Never Alone

Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Damien, are you ready to talk about your experience?" Dr. Crimm asked the boy who had once seemed disengaged and uninterested, but was now as much a part of this group as any of us.

"Yes." Damien wiped his palms down his thighs and blew out a breath. His eyes stayed trained on the floor near his feet and now that we'd seen the world from his point of view it seemed so inconsequential. "I told you before how hard it was for me to make friends. That first day of kindergarten was brutal. I got off to a bad start and I never could get it together from that point on. Maybe I'd find a friend here or there, but at some point, they would decide they wanted to hang out with someone else.

"At first I didn't think it was about me. My parents had done a great job building up my self-esteem. They always spoke honestly about my autism. I was diagnosed early at two years and had services right away and often. I'm considered very high-functioning so most people don't even recognize I'm on the spectrum, but they know something is different about me, and that something different isn't a good thing. It took losing multiple friends for me to start realizing that I was the common variable in every equation."

"I don't get it," Shima interjected. "I think you're easy to talk to. We have a few kids at our school who are autistic and they're mainstreamed, not ostracized like you were."

"That might have been the case if it weren't for a few specific kids." Damien replied. "Some friendships I didn't want because kids didn't play the games I wanted to play, but some friendships were sabotaged. There's a kid who's had it in for me for a while. We've been enemies since about the second grade. It's been bad enough my parents considered switching schools for me." Damien adjusted his glasses and looked up to Shima for a brief second. "He'd say mean things to me and get the other kids to do it, too. He made it uncool for people to be my friends, in essence making me the plague of our grade. No one wanted to touch me for fear of becoming outcasts themselves."

"So why not move schools?" Dr. Crimm asked.

"My dad thought that would be letting the bully win. My parents argued about it all the time. My mom wanted to move me and my dad wanted me to stay and fight it out. He's a professor at the university and believed if he let me run from this I'd spend my whole life running from things." Damien shrugged. "Maybe he's right. My mom argued that some battles weren't worth the cost of the war. She convinced me to mentor younger kids on the spectrum in an effort to build my self-esteem." He smiled as if the thought of her made his lips move on their own. "She's a kindergarten teacher at a private school. Both educators, but that's about all they have in common."

"Tell us about Jimar," Marco said. "He doesn't seem to care what anyone else thinks or says about you."

"Jimar is my buddy," Damien said through a smile. "He reminds me of myself. He was paired with me through the regional center. I met him and agreed to be his Big Buddy. I was afraid at first that he might not like me or that he would find out I wasn't cool, and then he wouldn't want to be my Little Buddy, but we clicked." His smile fell. "Watching him go through what I went through was depressing. I put on a smile when I told him it was his superpower just like my parents had told me, but now I know why my mom had to try not to cry when she told me that.

"I want to protect him. I want to make sure he isn't hurt the way I was. I want to make sure he never feels lonely the way I've felt lonely, because sometimes I thought that loneliness could kill me. I just wanted someone to talk to. I'd see a movie by myself and wish I had a friend I could talk to about it. I'd see everyone else doing things with each other on social media and not one of them ever thought to invite me. Nothing is as lonely as being right in front of people and not being visible. Nothing is as isolating as listening to every word that rolls off a tongue and not knowing when it's the right time to share one from your own.