My search for me (part 2)

I have written part 1 here.

Elementary school part 2

My parents divorced and it was a very rumbly state. I had to visit my dad every other weekend, and as I have said in previous posts, it was very hard for me, when he didn’t came to pick me up. My mom pushed me into phoning my dad, which helped me get a trauma everytime I am forced into having to call someone. I’m also very bad in having to make a phone call, as I need to prepare myself, mostly in my head. I need an opening line every time, so I know what to say. Yes, I need to script those things.

When I was in my fourth year in elementary school (Elementary school has 6 years here in Belgium), we were sent to a home, because according to our mom, our dad wasn’t able to care for us. Which resulted in my friend, my white pomeranian dog, which I had since my 6th year, with whom I played soccer, had to be put into an animal shelter. My mom tried to calm me, because I was so sad of having lost my one and only real friend. She brought me another dog, which I actually never loved, Lucky. He had a bad leg and had to be put down or I don’t even know how he died. I really can’t remember, because frankly I didn’t like the dog. I still only have a few animals that I can remember. I remember Tarzan, whom got put down because I wanted to ride horse on it’s back, and it bit me. Instead of punishing me, the dog got put down. I remember the birds I had. I remember the hamster (one died and one died in the car when I got another one because of the heat. I never got another one (not my fault though. My mom left me in a 30 degrees celcius car)). We had a cat, which was very good friends with our dog, but because the dog was put down, we never saw the cat again. Then we got Mieke, our pomerian dog. I didn’t have animals anymore until I was 12.

I was bad at languages. I had to study french in 5th grade, but I was very, very bad at it. I’m even bad at our national language. I can write it perfectly, read it perfectly, but they can’t eradicate my dialect. I can’t speak formal dutch that well.

I never had much friends, except the animals I loved. When I was with my dad on the weekends, we used to visit aunts and uncles and I got to play with my nieces and nephews. Not really play. I played hide and seek. I was on my own a lot, as well, which didn’t botter me in the slightest. I loved being alone. Playing with my action men, which I got from my dad, because I kept rewatching a video I had, and I was a big fan of the TV series. I remember that my dad went to the toystore with me to get the other characters from the series, but they weren’t there anymore.

I regressed a few times as well. I had an obsession with a toddler tv character called Plop. It’s a kind of gnome, here in Belgium. and I got a few video tapes of him and had almost all his books. I loved reading them, because it made me feel like a child again. I had lost a few years, I felt. I don’t own the books anymore, I gifted to my oldest niece. I collected these books when I was 13-14 years old. Nobody out of the house, except my backyard-neighbour-girl knew.

high-school

High-school was weird. My mom and dad never went to see schools with me, so I didn’t know what options there were. Pre-internet times still. I went to a technical school and actually loved it and found it very, very interesting. This is actually the first time, someone told me, something was wrong with me. I was slower than the rest of my class, although I aced all my tests, except french. I was good in calculations, and actually I loved it, but I was to slow. I was bullied alot as well, and eventhough I never did anything for school, I always aced my tests.

I will give you a very specific example. We had to file a leaf out of a metal plate. We had a paper cut out and pasted on the metal plate. I took weaks to file out one indentation on the leaf. It had to be perfectly on the line. Every few filing strokes, I bent over to see if it was perfect. I was clumsier then most boys as well. I must have dropped my tools more than other boys as well. Student-councelor came to take me out of class and told me I was slower than most, but more intelligent. I aced all my tests with ease and they told me that I was better off in another type of school and they recommended me an office-school, where I could learn to work on the computer and such. I switched schools half of my second year.

Here I noticed that there were people I knew from my childhood. A friend of my backyard-neighbour-girl, whom I knew very well as well was there. I learned to touch-type in my second year, but I noticed my autism more. I was in an unfamiliar enviroment, I was new. I never felt at ease between so many girls, although I was brought up by my mother and lived with my two sisters. I learned to interact with them, but never with girls outside my comfortzone. Never have. I learned how to… years later… by reading books. I was lightyears ahead that second year with math, so I didn’t have to do anything math related anymore, and in hindsight, my math teacher never gave me extra things to do, so mathwise I squandered my year… and never picked up math again, although I liked it, because it wasn’t necessary in my school curriculum. I didn’t know it was allowed to look for things.

At home we didn’t have the habit to go to the library, so I almost never went. I went in Elementary school, but I took home non-fiction books from the child part of the library, because we were only allowed in the child part. I was behind because I didn’t have education-centered parents. My mom didn’t stimulate us to learn, never took any interest in our education, only in the result of our education. When I got a report card she would ask why a certain degree was low, but never gave tips on how to make it better. It was noticable that I was much smarter than my mother. My dad also never took an interest in my school work, although he allowed me to use the computer when that was necessary for school, and he could use my touchtyping to write letters for him (even summoning me out of bed at 22pm on a school night).

I used to know only things that they taught me in school. If I didn’t went to school, I would hardly know anything. That changed when I got the internet.

I loved the internet. I’m on the internet now 18 years. The first website I visited, rather slowly, was pokemon.com, I still remember. The computer was setup in the hallway, to connect to the telephone line, and hear the beeping and booping of the router. We got faster internet not long after that (fast was not so fast as lightning speed today). it still used to take a while to load a page. I still love the sound of the modem. If you are to young to remember, here’s a clip:

I still love that sound. It has a soothing quality. When it went silent, you knew your were connected. It was an empowering feeling, to be able to surf the internet. I still remember, internet was a new thing then, at the start of the 2000’s here in Belgium. A newspaper had an insert that I read, when we visited my mom, and my dad got the newspaper to read the insert as well, but I practically memorized it. I read it so many times. I loved knowing how the technology worked. My favourite pasttimes on the net was reading Wikipedia, once it was established. Reading a page, and then clicking on a link and eventually, after so many clickthroughs, reading a totally unrelated page. I loved it. Still do… sometimes.

I only got to the first two years of my high-school experience. I will tell you more later.