The teachers didn’t know how to deal with me in elementary school. They treated me like someone with a disease they needed to stay the hell away from. They yelled at me when I had meltdowns and would drag me by the collar of my hoodie to the principal’s office, constantly handing out referrals whenever I would cry for “disruptive behavior”. I remember once, this one girl tripped and fell and started crying, but when I yelled “OW” and skinned my knee, the P.E. teacher wrote my full name on the board and said “Don’t be so dramatic today like this kid.”

Then, at my next elementary school, they would constantly not believe me when I got bullied and would yell at me. I also disregarded rules a lot as a child as I didn’t see a need for them and liked to play around with stuff and got screamed at rather than understood.

In middle school, the teachers were okay, but the kids treated me like an outsider, a sub-human.