So Alone- by Chelsea Bradham

The final 3 years of elementary school: so alone The last 3 years of elementary school, ages 9 ½ to 12 ½ were by far when I was the most alone and depressed. I didn’t know at the time that I was an aspie, all I knew was that I was different than other girls my age. I never made friends easily and looking back I misinterpreted a lot, over reacted a lot, and at that point I didn’t really have much of a concept of tact. Those years were basically hell for me on the relationships front for a few reasons. First of all many of my friends left our school for the gifted program, which my dyslexia, dyscalculia, and ADD (which I think now the ADD is actually part of the Asperger’s but they've diagnosed a few symptoms not the whole picture with that one) kept my grades less than stellar despite my above average intelligence and therefore kept me out of the program and stuck as a lonely left behind. Second reason is that the girls who relentlessly ostracized and tortured me verbally, emotionally, and psychologically were the queen Bee of my year and her court. Which meant that since they didn't like me nobody else would except for those kids a year younger who didn't have to put up with them and a few brave weird kids who to this day I am grateful for. The third reason is that at the end of the summer before fourth grade, a dear friend died suddenly. He was like my little brother and even though he had moved away a year and a half before that happened it was still incredibly hard. He had been the person who understood me on this incredibly deep level and accepted me for me. He had a lot of medical problems but he had always been so brave, and so kind, not just to me but to literally everybody. He was my rock, even though we didn’t get to really play together much anymore just knowing that he was out there was like a security blanket because as long as he was alive somewhere in the world I knew without any doubts that I was understood and loved by somebody and that no matter how many people rejected my friendship, no matter how many people thought I was strange, nothing was going to take that away from me. But when he got sick and died it was like someone pulled the solid ground out from under me and I was just trying to keep my head above water. Also the fact is that my NT parents were not a huge help in that whole situation. They kind of seemed to really not understand the full depth and closeness of my relationship with my friend and instead of helping me cope they basically acted as if I was totally fine, nothing really worth any real concern or special support. This is exemplified by the fact that I was not even allowed to attend his funeral. I’m not sure whether or not my communication difficulty had anything to do with that or not. But I tend to think so because my mom even stated once that she didn’t really see the grief and pain that I was in. And then combine that whole thing with all the rest of my friends transferring schools and the bullying getting ridiculously worse… it was a bad place for me… In the coming months I was lonely, I was depressed by the bullying intensifying among other things and I began to lash out because everyone seemed to either want nothing to do with me at all or go out of their way to humiliate me publically and I had lost the one person outside my family that I trusted unconditionally, I felt like I was being attacked on all sides and I was no-longer sure that I wanted to try to make friends with new people… -Chelsea Bradham