When I was 3 years old a doctor told my mother that I’d be locked away in a mental institution by the time I was sixteen.
Something underneath the seams had unraveled my genes,
They told my mother the “A” word.

Autism.
The disease that made me throw tantrums when routine was broken
Trapped me in my own world and made loud noises seem like hell’d awoken
And invaded my very being.

In kindergarten I got kicked out because I screamed and fought and cried every time someone put their hands on me.
In first grade I had no friends but I didn’t care because I could walk around the playground and talk to myself and keep my own company.
In third grade I had a teacher who didn’t believe in autism who purposefully antagonized me every day because she thought she could “break” me of it. She even brought a jar of fire ants into class even though I was very afraid of them because I’m allergic.
In fourth grade years of therapy made them change my diagnosis to Aspberger’s Syndrome.
In seventh grade I realized God wasn’t real but at the time I went to a religious school because they were the only place that would take the autistic kid back when I was six.
In eighth grade they shoved God down my throat and  I began to fight back against them and that made me have no friends again so I played bass in the hallway during lunch and prayed nobody would talk to me.

Years of therapy and countless milligrams of medication have made me who I am.
I’m not the kid I was born as and I never want to be that man again.
And for all of you who say it isn’t a disease
I want to squeeze your vocal chords ‘till you can’t breathe
Because not a single one of you well meaning but dangerous activists has EVER known what its like to spend your whole life wanting to be normal but knowing you never can be.
I can’t even feel the emotion to yell and scream because all this medication has dulled the demons inside of me, and I want to feel it, I want to feel it more than you could ever know.

I’m too young to remember that doctor telling my mother about me being in a mental hospital by the time I was sixteen.
But I’m 17 and far away from it as I could have ever dreamed of being.
The “A” word may have defined my childhood but it does not define me.