u/MattDaveBowron

I'm a cis het white male (41) from Australia, and have mental disability (autism/asperger's/ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and mental illnesses (GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), Depression and Schizophrenia).

I can remember back to before I was 2 years old, crawling on the grass of a park trying to get towards children playing at the playground. I was bullied since grade 1 (age 6) and was severely bullied physically, emotionally and psychologically particularly from grade 2 onwards, all the way through Year 12 (age 17). I also feel manipulated and sometimes bullied by society (both Left and Right wing politically, and various other ideologies, so prepare for a long rant.

I was raised in Perth, Western Australia from birth to age 3, when we moved to Kalgoorlie-Boulder for three years, then Port Headland for three years, and then back in Perth for the majority of my life.

I was a weird kid, due to not having not so good social skills, and ended being sent to the principal for good and bad reasons. One good was being given a golden sticker for some writing and drawing I did, which at age 6 made me want to become an artist. I was also introduced to indigenous Australians for the first time, where they did various dances of imitations of animals, which we kids were able to join in and try for ourselves, that was fun, it was also Kalgoorlie-Boulder. As I had gotten in trouble for dacking myself, imagining for some odd reason I was going to the toilet in my imagination, and got such a stern warning with my parents being called in, that since then I never wanted to get in trouble again, and obey the rules.

In Port Headland they were trying to integrate the indigenous community with the white kids, and to start the year off, some Indigenous people did a dance before us. Me, thinking this was like the previous encounter I had with Aboriginal dancers, decided to join in, and unknowingly may have irked some indigenous people, at an age I hadn't even heard of, let alone couldn't even spell or pronounce the words aboriginal or indigenous. When we were later sent up to class, we were all told not to run up the stairs. But what did all the kids do when we were sent up? They all went running up the stairs. I didn't want them to get into trouble so I tried to grab them to slow them down, and happened to grab an indigenous girl who turned around and bit me on the shoulder. That was grade 2.

In grade 4 I was bullied by a particular indigenous kid of around ages 9-10 and his brother, chasing me around the school, holding me down, kicking and punching me. They did this so much, I often hid myself away in the library, reading books about space travel and the future, which I wanted to be in. When I told the teachers, they didn't reprimand the two boys and just told us to stay away from each other. I guess the idea of two indigenous kids bullying and assaulting a white kid, wasn't something they cared about. The principal was a real integrator, making classes sing "My Island Home", and the fact that I was being beaten up wasn't dealt with, until my sister told my parents. I didn't learn until years later that my parents said they'd charge the brothers with assault, and when the principal tried to talk them out of it, my parents said they'd write to his minister about it. But it wasn't just the bullying at school that they did that caused my CPTSD, and from then on become triggered by especially aggressive indigenous males. It was the fact that they tried to drown me, not only in the adult sized local public swimming pool but also the little kiddies sized wading pool. They may have been rough playing, but I thought I was going to die, and so since then became terrified and triggered by people like them. Sure other kids may have called me names, or teased me slightly, but it was these two indigenous brothers and only these particularly two indigenous aggressive males, that really stuck with me.

We moved back to Perth, where I was still teased more emotionally and verbally by other kids. I tried to make friends with them by sharing my lunch, seeing them fight over my fruit roll-ups like a pack of hungry seagulls. I'd even draw cartoons of them as superheroes and want to write stories about us having adventures, which I did in order to be liked. This continued from primary school into high school, but some of the bullying went too far. I was often trying to win friends by drawing pictures of them as superheroes and writing about them in books, but they never read them. The girls were catty and teasing, and though I tried to join in different groups, they never really took to me. I was socially awkward and had some crushes that weren't reciprocated. Some girls were bitches, completely ignoring me, while guys would put tampons in my school bag, or teased me about sex, and some said hurtful things like "nobody likes you". I was a geek and was diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) when I was around 10-12. But I didn't find out until years later I was also diagnosed with Autism/Asperger's at the same time, but my parents didn't focus on that, or even tell me about it until decades later, choosing to focus on my ADD instead.

On ADD I was given Ritalin, and later Dexamphetamines for me to pay attention and be productive. I wrote a 252 page over 119,000 word novel in three months while still doing schoolwork. I however couldn't get to sleep easily, and with my active imagination have been having full colour dreams which I can remember back to when I was 2. So I was often red-eyed at school, and couldn't focus, so some students thought I was a pot-head, and if I told them I was on Dexamphetamine were asking if I'd sell them any. Dexamphetamine is also basically a legal prescription for what's essentially Methamphetamine. So I started getting paranoid, that people were teasing me behind my back. This was also a private baptist school, and so was told that due to my pure plain existence an innocent, wise, caring man was tortured and executed because of me, a person who happened to be Jesus of Nazareth. This caused me even more depression, and I was wondering if I was being punished by God for the bullying, or were demons tempting me to hurt others or hurt myself.

Then I was introduced to The Truman Show by my Media teacher, which I'd already heard of, and began to wonder if my life was like that. Only instead of being a star, I was a victim, being pushed by people to either commit suicide or homicide. I had anger issues due to bullying, and could even understand why some people who are isolated and bullied end up cutting all empathy towards others, and focus purely on themselves. But that I thought was the devil tempting me to do evil, and felt basically being punished by God, that I thought of committing suicide, wanting to throw myself from the roof of the school and land on my head. This was also, obviously a version of not only amphetamine based psychosis, but also the beginning of my then undiagnosed schizophrenia. I told the teacher and the students about my thoughts,, and they teased me playing on my paranoia, using lines from the film, and the teacher laughed at me saying I didn't know what reality was. He saw no responsibility or accountability for the material he showed or have any empathy or sympathy and basically let people tease and bully me about it. He even joked about me when he then later introduced us to The Matrix movie.

It was all this that led me to try to get sleep by taking stillnox, but that stuff only made me hallucinate. I became so stressed, so depressed, that I wanted to get off the Dexies. Unfortunately going off them, I couldn't handle the workload of the school, and ended up realising I couldn't do my TEE (Tertiary Education Entrance) Exams, and so went through TAFE studying film and media, and go to university as a mature age student. I had been to psychologists about my bullying and depression and anxiety.

While I was at TAFE studying film was I introduced to alcohol, and even weed, but I had a psychosis on that, and so never took it again after only trying it once. Fortunately because I had been suffering psychosis at high school, I could ride myself through it. I didn't find out until I was 22 that I probably had Autism or at least Aspergers. It was also around that time that I got my drivers licence and had done several jobs, working as a burger flipper for a while, literally working the broiler, and later a video store clerk. It was during one particular busy night that my anxiety shot up through the roof, and basically became a psychosis. I thought the actors on the posters were watching me as well as invisible people outside the store, that the DVD titles were leaping out at me, that I couldn't stand to see numerals leftover on the computer screen after a transaction and couldn't make eye contact with the customers. But I had done some acting in High School and University so I just did the motions and acted my way through them. This however lasted the entire shift, and soon they started happening everyday at work, every six hour shift.

Then they started happening when I went to the shops, and when I was at home. People thought they were just anxiety attacks so I was on low doses of Ativan. I got terms like I/Me/We/Us confused, I thought the people on the TV were talking to me directly, I thought my thoughts were heard by other people, polluting what I called the psychosphere. These came with extreme feelings of fear, guilt, foolishness, mania and rage. They lasted for hours, and it was only after I still had them after graduating University, but the video store went out of business, and due to having the attacks when I tried other jobs, made them have to let me go. I tried Edge Employment Solutions, but all they offered were shitty jobs, and basically passed me around from one employee to another as they only got comissions on jobs cllents got, which I never did, due to also my attacks. I tried TAFE again in 2010 but started having attacks there, that my parents finally got me diagnosed as Schizophrenic and I was hospitalized for the first time.

I hated it there in that dark lonely place, and while I was trying new meds to try to cut down the psychosis attacks, I tried going to GROW which is basically a 12-step group that's Mental lllness Anonymous, but it basically got too culty and so I left after a few years. I was also unemployable, and so lived off a DSP (Disability Support Pension), and nearly ten years after being hospitalized got a place of my own through Public Housing and have been living on my own independently off my DSP for a few years until 2022.

It was the 20th anniversary of my graduating high school, and here I was, single, living off disabilty, in public housing, basically a member of the underclass as I lived off welfare. I was 37, and my life had gone down the toilet, while the bullies who teased me had lived their own successful lives and never showed any responsibility, accountability, empathy or sympathy for me. I hated them. I wanted to name and shame them, and the school, and ruin their reputations, which ended up with me being hospitalized for a 2nd time after the police were called on me for a welfare check.

It was there that I had made some friends, but due to my hospitalization became eligible for the National DIsability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which gave funding so I had a psychologist, a cleaner, an editor to help with my writing novels which I'm still working on currently, and some specialists to help me with my funding. THe attacks haven't happened so much due to a steady med regime. I know I'm fortunate, and lucky unlike many others, to get DSP and NDIS. But I still remember all those events as if they happened a second ago. I get bullied in my dreams, making me wake up exhausted and so need further sleep or rest, whch makes me unproductive.

And with the extreme-left being seen as hating cis het white men, which could be real or a manipulation from the extreme-right to radicalise me. I hate those two wings of politics trying to play me off the other, as I hate organized religions that try to control people for money. I hate that we've become a war of memes, ideologies fighting to control their niches by manipulating people for membership, becoming parasites to their human hosts, and the fact that the world seems to be going to hell, which is what I'm attempting to fix or try to fix with the novel series I'm trying to write now. So am I the asshole for still wanting revenge?

I know I'll never do it, but I can understand why some people feel so rejected by society that they become school shooters or serial killers, I recognize that darkness in myself. But I think its seeing that perspective and understanding it, but not condoning it, is the key to intervene in these individuals and show them they're not alone, that people can understand and empathise with them, while still steering them away from murder, and by showing that they're not alone, give them that listening ear, so they don't fully cast off their empathy for their fellow men.

I can understand why guys get manipulated by the manosphere, and how niceguys act like niceguys because they've fallen for the idea of chivalric romance, like I do, but thus feel that acting like that entitles them to relationships and when that doesn't work causes them to lash out. It's the same romance story that makes every entitled woman feel she should be treated as a princess. But respect is a two way street. And if we all act entitled, that just shows how self-centred we all can get, especially in the west with the whole focus on individualism. To get respect, give respect.

We can all get bitter, cynical, frustrated at society, and if you get outcast, or bullied, or not respected, or feel targeted, a victim in society, which can make one open to suggestion, and thus marks for those who may seem to be in your best interest, but end up manipulating you for likes, or subscriptions, or follows, or votes or membership or indoctrination. But we have more in common than you think. We all have the same basic needs according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and really despite the costumes ideologies try to clothe us with, the difference is quite literally skin deep. I recognize my privilege of the help I get and that I can get to have a voice on this platform, although I'm just another cis, het, white male.

But I have time now to focus on my writing and see if anything I write is worthy of being published or will make a difference to humanity. I'm no saint. I'm a sinner. I've been considered weird, crazy, even creepy unfortunately, but I can't just blame that on being Autistic or having mental illness. I can only control how I behave and act in this world, and as one religion I like says "Let Deeds Not Words Be Your Adorning". So this is my first step in telling my story, getting all of my past out in the present, so I don't have to focus on that as much as I still do. But I'm not going to waste this opportunity I've been given to make a difference at least as best as I can. Thanks for reading this. Peace.