what if i'm someone you won't talk about

So I found this caterpillar on my way to class

i made him a tube room

im going to sleep, chicken nugget is snoozin and ill check up on him as soon as i wake up

hope he doesnt party too hard 

there he goes he’s free and im so proud and a little sad

this was an incredible experience

"okay but if you commit arson theres like... so much that could go wrong. personally I'd assasinate a government official- and no, you didn't hear me say that."

"if I win this bet you have to get "*his last name* is my daddy" tattooed across your chest. in comic sans."

"i actually try to interact with you all as little as possible outside of this classroom in order to maintain any semblance of sanity."

"please stop drawing anatomically incorrect genitals on my whiteboard."

after lighting somebodies backpack on fire very breifly: "okayyyy and we're not gonna mention that when he gets back-"

"i dont CARE if you won the quizzizz i can't let you eat any of my lab supplies."

"please stop discussing the production of molotov cocktails in my classroom im not sure when i need to report things to counselors yet and this feels weird."

"no you cannot hang up sexy einstein at the front of the room. put in the back like a normal person."

no I’m scared of being trapped

My elementary school had a PMI program for kids with disabilities like me, for people with ADHD, Autism, etc etc……

There were two rooms.

One was a padded room that was pretty much gym pads in a section of a room. The other was a fucking coat closet. Like really small.

I was trapped in the padded room for an entire day once, without bathroom breaks, because I was ‘too rambunctious’ and ‘uncontrollable’. I cried and screamed and hit the walls (and myself) until I passed out on the floor and fell asleep in a puddle of my tears.

I have ADHD. I was in first grade I think.

I can’t stand elevators and small rooms anymore.

Another time, I watched helplessly one day as my friend Ben was restrained by two teachers crawling on top of him, yanking his arms behind his back and digging their knees into his spine and between his shoulder blades. They then stuffed him into the closet and locked the door. He screamed for an hour before submitting and quieting himself. They didn’t let him out until a half an hour after that.

He had Tourettes and Autism. He was a third grader.

And they treated him like a violent rabid animal.

For those of you who think these have to be isolated instances???

Ha. No. They were at every. Single. FUCKING. Public. School. I’ve. Been. At.

Every one of them. Even after I got out after middle school, or went to one of the “better rooms” (one had two. One for mild kids and one for more severe) this shit still happened.

And most parents, I guarantee, if they find out it won’t be from the kid tattling. Or, at least, not purposefully. Maybe in a passing comment. But you never think that there’s a chance people don’t know what’s going on. Of course they would. Why wouldn’t they know?

And so it goes fucking on. To this day. I still have massive blanks in my memory from elementary to middle school (though many more are still very much crystal fucking clear) and I’m to this day not sure if it was due to the sheer outrageous amount of meds I was forced to go on, or trauma. It’s blocked.

My mom and nan were often very sick, so it was pretty easy to blame any “behavior” issues on a unstable home life. Maybe there’s something actually to that. At least contributing. But I will never back down from the belief my childhood would have been a hell of a lot better if I was treated like a CHILD instead of an animal or some bullshit.

Because goldmane is right. Disabled kids are not seen as fully human. We never have been. Either we’re pitied, or we’re treated like little demons.

Hell. One set of teachers nicknamed me the devil child. Acted like I couldn’t hear them saying that. I still have yet to regret throwing a desk at one. If anything I regret it missed.

Spread this like wildfire, because to this day a good chunk of people don’t believe the crazy ass shit I went through. What so many of us went through.

“Oh. But my nephew is in Special Ed and we’ve never had any issues!”

“Well they have to do something to avoid kids hurting themselves and others! I’m sure your misremembering it worse than it is.”

Ha. Yeah. Fuck you.

People don’t know what goes on. They don’t know how common it is. Because disabled children are constantly taken advantage of. CONSTANTLY. So yeah. Spread this.

I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable. My entire childhood was hell. They can afford to be uncomfortable.

YOU ALL SHOULD BE!

Anyway. I’ll tag this since it can be pretty triggering. However, abuse in the special education is a very important topic to me. I know some of you might have gone through it, and may still today be feeling the affects like I am.

I want you to know that nothing that was done to you was deserved. I don’t care how violent they said you might have gotten. That you were being disruptive. No child deserves to experience abuse. No child deserves to be treated less than human for something beyond their control.

There are kids who come out with PTSD, and I’m honestly surprised I wasn’t one of them. I think a lot of people are still completely unaware that this happens.

If you don’t want to talk about your experiences because they cause you pain, then that’s fine, but if you can help me spread this I’d appreciate it. We need awareness. We need people to know these stories, so that in the future disabled children who went through what we have will be protected.

No child should EVER be treated this way. This wasn’t our fault. Please know that if any of you are still in school, still going through this, and need someone to listen, I’ll be here.

The issue is ignorance. Disabled history is some of the most little known history. People still don’t know the disabled were the first group targeted by Nazi Germany, used as test subjects for future horrors under the T4 program, which was used to plan the final solution against jewish people. (Also, not saying we were the biggest victims of the holocaust. Just that it’s a important part of history that gets skimmed over. The importance of jewish discrimination was and is very prevalent, and their major end goal.) They don’t know about the Ugly Laws that lasted from the 1860s to the 1970s. The ADA was signed in 1990, only six years before I was born, and people don’t know about the bill right now Trump is trying to pass to loosen those laws. @marauders4evr posted about it, and I can’t find the post at the moment, but you can probably find it on her blog because I don’t know enough right now to talk about it.

The point is, ignorance is our number one problem. The disabled population makes up the largest minority group, but we also have the biggest accessibility problem when it comes to activism.

I think a future is possible where these things don’t have to happen, but it’s going to be hard. People might get hurt. But then again, we already are. Police brutality is higher among the disabled and mentally ill than any other group, even for blacks and latinos and LGBT. Heaven help those of us in more than one group.

That’s one reason I think disabled blogs on here are important. It’s a platform. People are only shown one side, and it’s hardly ever ours. Awareness and representation has to happen if things are to get better.

This turned into a ramble, but basically, I know how easy it is to be bitter and angry. We have a right to be angry. But we need to use that anger constructively, and I think a lot of us have a bad habit of getting stuck in that anger to the point where we also get stuck in pessimism and lose hope in people.

I’ve seen the bad humanity is capable of, but we’re capable of a lot of good as well. I think this is really important to remember. That’s one of the reasons I made this blog. I wanted to do something positive. Even though I’ve screwed up a bit on punctuality and dropped off a few times, every time someone sends a message to my inbox saying how happy they get seeing the headcanons, it makes it feel like I accomplished something, even if it’s small.

I’m rambling, but yeah. There’s a lot to be scared and angry about recently, but lets not give up just yet. We have a way to speak out in a way we’ve never been able to before in history. We have a way to speak to each other and share what we’ve gone through. That opens the door to a lot of good things, guys.