Easy Read Version of Josh's Story
Hi, my name is Josh.
I have autism, alongside a tag along diagnosis of generalised anxiety disorder. This often makes easy day to day tasks hard for me and hard tasks feel like the end of the world. I am also prone to forget things as soon as I hear them and over exaggerations in both my writing and speech.
When I was in grade 10, I thought I’d never amount to anything.
A lot of people will say that about themselves in reference to when they were younger. After a few years, looking back, they say ‘wow, what was I doing with my life?’
For me, while the word ‘never’ may be exaggerated, this line of thought was something that actively played in my head every time I made a mistake. Every time I failed a quiz. Answered a question in a tone that said I knew the answer, and I thought I did, but was off the mark. Negative feedback was something to be incorporated and positive feedback was a reinforcement that the method was working. I’m not saying that my school life was bad, just complicated and full of misunderstandings on both my end and the school’s end.
So, when it came time to move to grade 11, I thought about everything wasn’t on my side. Most, if not all, of my peers had held or were holding a job at some stage, had or were getting their licence and had a vague idea of what they wanted to do. Whether that be move away or pursue a career in a job they already had.
Meanwhile, I just felt dread. Dread that I’d never get the chance to even try any of those things for myself, if I could hold a real job in the first place. Not a lot of employers in my town would bring on a normal 17-year-old with absolutely no experience, much less a teen with a self-professed (and obviously presented after a few minutes of chatting) disability. Already, the fear of having to leave school, of adult responsibility, was mounting far too fast for me to prosses. It was as if I had a passenger in my mind, one that told me how badly was going to do in my life outside the controlled environment of the school grounds at every opportunity.
It was disheartening, the amount of time I spent lying in bed, thinking. If this was hard for normal teens to navigate the world, how was I supposed to?
It all sparked terror and stress, a straining tone in my voice that was impossible to hide. Something that did not help with my academic study. Were it not for my three best (and only real) friends at the time, I’d likely have quit.
Still, I pushed through. Things changed; old problems replaced with the new, 11 to 12.
And then, all at once.
School ended. I’d passed, but like I’d thought, the lack of world skills and ‘What now?’ had caught up to me.
It was a hard wake up call. All the stressing I’d been doing, it wasn’t without cause after all. I found it hard to work well without the scheduling of a school timetable, suddenly going from having every day planned out in advance to having no idea what was happening on a given day was a tough for me.
That was when I received a message from a person, I’d given her my number a few months before. I’d done it under the assumption that I’d never hear from her again, but I must have done something right, because she offered me something I wanted but was too afraid to try and get on my own; a chance to do something new.
I ended up doing a Peer Facilitation Training course with a group of people I’d never even met. It was completely unheard of for me before that point, but by the end, I’d found something I was at least ok at. A place to start, with a group of people I’d gotten to know over the course of my training and felt comfortable working with.
I was invited to the AGM that year to talk about the training I’d done, and with my acceptance of that, I found myself doing the second thing in a row that I never would have dreamed of; I’d gotten the chance to do a trip without my parents accompanying me. Up to that point, I’d never stayed away from home for more than two days at a time.
It was a huge step forward for it being something that I thought was impossible beforehand, and I look back on that with a bit of pride. I don’t often feel like I do things worth being proud of, and this was something that most kids do for the first time in something like a camp, but I was my victory. If I’d gotten no more experiences from working with P2P, than this had already made it all worth it.
After that I ended up working a more casual schedule but still found myself being fulfilled by the social connections I was able to build and the help I was able to provide to people that needed advice. It was nice to see my words taken into consideration even, if I was sometimes off the mark. My own ability to articulate my disabilities had turned into a valid skill.
I guess the takeaway from all this to me is that anyone can find something they can do, something to put passion and skill into. And I’m so happy I’d randomly found the courage to do something like give out my phone number. It left the door open. It was more important than I think anyone knew at the time.