So this week I started working with my school's "academic coach," which is essentially an executive functioning coach provided by Services for Students with Disabilities. She is really cool and she is helping me prioritize my work, and I email her every night to let her know how it goes. She is the assistant coordinator of the office so I get the impression she knows her stuff. I think it will be really helpful. Though on Friday she asked me to start charting out how I spend my time and I forgot about it until now. Um. Oops. Go figure. But it is nice to have someone hear how hard managing my life is for me and how RIDICULOUSLY hard I work to compensate and actually believe me. It is really disheartening to constantly be accused of making excuses, always having a "reason" for everything (as if that's a bad thing), refusing to cooperate, not acting my age, etc and so forth. Nobody but my boyfriend and this woman have ever really seemed to believe that I always do the best I can to do the right thing for myself and for others. Nobody else believes how hard I try to not piss anyone off or to take care of what needs to get done. And when you're going to get yelled at anyway, why bother trying? I do still keep trying but it's not as if I need my life to be any harder. Nobody ever seems to understand how hard I try. Every moment of every day I am fighting just to get through to the next moment without making any mistakes or upsetting anyone, and I just CAN'T do it. Nobody sees that. But my coach seems to understand that I need some extra consideration and some help, and that is a relief. At least someone gets it, and has the skills to provide support.

She told me that an aspie student she works with has a therapist who contacted her about starting a support group at our school for students with asperger's. I told her to let me know if there is anything I can do to get that started, and at my next appointment with her I am going to bring it up again. That would be awesome in about four different ways. I am really excited about it and hope it can start up well before I graduate so I can take advantage of it. That would just be so great, to not only have a support group but one specifically for students at our school. Apparently there are loads of us, and I bet it's not just me who's walking around friendless feeling like a misfit. Maybe I could make friends that way or maybe I couldn't, but at least I'd meet people like me FOR ONCE. If I must be an alien from another planet, it'd be nice to meet other aliens once in a while at least.