#and his TSS was this very smart and nice lady who had clearly clocked that Something Was Going On With Me and even though it wasn't like

[july-19th-club]

me age seven being sat down in front of the school’s district child psych lady and being given strange, simple spatial puzzles to solve and then long, complicated worksheets and hammering my way through them at the speed of light while having zero comprehension what their purpose was or why i was here: this is urgent! i have to get a good grade in Weird Puzzles, Or Else, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve,

#kjalkjsdalkjasdl mrs button was a nice lady but not one adult in my childhood ever seemed to notice what to me now seems like #a pretty obvious case of the autisms #then again maybe they just didn't look as hard unless it was *really* obvious back then . it was like. what. 2000? a couple years later #everybody was talking about autism but not when i was six or seven then it was usually just when it was Very Visible #a couple years later my cousin who's more visibly on the spectrum than me got her diagnosis so young that she's pretty much always had it #which is...well i think it's just made her life difficult in a different way. people underestimate her or don't treat her like she's her age #but then she's always had the opportunity to get accommodations and people are sometimes more forgiving when she can't do something #whereas i got labeled 'kid that should be ahead of the game' from a pretty young age and then when i struggled adults either ignored it #or it was just a huge hassle to them and even i could see it exasperated them to have to work around me #but because mrs button (nice lady but what were you thinking) hadn't told them to treat me like a kid with a developmental disorder #they didn't do that in good OR bad ways . so i never got any accommodations with school stuff i struggled with which was a fair bit #i wasn't supposed to need extra testing time in a quiet room or tutoring with math or help organizing my abysmally scattered things #the only time i DID get that was in sixth grade when i was sort-of friends with this kid jonathan who was Very On The Spectrum #he wasn't really a talker unless it was about whatever he was reading which suited me fine so we just kind of existed in each other's space #and his TSS was this very smart and nice lady who had clearly clocked that Something Was Going On With Me and even though it wasn't like #her JOB she made a little bit of time for me. mostly with emotional stuff (i think i was under the impression she was a therapist?) #but if i had some problem with being unable to keep friends or being frozen out by the kids i wanted to be liked by (happened often) #she'd be able to just like. be there she'd make the time . wish i could remember her name