This Roller Coaster Called Aspergers...

I'm just going to go ahead and say it - Aspergers is both incredibly amazing and downright sucktastic.

We go from thrilling moments where everything seems perfect and kiddo is doing fantastic to low lows where the world feels like it's ending. Why? Change. Change is bad. Change is evil. Change bites!

After a semester being a computer programming major, kiddo realized he's never going to be able to work for someone else in an office setting. He also realized that he has no desire to run a company (thanks to the douches in his computer club - but that's another story). So he decided computer programming was not where he saw his life going. The problem is, computer programming has been his life for 6 years.

But he also loves art. So he made the decision to change his major to Arts with a concentration in Crafts. This is probably a much better career path for him, even tho he won't make the kind of salary that will keep him drowning in computers. However (as stated above) Change is BAD. He's overwhelmed. He feels unprepared.

And worse, he struggles with making friends.

Those few kids he started to make a connection with are either in the computer club (he won't have anything to do with them now) or in his computer classes (which he dropped). So he's thrown into a situation with all new kids who he has to try to connect with.

Today, in art class, he was given a project that requires fine motor skills that he doesn't have. Aspergers prevents him from ever truly mastering many things. He struggled horribly with the project because as much as he tried, he was unable to do it. And his frustration, anxiety and loneliness got the better of him. He cried in class. He's devastated because he works so hard to "fake normal" and he blew it - the second day of class. In his mind, he's a freak already - now he's a freak who cries.

He wants to drop out. He says it's not worth it. He's never going to make friends. People pick on him. They make fun of him. They laugh at him and call him names. (He even had a teacher tell him he was a worthless useless waste of space - which is why he dropped out of high school, got his GED and went to college when he ought to be in tenth grade). And the kids that don't tease and torture him? They pretend he doesn't exist. They literally ignore him when he tries to talk to them. That's just as bad.

If he drops out and gives up, I don't know what will happen to him. Sitting at home with me isn't going to give him the socialization he so desperately craves. And where is he going to find a job in this economy? I feel like someone's jammed a knife in my heart and is grinding it back and forth. Life shouldn't be this hard. He's such an amazing person - smart, funny, kind and interesting. He deserves happiness, not this constant stress-filled and lonely existence. Life isn't fair. It doesn't even come close.

And as for people who treat people with disabilities like they're freaks or less than human - shame on you. Different isn't less. A human being is a human being and they're worth knowing for the very fact that they do have such a different view of the world. A world, by the way, that either ignores them, shuns them or tortures them.

I hate today.