There wasn't a single good year that then turned bad. It had been building gradually since I joined — which is almost harder to hold onto than a clean before and after would be. There's no specific day I can point to and say "that's when it was still fine." It was fine less and less, slowly, for a long time.
But there was still a version of me underneath all of it that existed before the weight of it built up to what it became. I want to try and remember what that version was like, even if the memory is a bit worn down by everything that came after.
Quieter problems, more capacity
Early on, the difficulties were there — they always had been, being autistic in a mainstream school was never going to be seamless — but they hadn't accumulated yet. I had more left in me at the end of a day. More patience for the things that were hard. More belief that a bad day was just a bad day and not evidence of a pattern.
What I think I've lost from that version
Some trust, mainly. The version of me before all this hadn't yet learned that raising a genuine problem could become evidence used against me. Hadn't learned that a trusted adult could be unreachable exactly when needed. Hadn't learned what three hours in a room with no lunch and no explanation actually does to you. That version of me still believed, on some level, that the adults around him were basically on his side.
What's still there
The curiosity is still there. The interest in building things, the way my brain works with code, the relationship with Claws, the people who actually know me — none of that got taken. What changed is more specific: the trust in institutions, the belief that reporting something honestly gets you somewhere good, the ability to speak in most situations. Those are the losses. Everything else is still mine.
I don't know if the version of me from before this all started exists anymore in any recoverable way. I think what exists now is someone who's been through it and is still here, which isn't the same thing, but it isn't nothing either.