaps and bounds forward. I soon learned eye contact, conversation and other social skills. Progressing fast I became a chameleon of sorts, adapting to my new and changing situations. It is now very difficult to pick that I am on the spectrum, I am an anonymous aspie - silent and unseen.
I apologize for the length of this post but I felt it needed to be said, and this is shortest possible version.
17 Feb 2010, 2:27 am
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