My experiences in elementary school (or, a list of confessions and grievances)

All names have been changed.

My experiences in elementary school are hard to talk about, but they're worth sharing. For background knowledge, I have Asperger's Syndrome, which many of you probably already know. I would never change who I am, but Asperger's has been a challenge in my life.
I remember that as a kindergartener, I liked Disney Princesses, especially Cinderella (which is okay, mind you). I even pretended to be Cinderella. I wanted to be called Cinderella, but when the teachers refused, I would hit and kick them. I did violent things entirely because I didn't get my way. Still, the teachers refused. I remember that I had a helper, but I don't remember much about her.

I vividly remember that when coloring pictures, my kindergarten teacher would tell us not to color the girl's hair blue or color her skin red. "Make her look like a normal girl," she always told us. Looking back, this still angers me. Children should be allowed to be children. It confuses me that many teachers don't understand children.

I remember that I would do violent and extreme things just to get my way. During circle time, I insisted on sitting on a chair rather than in a circle, probably because I felt that sitting on a chair would be more like sitting on a throne or something like that. Basically, I thought I was too awesome to sit on the ground. I thought I was too awesome to follow the rules. I was quite narcissistic as a young child. I still am kind of vain (aren't we all?), but not as much as I used to be.
In the first grade, I got a new helper. She didn’t understand me. She was afraid of me. In fact, she got so scared of me that she left. Eventually I got a different helper, Ms. F. She was firm, but she was kind. She tried to understand me, and she never gave up on me.
Still, my life did not improve. I remember having to go "under cover" during recess, meaning I had to go underneath a sheltered area. I hated it because it was loud and I didn't like the games people played there. I later found out that my parents told my teachers to let me stay inside during recess when it was raining, but the teachers refused because they wanted me to socialize with the other kids. Yeah, when you're extremely prone to violence like I was, socializing with people shouldn't be a high priority.

I had friends, but I was only really friends with them because I said I was their friend; I don't think they actually liked me. In first grade I remember having a friend named Elizabeth. She had a wild imagination like mine, but sometimes I felt like she didn't really like me. She often abandoned me for her other friends. She told me I was "the grossest girl [she'd] ever seen" during lunch. Of course, I wasn't very nice to her either; I insisted that she would always hang out with me. I was very controlling.

Soon I started obsessing over other things. I still liked Cinderella, but I also loved rainbows, fairies, and Star Wars, just to name a few. I got mad when people drew rainbows the "wrong" way. I believed in fairies and was upset when people said they weren't real. My obsession with Star Wars probably lasted the shortest, but pretend fighting wasn't allowed on the playground, which I thought was stupid. I can understand why it would be against the rules to bring fake weapons to school, but lightsabers? Seriously? Those lightsabers didn't hurt anyone, either. They only hurt the evil villains. What else was there to do on the playground? Sell things?

Actually, I did sell things. I was the owner of an imaginary jewel shop (though I also sold other things as well). I remember that these kids would rob my jewel shop and try to eat Elizabeth and I, but I talked to the principal, who tied them up and kept them in the office for one hundred weeks. Okay, that last part was a joke. I didn't actually talk to the principal and the principal didn't really tie them up. Although I acted like I hated them, these kids were actually probably the people I liked playing with the most; I just didn't realize it at the time.

My teachers had an incredibly weird problem with anything that was even remotely violent, which was pretty annoying. I remember that when I was in second grade, I had watched Corpse Bride, which is a stop-motion film made by Tim Burton and isn't much worse than The Nightmare Before Christmas. I enjoyed the movie, and I wrote about watching it when I wrote about what I had done that weekend. When my teacher saw it, she looked at me strangely and said "isn't that a scary movie?" It wasn't; I actually found it pretty funny. I liked the "silly skeletons."

When I was in third grade, I got a new helper (again). However, I also had the most problems. I was sent to the principal's office more than ever. Eventually it was decided that I should change schools. I had difficulty with that transition, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. It was also kind of awesome because Ms. F was there.

The one downside was that my class only had boys. There were nice boys, but I wished that I had a girl I could be friends with. Luckily, that eventually changed when my teacher announced that there would be a new student. Her name was Ashleigh and she was in the third grade. She would be coming to my school shortly after Valentine's Day.

When I met Ashleigh, we became best friends immediately. She was kind, funny, and outgoing, but she was also very strange. I remember that she would want us to be pregnant pegasuses, so that's what we were. We couldn't run or jump or anything like that and we had to go through painful childbirth. Nevertheless, we were very good friends and shared many similar interests.

In fourth grade, we got a new teacher. I’m sure she had good intentions, but she was inexperienced and changed everything. Things were chaotic, not just for me, but for everyone. She thought all of the kids in the class were the same, when they weren’t. I remember that she would give us "checkmarks" whenever we did something bad, and that if we got so many checkmarks, we couldn't have free time. I was sent to the principal's office more than ever. When my parents told her how she could help me, she always refused.

It was soon decided that I must go to a day treatment program. Although it was a hard thing to do, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. The teachers there did everything that my parents wanted my teachers at my old school to do. They let me do art and they actually listened to me. They also got to see more of the good in me than anyone else got to. In the past, people just saw the side of me that had a bad temper, and while they knew that it existed, they realized that I wasn’t that person. Many of the people there even wondered why I was there in the first place.
I was extremely sad to leave, but I still remember my experiences there fondly. I am grateful that these people helped me. We don't really keep in touch, but I want to thank them if I ever see them again. My life is not perfect, but my life has changed.