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It's New Year and I don't feel happy. In fact, I feel quite miserable. For the last 2 years, I've tried to raise awareness about what autism is for people to understand how to relate to my little boy and for people to understand that it can be a 'hidden' disability and that us girls can have it too. I was too outspoken from the start. I was too enthusiastic. I thought I could challenge perceptions and stereotypes and that people in RL would actually listen. However, it's all backfired. I'm not believed. I'm seen as being an attention-seeker and now that I'm in full-on withdrawal mode, simply cold and horrible. My son's not that autistic because people KNOW what autistic is, after all they've seen Rainman and there are other kids in the town who DEFINITELY have autism and compared to them my kid is obviously not. As for me, I'm talking rubbish because again, I don't LOOK autistic and everyone's quite clearly intelligent enough based on next-to-no actual knowledge on the subject that I'm talking rubbish. I'm sick of all the posts on FB (yes, that's a lot of the trouble) where autistic children are 'angels'or 'treasure at the end of the rainbow' or some other equally nauseating description with mums responding saying things like 'My child is an angel with wings' or other variations on the theme. No. Having autism is damn hard work a lot of the time and parenting a child with autism can be damn hard work too. I'm sick of the posts which say that THIS YEAR in 2013 they pray that people will understand what autism is. Everyone supports those posts, everyone 'likes' them because after all everyone wants to be seen to support such a worthy cause. Still, no-one listens and no-one wants to understand. A few days ago, a local woman killed herself and no-one had any idea before she did it that she was in such turmoil she would jump in front of a train. There's been a huge outpouring of grief for her. I've tried to tell people how difficult my life has been and particularly about recent times. Is it preferable that someone just kills themselves and everyone remembers the 'wonderful' person they were when they were still blissfully ignorant (not that anyone would think I was wonderful)? Because whenever I reach out, I feel that I just manage to push people away because they really don't want to know. How much more explicit can I be? 'I'm considering going back on the happy pills because I feel quite depressed, my emotions are yo-yoing and December is an extremely difficult time for me'. Response (not literally been said): 'Oh that's a shame. You're obviously just an attention-seeker. We'll just calmly walk the opposite direction now.' Seriously, I'd have to laugh or I'd cry. Actually no. I'll just cry.