When I was about 7 or 8 I really liked my teacher in school. He had a reputation for being an angry -blam!- but I got along with him. One day about halfway through the year he didn’t show up. The substitute said he was off sick so we thought nothing about it. Weeks went by, months, for the rest of the year we had a constantly changing stream of different teachers and none of them told us what happened. Something broke in my brain and I started acting up. I HATED being at school after lunchtime, and every single day I would pretend to get sick so I could go home. I even tried to run away; i got halfway down the road with my little sister before one of the teachers noticed and came after us, and then I tried to run away from home. Turns out the teacher who left was sent to prison for child stuff, and I have memories that imply he did stuff to me. I don’t like new people, I don’t trust them, I barely open up to anyone and my brain doesn’t let me think other people even like me. And that’s before we get into the muddy mental health waters of growing up as a disabled kid. The way people look at you and treat you, the kind of presence you have to cultivate to be as inconspicuous as possible, the social cues you have to fake responses to, the walls you have to put up just to get through the day. Makes ya want to scream sometimes.