The little blonde girl stimming with her fingers in her mouth on the far left is me at 5 years old. Everyone knew something was “off” about me and the tumultuous journey to discover just what that was took an exhausting 25 years.

As a child in elementary school I felt I was outside looking in on everyone around me, unwillingly set apart from my peers. 20 years ago I was misdiagnosed ADHD and given stimulants for the disorder. The problem was, I didn’t have ADHD, I had Autism. The stimulants caused alot of problems with me; trouble sleeping, enhancement of my already over-stimulated senses, migraines, and agression to name a few. I’m sure for those watching, it was a harrowing time. My meltdowns were as intense as they get and I just wanted out of my body at times, but I didn’t know what was wrong… and neither did anyone else.

What followed can only be described as 10 years of pure hell. I was misdiagnosed again and again. From ADHD to ODD, Bipolar and beyond, I was drugged into oblivion, in fact alot of my childhood memories are obscured in the fog of mood stabalizers and anti-psychotic medications. I used to blame my mom for the hospitalizations that terrified me with their authoritarian rules, painful restraints, seclusions, unstable residents, and forced medications. I felt as though I were fighting for my right to be myself much of the time.

There came a point in time where I began to believe that I was inherently “bad” and I would scream during my meltdowns and at times when I was fighting with my mom over taking my medications, that I just wanted to be normal. I sincerely felt that the medications were causing my oddities and setting me further apart than I already felt from those around me. I remember learning about leukemia and telling my friends that I had leukemia, because to me it was better to be dying with some horrible disease than to endure the labels that were ostracizing me. I was in 5th grade at the time. I always said I would rather be in a physical hospital than a mental hospital because in a physical hospital people genuinely care that you are sick and hurting… in a mental hospital you’re told how you have to change yourself because you don’t fit into societies pre-conceived mold of what makes a “proper” human being. I would rather be sick than be a pariah. There are still far too many Autistic individuals being labeled unjustly by a system more concerned with their profits than the individuals whom they “treat”. Had someone stepped in for me as a child and said, “Hey, this obviously isn’t working. Lets take a step back and reevaluate the situation.” maybe it would be easier for me to move beyond my traumatic past and heal. But that didn’t happen, I became my own advocate, I fought tooth and nail against the diagnoses that plagued my existence… and I won. Eventually I beat the system!

Now it’s a matter of protecting my children, two of whom have Autism themselves, and healing from the abuses I’ve endured over the years. It’s a long ardous process, one steeped in confusion, reconciliations, and losses. This is my life welcome to it.