SPLAT: The Official Newsletter of the Ateneo Special Education Society Sept. 2013 | Page 11

industry as a call-center agent for two years, and while at it, running my freelance multimedia design venture. My journey in life has not really been that smooth. I was born a healthy baby, but I was not able to speak until the age of 5, and once I was able to do so, my first language had been English. As a kid, I loved reading a lot. Every year, my parents bought textbooks for school, and I read them as soon as they land home. My parents actually bought some encyclopedias, and I have read the entire sets a lot of times, which I still do to this day. while that I am different from others, but it was only at the age of 23 that I had realized that I might have autism. While my parents might have acknowledged that at times, my diagnosis is questionable as of the moment and they have yet to accept my condition. I hadn’t been in a special school in grade school, and even if I had been enrolled in one way back high school, I was in regular classes all my life. Though I excelled in academics, I experienced being bullied on a regular basis. The bullying worsened as I grew older, and it was all on the basis of my quirks and behaviors that I have known for a long seem “weird” to others. 3