Everyone changes. It's a fact of life. Experiences, thoughts, dreams, lessons and just time alone will change anyone. But I've changed quite a lot, which I guess is a tad ironic considering that one of the key points of autism is a dislike of change. I'd guess that anyone from any one stage of my life, such as primary school, my first secondary school or my current school, wouldn't be able to recognise me from any other stage.
So I thought I'd see exactly how and how much I've changed and give everyone else a glimpse at the person I once was and the person I am today. I'm going to do this by interviewing people from the various schools and providing the answers highlights and summaries. I may edit some quotes for the sake of privacy but I will at no point edit anything to distort peoples opinions or thoughts about me.
It only makes sense to start with people from my primary school. So I'll do that.
The first person I ask surprises me with his answer. His response was "you were the funny one, who did all the crazzy (sic) stuff". This was surprising because the way I remember it I was a tad more psychotic than that. Intrigued I ask for examples and he comes up with "throwing a chair at [Name]" and "pushing a table at mrs [Name, my head teacher]" and here I was thinking that I was just mistaken about my past. I may just have been mistaken about the sanity of the interviewee.
The second person I asked came up with "umm well you threw a chair at me , soo.. i found you quite scary?". Just as a point this isn't the same person mentioned by the first person. It's going well, I've asked two people and already got two references to throwing chairs.
Now seems like a good time to introduce a new source, my statement of special educational needs from 2005. This is a confidential, private and highly personal official document outlining my needs and is only to be shown to officials of schools and councils. Let's take a look.
Starts off well: "Algar's verbal reasoning and thinking skills far exceed his chronological age.", "has a good grasp of numbers", " has a good understanding of general knowledge" and "His auditory short-term memory skills are two years above his chronological age". So I was smart. Things take a little dip with "Spelling and sight vocabulary are poor and there are indications of specific literacy difficulties". After this was written I was diagnosed with dyslexia.
Anyway, it then goes onto emotional, behaviour and social, the real dirt. It starts "Algar presents as a tough, unsympathetic child, but internally he is a child who finds it extremely hard to understand others.". Wow, I was pretty messed up it would seem. It continues "Algar has expressed suicidal thoughts at home", "Algar is verbally bullied at school" and "Algar is aware of his social difficulties and will compound these by isolating himself from other children." so yeah, pretty messed up is the feeling I'm getting. It also says about my independence "Algar relies on adults to ensure his safety and help him cope both at school and home".
So that's what I was like at primary school, now for what I was like for the year I spent in mainstream high school.
The first interviewee said "I think from what i knew, you were fairly quite (sic), but funny aswell (sic). Spent lots of times having good random conversations about things which is always a good thing, so generally a cool person [smiley]" so I seem to be doing quite well. I then ask for any other thoughts, to which he replies "you were quite scary when you got angry....your attempt to hack [Name] with your fountain pen springs to mind [smiley]" OK, so not quite as good. But I think I've found a small trend of people laughing or smiling after describing my acts of violence.
The next person I asked gave very good insight. His answer was "You were eccentric. You also seemed really intelligent and you were always good at arguments. You also fought very well [smiley] You were also quite lonely sometimes, but it was almost as if it were by choice.". Wow. That's pretty good especially that last sentence. I should point out that the fighting wasn't just random acts of aggression, we had little boxing matches at breaktime sometimes. I remember one time when I took on two people at once only using one hand and won. But I think that the statement about being lonely by choice echoes the general feeling I'm getting from these interviews of people from this school about being a withdrawn loner. He went on to say that I was "very strong headed".
The third person I asked said "you seemed to be always plotting yet unique And you always used to be looking suspicious But you always had something interesting to say". Again it feels like he was an observer of me more than someone who hanged out with me. This just strengthens the outsider loner image, like I was in a world of my own.
The fourth person described it the most like how I remember it so far with "Hmm, I'd say violently, slightly psychotic but likeable (sic) and friendly [smiley]", OK so a bit of a strange combination, but strange seems to have been my largest export back then. He went on to say "You seem'd to be fairly intelligent". I'm getting a lot of people saying I'm smart. Yay me.
The fifth person, who I didn't like much and I don't think he thought much of himself as when I first talked to him on MSN a couple of years later the first thing he said was "I'm not a dick anymore :)", said of me "You were a (sic) quite quiet, a bit off (sic) an odd one to be honest. and got angry easily" which fits in with what we've heard so far. He then said I was "quite clever, you were pretty cool most of the time". See, I really am smart. Even if he only said I was quite clever.
So the students views of me here seems to be simultaneously cool/funny/smart/loner/psychotic madman. So that's a nice combination. So let's see what the staff thought of me.
I have the views of the head of the Learning support. They're quite colourful. Just some background information on this, when this was written my parents and the school had both agreed that the school wasn't right for me, and this document was used to try and convince authorities to move me. Whether this means that she exaggerated I can't say for sure. But regardless the things she said are still of value here. She starts off with "Initially Algar presents as a very anxious child who constantly looks towards the adults around him for direction and support.", "He can be very rude and confrontational" (most of this was actually their misunderstandings, I was never as they claimed purposefully rude. Well, at least not most of the time.), "I think Algar manipulates situations he is in, for example if he does something wrong that he knows that he should be punished for he is starting to initiate evasive action by sulking, becoming physical towards property and then bursting into tears". This is actually total crap. In fact, it was this kind of misunderstanding that lead me to try and kill myself. I can remember on one occasion being really stressed out about something, I can't remember what, and got really upset eventually going in to a sort of catatonic state, not moving for what I think was about half an hour. During this time I heard two LSA's (Learning Support Assistants, you know, the people who are supposed to help me) talking about me, with no regard for the fact that I was there. They said something to the effect of "He was acting really upset earlier, now he seems fine. It's just an act.". Yeah. I was fine. Except for the not moving. The worst thing you can do in a situation with an emotionally unstable person is accuse them of lying. Just so we have some perspective on this keep in mind that this kind of thing very nearly killed me. Because of things like this I might not have been alive today. It's important to remember that the reason I'm alive today is not that I never tried to commit suicide, I did, but because on the occasion that I got closest to doing so my brother saved me. In a way, the staff were partly responsible for me coming within minutes of death. But I don't blame them. I blame their misunderstanding and ignorance to my needs, which they couldn't really be expected to understand.
Anyway the rest of the document is mostly the same but a couple of key points include where she describes my mind as "disturbed" and where she says "I am also concerned that Algar may be manifesting some signs of paranoia or psychosis.". They checked. I wasn't. Not only did I not have either of these conditions, I also had none of the symptoms. Which kind of shows how much she knew what she was talking about.
The rest of the document includes a school GREENIE (a slip sent from one member of staff to another, generally about a students behaviour) about the time I had seriously blood shot eyes following a suicide attempt, a message from my textiles teacher (where she totally misunderstood my whimsical comments for horrific, brutal and psychotic ramblings of a madman. It happens to us all at some point or other.), notes from both my one to one's, my thoughts of the situation scribed by an LSA, highlights from my home school book (with five references to stress related illness, four mentions of wanting to die and two mentions of attempted suicide. It should be remembered that this is only from five months and doesn't even include all of the instances from those five months. It also includes my favourite entry "26/09/05 - Agitated and talking about wanting to die. Had to be removed from history." When they resort to time travel to completely remove your presence from history, you can tell they don't want you there) and a point-by-point explanation of how I fit in with the every child matters agenda.
So that's what I was like at my second school. Now for my current school, and what I'm like today.
I've been at my current school for nearly three years and I've changed a lot in that time, but It's been a slow change and virtually everyone who knew me at the beginning of it still knows me now, so it makes sense to focus on what I'm like today. However because there aren't many people who know me at my current school it may be more difficult getting interviews, but I'll try.
The first person I ask says that I'm "Very intelligent, you've got quite a hard exterior - as in, you don't seem to be affected by much, you think you're right at lot of the time (although to be fair, you usually are) you seem to be really moody when you come into school in the morning, but you're usually not actually moody at all." "You're good at containing your emotions, i.e things like, er, not liking [Name, I wonder if he'll work out who I'm talking about] for example...you've not really had any proper arguments or falling outs with him" "you're tolerant" "A bit weird, in the good way" "You seem to have a lot of self confidence, which is good" "and you can be very interesting". So what appears to be a positive opinion of me by someone who actually knows me. Things like "You seem to have a lot of self confidence", You're good at containing your emotions" and "you're tolerant" are a far cry from what we've seen so far. In fact, they're the exact opposite.
The second person was slightly less positive with "At time's you can be like really nice to get along with and be really sociable and at other times you can be like a knob! by talking way to much and getting on peoples nerves! alot! and you talk way to much! and i personaly (sic) think u should have your hair cut" and "you should learn to play the guitar". Well, he seems nice. Just in case you're wondering, this is the person mentioned by the previous interviewee (you know, not liking [Name]), so yeah, tolerant is probably a good way of describing it.
The next source is my annual review from March 2008, the one from last year. I would have included my most recent review, but I couldn't find it. So just remember that this is excluding a year of change, but it should still be relevant.
It includes a review of me by my teacher, saying "He is fully aware that he easily becomes stressed and will listen when he needs guidance. He is a positive role model in the class", "There are still occasions when he can become argumentative but this is decreasing as he takes more time to consider the whole situation or problem and not just one point. He demonstrates consistently good behaviour and is a pleasure to teach.". So that's good. Consistently good behaviour. There aren't that many people who can boast that, and even fewer who used to be violent psychopaths. I can't fully remember what my last review said, but I think it was completely positive. Just so we're clear this doesn't mean I'm any saner. I'm completely crazy. But in a nice, charming sort of way.
So that's that. How I've changed over the course of my life. What started out as a simple blog post, albeit an ambitious one, has turned into the best insight into my mind anyone has ever had. You must draw your own conclusions from this. All I can say is that if you think you knew me, if you think you know me, if you think you know what I've been through or if you think you know the first thing about me, I can only leave you with one final statement.
You're wrong.
