I respect and appreciate how well you explained this, and I empathize with you anger relating to autism. My daughter is autistic, and I see how the world treats her differently. I'm sorry life was so cruel to you. You didn't deserve it, none of us did. A part of me feels it would be better for my kids if they had never existed, but they are happy, social, doing well in school, and are loved. I keep working to give them what I didn't have, and what a lot of us didn't have. Existence and life itself isn't what is bad, but rather how people and society treat one another.
Warning: This is going to be a pretty savage vent coming up, but I suspect you are as strong as you are gentle. Nonetheless, I have typed these lines last to forewarn you.
My two best female friends (one widowed at age 32 by a young husband with colon cancer, the other having to divorce an alcoholic narcissistic husband) have repeatedly spat out to me in anger, "I
never shoulda gotten married,
never shoulda had kids!," but they dearly love their children and are great single moms.
I labor under great difficulty in trying to unload with some measure of self restraint. My being bullied did not begin from other children. Part time private kindergarten was completely innocuous. The bullying originally came from my first grade teacher and second grade teacher, while my father also turned into an angry and physically violent bully at home when he was promoted from teacher to elementary school principal himself at another school as I entered first grade.
By third grade, the kids had learned to pick on me from our teachers, so as soon as I'd set foot on the playground, they'd set upon my like a swarm while the teachers stood by and laughed. Also in third grade, a carbon copy of my father became the principal at my school. Today, decades later as an octogenarian town official elsewhere, that former principal and subsequent school superintendent remains a notorious bully. Thanks to me evil fourth grade teacher being the most savage bully of all, the damage was complete. (ALL of these bullying teachers were women, hence I am a woman hater, despite being straight, forever incapable of a healthy relationship.)
Decades later as a school support staffer for years in maintenance, I saw my childhood pattern repeatedly played out, only WORSE! The creators of bullying in the school system are the TEACHERS, and almost all of those bullying teachers were WOMEN.
These monsters qualified to teach by obtaining degrees. I have ZERO respect for these people, and they deserve ZERO understanding. Teachers aren't part of the solution, they're the CAUSE of the problem! (In the United States, they are the sole reason the USA uniquely failed to convert to the universal metric standard in 1980, absolute proof of how completely incompetent American teachers are.
Yes, I've known a tiny few exceptions who make it obvious how evil and rotten the rest of them are.
Know this because of my painfully extensive experience (and sure, I fully realize this will probably offend you and many others here). Within my mind, "woman" is a five letter word spelled B-I-T-C-H, while "girl" is a four letter word spelled N-I-C-E. (BTW, my super cool Aunt Harriet was a 1920's flapper who NEVER referred to herself as a "woman," but always as "this old girl." The term "ladies" is used by my Texan PharmD girlfriend to describe her female friends, and "woman" is not a word in the vocabulary of another female friend of mine. Yes, I am a woman hater, and interestingly, my few female friends are also woman haters - I have no male friends, and don't want any. Boys bullied me plenty as well.)
Charles Schultz nailed my childhood in many ways in his brilliant Peanuts comic strip. I was Charlie Brown, most little bitches were Lucy Van Pelts, and my favorite character was Peppermint Patty, the one girl who was really cool and friendly to "Chuck," instead of treating him like a loser.
For me, "love" is the filthiest and most disgusting four letter word in existence, because of how my evil father and his bullying relatives used it as a weapon of manipulation and reason for justifying abuse. (I explained that early on to my future PharmD girlfriend. When she ultimately declared her "love" for me, she simultaneously and repeatedly ordered me to never say it back to her. I'd already told her I agreed with philosopher Vernon Howard, when he said the more one uses the word "love," the LESS they mean it. In point of fact, it's a word that's never used between me and my mother, so it seems Vernon Howard must have been exactly right in our case.)
Just as I entered school hell, the great Haim Ginott had published "Between Parent and Child," "Between Parent and Teenager," and "Teacher and Child," all of which I read years after my school incarceration ended. He cared so greatly about children that their be no more scratches upon their souls, yet the degrees in my life did the exact opposite of what Ginott detailed.
No, the degrees in my upbringing did NOT do the best they could with what was known at the time, they were so completely evil and incompetent that Hell is far too kind a fate for these demons. "When you get to me my age, you'll understand!" Yeah, I now FULLY understand those stupid, cruel and sadistic fucks!
