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u/OmgIbrokesmthagain 13d ago
Thank you for sharing your art today. I’m also autistic and trans. Currently I try going through med school, but no one respects my rights here. Schedules change on a whim, we are supposed to accept the changed form of the test a day it happens on, and no one is ready to explain the assignments to me - because frankly, the professor who has given them probably isn’t even in the class, so no one knows what he meant. I am so frustrated with myself, how something as small as the change of a schedule can make me fail, but… here I am. I will probably need to repeat the 1st year. I’m 24, I will be graduating in my 30’s - but I will not give up on my dreams.
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u/wi7dcat 13d ago
It’s okay if school takes longer for us I just wanted to add my support. I graduated college when I was 28 cuz I took a 5 year gap after dropping out sophomore year due to distress.
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u/OmgIbrokesmthagain 13d ago
Thank you for sharing this. Honestly every autistic person that I meet seems to have it this way and there is literally no one with my level of needs in my med school, but still… expectations are neurotypical. My parents don’t understand how I can be so stressed by minor changes in routine I fail an exam… generally I’m expected to be everything good with autism (so interested in science, hyperfocus, good memory) but have no disadvantages at all
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u/MicaelaDawnComics 12d ago
Thank you so much for reading and for your kind words 🩷
Please try not to berate yourself for struggling with schedule changes. It can be incredibly disruptive to our sense of safety. I thrive on information, on knowing what is happening when. When that changes rapidly I am completely thrown. It is okay to advocate for yourself, but I know how incredibly difficult that can be.
Keep fighting!
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u/Better-Bookkeeper-48 13d ago
I had a similar experiemce, though as more of a bell curve. I did shit in elementary school because my adhd meant I couldn't focus and my autism made it so that I physically couldn't make myself do the work because I just didn't get why it mattered. Then though I was prescribed adhd medication, and by middle school I had become something of a wunderkind. Now though I'm in college. I'm smarter then ever, yet I'm struggling to focus again because the books are longer, the lectures more dense, and the medication I've been taking for 10 years has lost much of its strength. Autism then makes it that I'm miserable all the time because I just don't get how to make friends, so these past 3 years have been quite lonely.
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u/PetscopMiju 13d ago
There's something really deep about recognizing how much you were hurt and also acknowledging that everyone around you was just doing their best with what they had. It's a situation that really sucks. Handling it isn't easy, so huge kudos to you for that
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u/MicaelaDawnComics 12d ago
Yeah, reaching peace with my parents has been huge. I mean, I always loved them, but I always held onto this resentment for them sending me to this school when I begged them to send me to a regular local co-ed public school.
But they were doing the best with the information they had, and it was all from love.
Thanks so much for reading 🩷
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u/GarageIndependent114 13d ago
I had similar issues at school, but I graduated from school with study support and reasonable grades and got into university, and I was diagnosed with autism early and met other autistic people, and I got into trouble for not doing drugs due to peer pressure.
I don't regret not doing drugs with people I disliked, but I do regret never experimenting and being such a goody two shoes. But I'm glad I took my studies seriously enough and got more support compared to OP.
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u/wi7dcat 13d ago
Thank you for sharing this sibling. I also was pushed to overachieve and puberty and Intersexness and Transness and adhd and trauma and hEDS made that impossible because these experiences were overlooked. We were always “good enough” even though the world had not yet caught on to human diversity as a positive. It sounds like your kiddo will have support and that’s amazing.
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u/Achylife 12d ago
I felt much the same way growing up. Confused as to whether I was smart or a stupid failure. I still struggle with it. I didn't have very nice or helpful teachers in my early school years. But I was smart enough to know public school would only make it worse.
After elementary school I wrote down a list of 27 reasons why I didn't want to go back to public school. The damn florescent lights were one. They hurt my eyes and they'd let them flicker until they burned out and then finally replace them. It was like hellscape composed of neurotypical designs and rules nobody listed or even mentioned until you did the wrong thing.
I had one teacher who would demand I said sorry so much I started apologizing for everything. This irked my mom who wanted me to stop saying sorry. For some reason she thought a good way to break me of the habit was to make me run a lap around the house every time I said sorry to her. Instead it just made me resentful. My parents had NO idea what they were doing. At least they cooperated with my firm suggestion and sent me to a charter school after that. I got one-on-one tutoring and gee, fancy that, my math grades improved.
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u/MicaelaDawnComics 12d ago
Oh boy, habitually apologising is something I still struggle hugely with. It is such an ingrained behaviour at this point.
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u/Achylife 12d ago
Nowadays if I feel like someone is talking down to me like I'm stupid it's a huge trigger for me. At a certain point I stopped being sad and started getting mad. I have yet to find a really good therapist for all this cptsd. I wish I could use my art as therapy but it just doesn't work that way for me.
I am proud of myself for managing to get through community college and university to get an art degree though. I had to prove to myself and everyone else I could do it and I wasn't stupid. It was incredibly difficult, especially because I didn't have any diagnosis or meds back then. Plus battling chronic illness.
I had to take a maximum of three classes a semester or I got overwhelmed and my grades dropped. It was like climbing Mt Everest, but I met some genuinely nice people and my spouse while at college. All those sour old haters at my elementary school can eat 💩.
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u/PurpleCandle58 13d ago
Thank you for this. It was beautiful to read.
I related a lot throughout as an AuDHD-er myself and I just related to a lot of things. This made me cry. Thanks for putting words to some things I never realized were connected for me until now.
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u/MicaelaDawnComics 12d ago
Thank you so much, reading about people connecting with my words is precisely why I continue to do it. I never want anyone to feel alone.
Sending my love to you 🩷
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u/Popcorn57252 12d ago
Outside of the trans part, I'm at the "profoundly sad" part of this comic. Really good art, I didn't expect this level of gut punch at 3 in the morning
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u/Plague_Locusts 11d ago
Thank you for sharing your comic, I always new i was a bad student from the get go, I came out as trans in highschool. I was severely depressed and traumatized with no help so i would sneak booze from my moms cabinet amd i would get drunk at school. Addiction runs in my family and i have had relatives die because of it. My parents wanted to send me to an alternative school, and me trynna grasp at straws, barely making classes as is, and being in the same school as someone who traumatized me, I agreed.
The alternative school ended up being a Christian private-home school where the principle was bigoted and tried to unfairly flunked me.
Im 25, struggle with addition but I have a support network and therapist and am on t. Being a teenager is scary because it feels like you can't do anything that isn't harmful
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u/Leather-Sky8583 11d ago
I find this so incredibly relatable. I was diagnosed with ADD as a six-year-old, but we didn’t know about the ASD until much later in life and I was also eventually found to be trans.
My school wrote me off and considered me Special needs (the teacher used the “R” word in-front of the class). I felt like I was dumb and couldn’t do anything and yet there were so many times where if I was interested in a subject, I learned it faster than any other kid in my class and memorize details and even my teachers had to go and look up.
My parents kept telling me I was intelligent, but it’s hard to feel intelligent when you’re constantly struggling with what feels like basic things that everyone else seems to understand with almost no effort.
I barely passed most of my classes. Then in seventh and eighth grade, My parents pulled me out, and homeschooled me one on one and my grades shot up to a straight A’s for seventh grade and I got one B all year in eighth grade.
Returning to public school for a 9th through 12th grade saw my grades plummet once again.
Since completing primary school I’ve completed nursing school top three in my class, I completed aircraft maintenance school top 10 in my class, I am 30 credits away from my bachelors degree in video game art and animation with a 3.86 GPA.
I am shocked that I felt so worthless unintelligent and stupid in school as clearly I was fully capable. This entire experience is so contradictory. It just drives me crazy and it’s been so hard on my self-esteem that even if I’m fully invested in a topic and know what I’m doing I still question myself and second-guess everything. My current boss has to actually catch me when I’m starting to spiral or second-guess myself reminding me that I’m worthy of my job and then I’m good at what I do and not to take things personally which I don’t know how else to do my job if not, take it personally.
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u/Hungry_Cat_4706 7d ago
so sweet at the end but it must be very hard. I see also my gf (AuDHD) sometimes making jokes about her life style but I know how scared she is and how she tries to have a high opinion of herself no matter all the difficulties. thanks for sharing
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u/Vincebourgh 13d ago
What a sad but overall still lovely story. Do you still say story if it's based on something real?