Pleas of Futility

THE FIRST TIME I REALIZED THERE WAS INJUSTICE IN THE WORLD

May 24, 2023 3:20pm - May 25, 2023 1:39pm

I was brought into this world on October 22, 2005, a black, autistic, woman. As a baby, even as an infant, that didn't mean much to me. It didn't mean much to the world.

The first time I noticed the colour of my skin was first grade, sometime after the leaves began to fall. It never seemed to matter before then—to myself, to others, to society—because I was a child still. I hadn't grown up into what they feared; an adult with opinions. My only opinions were that I wanted ice cream before dinner and that rules were stupid.

I'd like to think that I was a friendly kid. I lost my two front teeth on the playground when I was blocked in a... red, spiral tube slide. A little boy, with a white shirt, stopped me halfway through and called for his friend to come down. Long story short, his friend knocked my two front teeth out, and I bled all over the boy's favourite white shirt. I cried and cried, and begged the boy to forgive me. I promised him a new shirt, and he helped me look for my teeth.

I was just a normal kid, in a normal environment. Sometime after the leaves began to fall, I stopped being a normal kid. Other children began to notice the colour of my skin, and I began to as well. Suddenly, I wasn't the type of kid that the others wanted to be around, unless it meant making sure that I knew that I was different.

I'm pretty sure you know what I mean....

We moved schools.

The first time I noticed that I was different, was the day that I learned that it was always best to blend in. When my differences became visible to the naked eye, no longer disguised as the childish actions of a second-grader. Friends were limited—if I'm honest, which I always try to be, they were non-existent. It was a new environment, I told myself. None of these kids knew me enough to want to be my friend yet.

Grades three to six, I was friends with my teachers and only ever hung out with people twice as young as me. They seemed to be the only ones who ever understood me. The only ones who accepted me for who I was. They were the only ones that I could be myself around. Grades seven and eight I moved back to my old school, and yet again I had no friends—at least until after March break when this girl a year younger than me moved to our school. Everyone already had their friend groups, they'd all been together since kindergarten. This girl, like me, knew no one.

She was the perfect person to be my friend. It was the first, and one of the only times, where my differences didn't matter. Until they began to matter to her a year later.

Even now, my being different, my... inability to function the same way as others, affects my everyday life. It has cost me opportunities, relationships, friendships...my mental health. The second someone finds out you have autism—or any disability, really— they begin to treat you differently; even your own family members. It's like no matter what you do, it will always define every aspect of it. My mom may have had to worry about leaving me home, or my room always being a mess, and whether I was taking care of myself, but she never had to worry about me walking anywhere alone. She never had to worry about whether I got hit by a car while crossing the road somewhere or if I got kidnapped, when I was out with a friend. I never really had any; I never really left the house.

The first time I noticed my body, was the day that I felt trapped inside of it. Whether this was before or after I was five, screaming on restaurant tables about it, I don't know; but I know that I've always felt trapped, for as long as I can remember.

The first day that I noticed my body, I stopped noticing the mirrors that hung on the walls of my house. It was something new that made me even more different from my peers—something that made them even less inclined to befriend me. I was...weird, out of place. I'd never met anybody who'd felt the same way that I did, so when I got older, and people started noticing, I stopped letting them. I created personas—shadows of my former self, really. I built a different 'me' for every different scenario so that I could finally fit in. So that I could finally belong.

Now, for those of you wondering, it did not work, it only created further problems down the line, relating to my identity and made me much more aware of the fact that I have absolutely no idea who I am. I know who I want to be, I know what I want to do, but none of that helps me right now. Hiding who I was, was all I knew how to do. It's what I was taught by society as I grew up. I was taught to hide myself, even from those closest to me. To hide who I was from myself.

The first time I noticed how much of an influence society had, was the first time I started to notice women. The first time that happened, I tried to keep it a secret, but I'm terrible at keeping secrets. She found out, but she told me that she felt the same. So we went out, and we kept that secret....until she didn't.

She told everyone in the school. How I wasn't what they thought I was. How I was sick in the head. How she was toying with my feelings in an attempt to see if I was really telling the truth about how I felt or not. I was.

The first time I noticed how much of an influence society had, was the first time I watched my sister betray me. The first time I watched her disown me, reject the blood that we shared—the blood that flowed through our veins, made us who we were. When she called me blasphemous profanities in front of both of our classes. I saw it the first time that I shouted across the kitchen table for her to keep her mouth shut. I saw it the first time that I came out to my parents in hot, angry tears. I even saw it when I lied to my parents and told them that the girl was nice and that we were still together, right before they told me that I wasn't allowed to see her anymore.

The first time I realized there was injustice in the world wasn't any of those days. The first time I noticed injustice in the world, was the day that I watched people fall and be judged for it. The first time I noticed injustice in the world, was the day that I saw people changing who they were in order to fit in. The first time I noticed injustice in the world, was the first time that I saw my mother cry.

The first time I realized that there was injustice in the world was...well, I don't know. The truth is...I noticed that there was injustice in this world many times. But like the rest of the world, I never acknowledged it. I never really realized it. I ignored it.... Because that's what I was taught to do. It's what society trained me to do the second that I was old enough to think and act on my own behalf. Now, don't get me wrong, I am my own person. I am accountable for my own actions, and I do not disbelieve or discredit that. I'm privileged, that much is true. I have more to my name than others, and more opportunities to advance in this life than some people I've met. I noticed the injustice in the world, lived it. But I never realized it. While some of that is due to society, to the environment I grew up in....

That is on me.