I hate people.

Today, J was in an awful snit. Some days are good and some aren't. Today she was just mad because she couldn't find her pink silly straw. At first she accused me of taking it, then her dad and lastly, of course, it was her sister's turn. The sister who hadnt been home all...day...long.

As she stormed through the kitchen, literally tearing through the drawers, I found that the straw had accidently fallen into her trash can beside her bed. When I brought the straw to her, in the kitchen, and began to wash it, she burst into tears.

"Mom why can't I have friends?" "Why can't I be normal?"

Okay heartbreak time.

This is the life of an Autistic adult in a small town.


It's not that my daughter doesn't have friends. She is on a Special Needs softball time and has quite a few friends. They also hold parties where she gets to socialize. But softball season is not constant and neither are the parties. That time in between is the hardest.

Both my husband and I are physically disabled which means we live below the poverty line so allowing her to be involved in other activities is difficult because they are costly.

And the normal part. Well that part gets dicey as well. How do you tell your adult autistic daughter that even her aunt, uncle and grandmother don't want to be around her because she still has tantrums? Her own flesh and blood. The ones that I fought with to stop attempting to spoil her. Now they write her off because they think, somehow, she is going to get a gun and shoot them or beat them up like they've heard on television.

Yes, she gets angry out of frustration but violent? Come on! Never has she hit them or cursed them . But she understands what they are doing. J tells me that they 'threw her away'. And she's not far off.

Unfortunately, J does have the 'princess' attitude; believing it is all about her (ironically a behavior that she inherited from her aunt). It's hard to explain why she can't have a castle or be princess when 'she grows up' (she's 22). In the same way she doesn't understand why she can't spend the weekend at Grandma's anymore

People chuckle when I say I don't like people. If they only knew why.