who has no empathy?

I have migraines. I get migraines all the time. I get migraines from everything. People ask me my triggers, and I laugh and reply life, because I am triggered by so many things. I'm a migrainer. My migraines are inherently part of me.

I get migraines everywhere. If I leave the house, I react to something, to everything. If I stay home, I'm still not safe, though there are fewer triggers, there are fewer things that can go wrong, there are more things I can control. My life in many ways is planned around my migraines. What can I do, where can I go? what do I need to keep myself safe? how much can I do before I cannot keep going? how many plans upon plans upon plans need to always be made? How will people react, and how do I need to plan on dealing with others?

Because people are always a wildcard. People come with triggers. People are dangerous. People don't listen. People don't understand. People won't take me seriously, won't treat me as human, won't respect me. People are terrifying and are everywhere. And yet, I am lonely and don't want to always be alone. How to I plan for people when I don't know how my body will react this time?

I can't trust them, experience has taught me that, and yet, experience has also taught me that those who treat me worst are those who's jobs claim they care for us, and those who treat me best are those who "have no social skills". Those who "work with disabled people" lead to trauma and fear of leaving the house, and the children who I hear adults all around me speaking about how much they do not know, cannot understand, will never do, show me so much love that years later it makes me less afraid to face the world.

It was a special education paraprofessional who learned that cigarette smoke was a major migraine trigger of mine, and every time she would go out for a cigarette, would return, to follow me as closely as she could, even when she was supposed to be in a different room than I was.

The number of people in different roles, with different jobs, who've claimed I was abusive for having a migraine, for having access needs at all, has been so high I cannot remember it. I've been thrown off trains, removed from buildings. I am not allowed places, not for any way I act, but because my brain reacts to the environment around me, because others threaten me when they find this out, and because this is my fault.

I must be lying about this. My disability must be made up. From medical assistants to doctors. Professionals of all sort make this clear.

My experiences are fear, knowing I'm not allowed, knowing I'm not real to others. I don't want to go into them, they're just more experiences that all disabled people know.

Because what is notable to me is instead who does care. Who does notice. Who sees me as a person.

Because without stopping, or asking, or saying I need help, there are people who automatically know and see that someone isn't okay right now, and react and respond without questioning doing so. And for me, every one of those people has been an autistic child. Every one of those has been someone who written into an IEP was things about how not empathic they are, how they don't understand social interactions, how they need to be trained. Every one of them was someone who was being abused through ABA by people who claimed they did not know the "correct" social interactions at any point in time. And yet, when they saw someone who they cared about, they immediately responded. And their teachers might not have understood. Because at times, their teachers listened to them, and at others times their teachers went on about how socially inappropriate they were being, but every time, these reactions were the meaningful ones, the helpful ones, the ones that showed me that I mattered to someone in the world, and also the ones that did anything to make it easier to get through that moment in time.

A child taking off their earmuffs he was wearing because noises were too loud, and bringing them to me, and trying to give them to me because they thought that noises would be more of a problem to me than to him. The fact that they wouldn't fit me didn't change how meaningful a moment like this was (and such an action reminded me of the sound protection I was carrying and could not remember about without a reminder. Yet another child helped me go through my backpack and find some sort of hearing protection item to make noises less overwhelming).

A child stopping doing what they was "supposed" to be doing, going through their teachers stuff, and hiding everything that might be a migraine trigger of mine so nobody could interact with it. The teacher got really annoyed with them because of them going through their stuff rather than doing their school work, but it was because the cleaning supplies and such that were easily accessible were repeatedly triggering migraines. They did not find this acceptable, and wanted me in the classroom, so fixed the problem, removing the migraine triggers, so nobody would interact with them.

A class, shutting the lights off, closing the shades, to make it a dimmed classroom, before I entered the room, when they found out I was going to try to teach despite my migraine having spiked high. In an excitable, rambunctious class, every time anyone spoke above a whisper another student reminding them that noise was bothering me and being quiet would make it easier for me.

From students finding ways to help me around a school building when I couldn't walk, to students helping me find places I'd never been before when I couldn't see, it's been the autistic children who help, and they have done it without prompting, and without forcing help upon me.

While to others, I have always been a burden, a thing to remove, it's only been to those who I must hear about how much they, how much I, cannot understand concepts like caring about others and showing empathy, who care about me.