These two poems, one of which has been written by someone with Asperger syndrome, really help to explain what it is like to have a spectrum disorder.
They tackle the harsh reality of feeling different and alone but also ultimately of finding a way to belong. The more we can understand the more we, as therapists, can find a way to help.
Acceptance makes you free.
Forty years of failing
to fit in.
Forty years of sadness
where do I begin?
Every day had a shadow
and has been painful to me.
I’m different,
I accept that now
I have Aspergers you see.
This awful child,
that is me.
I was difficult and never felt free.
I know now I wasn’t being naughty
And I wasn’t really ill
I just had a mind that was never ever still.
Everything hurt me more than it should
No one understood my pain
Why was I such a drama queen
No one could ever really explain.
“She’s attention seeking and needs a slap”
“If she bites you bite her back”
“Make her eat or let her starve”
“Make her wear that itchy scarf”
“She’s highly strung”
“She doesn’t really belong”
“We can’t take her anywhere”
“As she plays up and everyone stares”
What did they do to deal with me?
They beat me, locked me up and hid the key.
Conform, conform and you’ll be fine
but the harder you try quicker comes the time
Where the lid blows off
And the fallout falls
And the world is an awful place for me.
They fought in vain
to erase the fear in my heart
and slowly tore my confidence apart
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Why do you scream?”
“You are a walking nightmare”
Yet it wasn’t a dream.
I could read before I went to school.
I was an artist and a writer and not a fool.
I was happy in classes where I learned lots of facts
Every class apart from maths.
I always finished first and got high grades.
It was in the playtime someone had drawn the shades.
No one wanted to be my friend.
Fights were never solved with amends.
I was weird, a goody two shoes geek.
What they really meant was I was a freak.
Well now I’m forty I know what is wrong
Suddenly I have found I do belong
With others like me who have a gift
Of a mind that darts just like a swifts.
We may be on a different plane
But some of us are much the same
We’re not alone and ill or bad
We’re special and talented
To not be able to see that is so very sad.
Another glimpse of what it is like to have a spectrum disorder.
Illegal Aliens
They know not us, we are other, us alone
Separate, different, alien, unknown
Judging by rules made for the masses of same
Thinking in their boxes, like a runaway train
The army is building, the new breed, it has come
This world of wrongness will become, undone
Like the fly in the ointment, we exist we are real
Ignoring us easily, like it’s no big deal
Huddling together against our kind
You live in the chains of your minds
Despite how hard it is, struggling through
I’d rather be like me, than be like you
Pretending to be one of you, to merge
Whilst inside, I feel myself want to surge
Societies that are blind, crumble in the end
Let us show you the way, let us, you mend.
To read more of the poems go to http://community.autism.org.uk/comment/23899
Compiled by Rachel Harrison
Speech and Language Therapist.
Integrated Treatment Services
April 2014
