People have taken advantage of me my whole life because I am an innocent, gullible person who can easily be fooled. I would have thought that as I grew older I would get better at detecting such things, but I haven't. I can vividly remember the girls throwing sand on me going down a slide, the girls who sang "There she goes again" while we ate lunch because I was trying to sit with the cool kids, the girl who threatened to call the cops on because I was "trespassing" because didn't believe I had the same Godfather as her and I was "trespassing" on her friends property, and now someone sneakily pretending to be in the same room as me, having me hunt her down so I could catch up with her and to later learn she wasn't there after all. What other things, bigger things in the future will people do to take advantage of me?
Often times growing up in my neighborhood, I would ride my bike around and ring doorbells just trying to find someone to play with. I would often end of at Kara's house where we would play in the basement, play outside, and pretend A LOT. Of the many things we pretended to be were mom's, camp counselors and ride attendants at water parks. I always seemed to get the "dirty job" and would be taken advantage of. The one day when we decided to play "water park", I was a customer going down a water slide off the swing set. I would climb up the ladder and go down the slide as they poured water on me and the slide. There was a reason I was the only person going down the slide. The water in the bucket was mixed with this oh so wonderful stuff called sand. After a few times, I finally realized what was going on, but had hope that maybe someone else would go down the slide or that the next bucket wouldn't have sand in it. I went home that night with sand in my hair and gritty teeth. I'll never forget it.
In fifth grade, my teacher told the class that we better make friends now because once we got to middle school, it would be a lot harder. After that, I decided to start sitting with the "cool" kids instead of the table I had been sitting at. The table I had been sitting at, had been the table of kids who were mostly in learning support together all day. I wanted to try and make friends with my "neurotypical" peers. As soon as I started sitting at the new table, they realized that I was this wonderful ball they could bounce. They new they could get me all riled up and cause me to react or bounce. They played "not it" games and it wasn't like we had to do a chore. It was more along the lines of being characters from movies such as Dumb and Dumber, I always ended up being the worst character. I remember them saying I was the character named Mental? I still haven't seen the damn movie.
Then there was that wonderful day when I was playing with neighborhood friends in one of their backyards. I guess the parents weren't home and we were old enough to be alone. I said something about a man two of us mutually knew being my Godfather. He was my Godfather, but he is now deceased. The girl started cornering me into showing "proof" he was my Godfather. What proof? I have supposedly have pictures of him and I and his family and my family went to see Sesame on Stage when I was little. After not showing proof and refusing to leave because I did nothing wrong, these preteens threatened to call the cops on me for trespassing. Supposedly this man was this girls Godfather also, which meant that he couldn't be mine. it highly offended her that I said such a thing about her deceased Godfather.
Now today, I'm struck with some of the same stupid situations I dealt with in Elementary and Middle School. Last night I was at a magic/comedy show thing on campus. There was a lady behind me that knew me and had a friend who has since graduated that knew me. The lady sitting behind me must've texted the other girl who had previously been my friend until we had a falling out last spring. Next thing I know, the girl who I had the falling out with, is texting me saying "I see you". I was looking all around the auditorium and couldn't find her. I asked her where she was and she said she wouldn't tell me. She told me I had to come and find her. I asked her to give me a general sense of where she was and she told me birds eye view. Next thing I know, she tells me exactly what I am wearing and is accurate. I find out at the end of the show that she wasn't even there, I looked like a gullible fool, and she was texting back and forth with the girl behind me who was giving her the details.
I look back at these situations and wonder how vulnerable my little soul is. I think it is one thing to be young and not understand. That fact that I am a young adult now and people still take advantage of me, scares me. It's still been little things in the grand scheme of the world, but still. What happens when I get into a romantic relationship with someone? How will I know if they are taking advantage of me? They could say they are at work, and really be cheating on me. I wouldn't know the difference. Then there are those suck ups. People who break up and then want to get back together. How vulnerable will I be then, since I like to be friends with everyone. Will I trust that person again and want to make up? these things scare me and I'm not sure what to do. Currently I'm in the process of working with a newly developing autism program in our area and they want me to be on the housing committee. I happy that hopefully I will have a safety net my whole life. It will be interesting to see how strong the safety net is though. There is only so much others can do.
