My Parents Never Told Me who I am

[Applause] hello everyone I'm Caroline and I'm excited to share my story with you despite it being a bit hard to talk about you see in reality I actually hate sharing things about myself with others it's hard to explain but have you ever felt like you just didn't like being around people and even seeing them or talking to them gets on your nerves well that's exactly how I feel every single day you might be thinking what a cold-hearted girl right but trust me it's not like that at all stay with me and I'll explain everything to you my story begins with my parents like most people my parents dreamt about sharing their world with a child and building a beautiful family I was their little baby and that is why I was spoiled like embarassingly over the top spoiled looking back at old photos I could see that my parents had given me every single thing I had ever asked for however all of these things were just materialistic the truth was they never made an effort to focus on my personality and interests and this is where the problems began up until I was in first grade life was pretty peaceful my mom was a stay-at-home mom so I never had to go to kindergarten before starting school like all the other kids because of that I never really socialized with other kids so you can probably imagine the nightmare I went through when I started school and suddenly had to deal with all of these other people I had to listen to every single child screaming and being hyperactive I was in complete shell shock and on top of all this an older kid approached me and he tried to hold my hand he smelled so bad and his hands were dirty I got scared and pushed him away and started hysterically crying I made such a scene and shortly after my mom arrived to pick me up and took me home on the way back home I was shaking uncontrollably I was traumatized I thought to myself that school was a place that I he never wanted to go back to ever again my mother didn't quite get what was happening she was so confused you might be thinking that I was being overly dramatic but the truth is I really hated it there and after that incident it didn't get any better of course my weird behavior seriously worried my mom and it just got worse when the school counselor called her and said that if I kept failing to engage with the other kids the school would need to take some measures and investigate if the reasons for my odd behavior were because I was coming from an unhealthy home they were even suspicious that I might have been getting physically abused that really put my poor parents in an awkward position a position where everyone thought they were mistreating me my parents started blaming themselves for my social awkwardness and my lack of interaction with people it was such a difficult time my parents had done nothing wrong and raising me and they were just absolutely clueless about why I was acting so strange one evening my parents and I were having dinner in peace when suddenly we heard a loud knock on the door they were knocking non-stop the noise was unbearable I remember hiding behind the couch and covering my ears with my hands when my dad opened the door a police officer came in and said that my school's counseling committee had assigned him to run a surprise checkup to make sure I was doing okay however when the policeman saw me I looked anything but okay anyone who saw me in that state hiding behind the couch cowering in fear would have been extremely worried about me that night my parents were arrested and forced to spend the night in custody and I was taken to a little room and questioned by Child Services they asked me so many questions and I was very uncooperative hours turned into days and eventually they began to realize that this wasn't about my parents and that I was just a strange kid who was quite simply afraid of everything after that people started talking rumors were going around about my parents but most of the gossip was about how much of a weird child I was the child who caused her parents to spend a night in prison unfortunately I hated myself since I was a little child and I hated being this weird and awkwardly quiet person and it never went away as I got older in fact with time that became my sole identity the weirdo quiet girl I even used to believe that I was a bad person I mean if I was a good decent person then why hadn't I just let the social workers know that my parents had done nothing wrong it felt like the whole world was against me and it continued in this way until I became a teenager I was never able to express myself talk to people or socialize in the slightest I was just totally awkward all the time imagine feeling like there was no place you could go to when you felt sad no place you could retreat to to feel safe from the world I felt so completely out of it I just didn't fit in anywhere it seemed there was no place for me in this world these dark thoughts haunted me all the time and I couldn't escape from them however one day I found something that gave me comfort I started drawing and it helped me empty out some of the negative energy I had stored inside me getting involved with arts started helping me tremendously even my mom had noticed how much I enjoyed it she encouraged me to continue and after a while life stopped being that harsh in fact lots of things got much better I was making art and people were appreciating it not only my parents but also my art teacher who expressed great admiration for my work I finally felt like I belonged like I'd found an outlet to express myself through my paintings and drawings started attracting a lot of attention from everyone and my school started displaying them in their art gallery some more people liked my work the more I felt I fit in eventually I couldn't stop I spent every waking moment painting and some nights I didn't even sleep I just painted all night long a local gallery in our town asked me if I'd be interested in running an exhibition and I agreed I didn't realize the mistake I was making though I spent weeks preparing for it I completely isolated myself and painted non-stop when the day of the exhibition came my mom took me to the gallery to set up and as people started arriving I started panicking that's when I had my first panic attack I don't remember much of what happened next but I just know I fainted and my parents had to take me home the exhibition I'd spend so long preparing for went to waste I didn't even get to be there for the opening my parents were seriously worried now the doctor contacted my school and had them give me some time off they said I'd had some kind of burnout and needed to rest and recuperate for the next month I spent all my time in bed I didn't even paint I just surfed the net and slept one day I decided to look up my symptoms and I couldn't believe what I was reading why hadn't I done this earlier it explained everything according to the search results I had autism I was devastated I'd always known there was something wrong with me but I didn't think it could be something like autism for the next few weeks I just lay in bed in the dark feeling miserable pretty soon I also stopped eating I didn't want to do anything anymore life felt hopeless I was so weak I could barely even walk to the bathroom at the end of the hall one day my mom forced me to go for a walk with her out to the garden to get some fresh air on the way downstairs I fainted my mom rushed me to the hospital and they ran a bunch of tests they made me stay overnight so they could monitor my health one of the nurses was really kind to me and I found myself opening up to her I told her that I had autism and she looked very surprised she ran off to get a doctor they came over to me and ensured me that I definitely did not have autism and that other than a weakened immune system due to lack of nutrition I was perfectly healthy and that they just wanted to keep me in for a few nights to monitor my eating habits I started crying I'd gone my whole life so far feeling like an alien and finally I'd found autism and was so sure that that's what I had and now this doctor was telling me I was actually fine and healthy I felt so confused as if I were back at square one back to being that awkward weirdo girl the doctors left me to try and calm down for the night and then I heard a voice from behind the curtain there was a girl about my age standing there and she asked if she could come in even though I felt vulnerable and shy I said yes for some reason she sat next to my bed and introduced herself as Selene and started explaining that she was also here because she'd stopped eating and her parents had been worried about her as I listened to her talk something inside me shifted and I felt like for the first time I could actually communicate with someone I started talking to her about my art and how I felt awkward around people and she said she felt exactly the same soon we realized how much we had in common and I went to sleep that night smiling I finally had a friend that understood me it was the best feeling in the world the more I got to know Selene the more I felt I belonged she made me feel that I wasn't so strange after all and that just because I'm not the most social person on the planet doesn't mean I'm any less of a person it's honestly crazy to think I've gone all these years identifying as a weirdo when in actual fact it's just my personality and I'm just different from other people we can't all be super bubbly and outgoing I wish I'd met Celine earlier when I was a kid but then again sometimes we need to go on these self growth journeys alone and better late than never right here's to Friendship did you like my story please comment below and share your thoughts with me also don't forget to like my story and subscribe to this channel for more

Channel: My Story Animated

Views: 2,178,404

Rating: 4.7433295 out of 5

Keywords: problems, my story animated, stories, animation, short film, alone, storybooth, storybook, story booth, story animated, animated story, truth, world, amazing, video, autstic, atusim, parents, jail, social, akward, socially awkward, shy

Id: RsNs0o5YxF0

Length: 10min 55sec (655 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019