What have I been doing the past 13 years?

I am aware that this may sound insulting but I was quite offended by a comment made to me earlier. Some times people forget that we have our own private life. An autism parent basically accused me of not advocating enough for the autism community. On their first status they basically accused the actuallyautistic adults of failing to work hard enough to tackle the issues like ATU’s (autism treatment units). I haven’t been focusing on the autism things this week because my boiler has broken down. I’m either not spending as much time at home or using my electric blanket to keep warm. I have also felt overwhelmed because autism awareness month is uncomfortable for those of us on the spectrum. We are trying to live our every day lives and don’t want to feel spotlighted due to attention being bought to our condition. The misinformation out there on autism awareness week/day/month is upsetting for us to watch.  April is a difficult month for me because that is when my son was born. I have had more messages from those wanting to know more and a huge amount of friends requests via social media. I’m burnt out from interacting with others. I need my own space which I won’t get tomorrow anyway because boiler being repaired.

I have been doing the awareness campaigning for 13 years. I have worked for no payment at all hours. I was fighting for autism acceptance a long time before many of the current autism parents had their children. I have made many personal sacrifices to bring up the topics that society wanted to silence. I had loads of crap written about me on official records within the system. I can’t have letterbox contact with my son because of my recklessness campaigning for autism acceptance which I did growing up. I have been bullied and singled out for being openly brutally honest about autism. I have been followed while driving and had my personal life wrecked because of the autism acceptance campaigning I’ve done for all my adult life. I’ve been sectioned and imprisoned because I refused to back down. I will not be told that I haven’t done enough. I have to live with the trauma of my experiences. They’ve left me with nightmares and PTSD symptoms. Also, being autistic means we don’t get listened to by the system. Our voices are ignored. I was persistent and tried to get society to see their errors. Instead if listening to me and making changes that make our life more inclusive, they sectioned me as a teenager and imprisoned me as an adult. The things I did out of frustration as  teenager will always be used against me. I was pushed by others for years before I did that bomb hoax (downgraded to providing false information). I was bullied every school day. It was by the staff as well as the students. Social services were more harmful than helpful. Also, I was given medication for Epilepsy that it turned out I didn’t need. The medication was too strong for me and affected my education, learning and development. I was abused and kicked all the time growing up. I had a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. That happened after I was excluded from university. I had just gone through all the child protection abuse which resulted in my baby son being ripped away from me for adoption. I’m not an awful person.

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