CN: suicide, ableism, ABA
I should not live in a world where I have to worry that my students won't be alive every time I go to school, because of how they're treated by their teachers. This world should not exist. This world should not be our world. I should not have to worry that my students that I care about, who play with me, who go out of their way to do things with me and include me, and who make sure that I'm someone who knows that they care about me, won't be there when I wake up, because every other adult in a school, instead of caring about them, only cares about behaviors, and eliminating them, and behavior plans, and doesn't even care how many times they even break their behavior plan because who cares if they hurt the children they have power and they'll show the children they have power. I shouldn't need to be there, listening to the children about their suicide attempts, not knowing how many more exist beyond the ones I know about, but knowing that they exist.
I shouldn't live in a world, where because I've not been at that school for a year and a half now, I don't know whether everyone is still alive. I know nobody will tell me. The students would, but they don't have a way to contact me. Some of them tried to friend me on steam, but somehow that fell through. None of the adults would. The adults didn't tell me whether or not I had a job anymore. They just stopped talking to me. Why would they tell me about students I care about living or dying. They don't care about me. They never hid they didn't care about me. They claim to care about the kids, but they abuse them. It's a common pattern.
I shouldn't have to be reminded and wonder whether people I care about are alive or dead knowing if they're dead it's probably suicide. I shouldn't have to think about teenagers and how many suicide attempts they've made. I shouldn't have to know what they've gone through because of how much people have taught them that they can't be autistic, autistic is wrong, they're wrong, among the piles of lessons taught by people taking over their minds and bodies through ABA. I shouldn't have to know these things.
And if I didn't know them, I couldn't have been there, and I couldn't have helped them through the years I was there. I couldn't have introduced them to neurodiversity and autistic community being a thing. I couldn't have been someone who they learned to trust. I couldn't have made the difference I know I made. And I would still know that this is happening to children. The children just wouldn't have names and faces.
I'm told by people I'm too emotional when saying that what people call therapy is actually abuse. I'm told that being angry will mean people won't listen to me.
I just don't want anyone I care about dying. I just don't want anyone else abused. I just want this to stop now.
How can they not be emotional about this?