I actually have posted the worst thing somebody has ever done to me before. Not the teachers (hopefully) didn't mean to be malevolent or torturous on purpose, but just didn't know what they were trying to do to help me didn't actually help me much, but whatever. Here is the story:
So, when I was in the 4th and 5th grade, which was during the time when my parents absolutely knew that I was in need of a school that has better resources with me, I started going to a different one from when I was in 3rd grade. They had me go to this new school because I was a bit of a problem in the 3rd grade, as well as the second.
The teachers were nice and attempted to help me a bit with my schoolwork whenever I asked. I even went to a class for the special needs students, which usually took place during the morning homeroom. The teachers working in that room where trained to work with kids on the spectrum, but, since this is the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years we're talking about here, it's debatable as to how well-trained they actually were.
Despite this, there was one problem. The problem was that, whenever I got upset or acted out, whatever teacher's class I was currently in at the time contacted my special ed teachers so they can assist in calming me down.
However, when the Spec Ed teachers went to get me from the classroom I was in, they told me to go to the Spec Ed classroom. When we arrived at the Spec Ed classroom, they told me to go into a small room where they thought that I would calm down inside of, however, that wasn't the case.
They told me to go inside, apparently for me to "calm" down. However, I not once was told I wasn't in trouble or being punished for my actions, so I took it as a punishment. Once I was inside, they closed the door behind me and locked it. Sometimes, they had it unlocked so I can open it a bit and peak out in order to tell them if I needed anything, but that was very rare. It was almost always locked.
The room was small, maybe about 1 and 1/2 or 1 and 3/4 meters squared, but that was what I remembered from eyeballing the measurements from those years long ago. It could have been 2 meter's squared or 2 and 1/4 meters squared, though, so let's just go with that.
It was either a teacher's closet with all the items and shelves removed, or maybe even a small, converted single-serve bathroom before it was the teacher's "cool-down" room. It's ceiling was also shallower than that of the classroom it was connected to.
With the doors locked and the only thing inside was me, myself, my backpack, everything in my backpack, and the crappy school-provided Chromebook, which may or may not have been dead by the time I was in there, I was pretty lonely.
Even though the entire room was effectively lit with one light-bulb, the linoleum floor as well as the small dimensions and cinder-block walls made the entire room feel dark, damp, and like the entire room was closing in on me.
Since the door was locked, it felt like I was trapped in there and had nowhere to go. I felt imprisoned. Whenever they had me go into that tiny room, they said it was so I can "think and calm down," but I couldn't think of anything, and I couldn't calm down easily in there, either. All I could think of then was how miserable I felt in the room and how to escape it.
The room wasn't look very clean, either, so the teachers/janitor probably ignored their duties in cleaning that room. There was always dust and black skid marks from desks and shoes on the floor, and the walls had dust in the grooves between each piece of cinder-block that were caused by how the materials were always masioned in the schools.
I think the desk broke on one of the other Spec Ed students who had to go in their, too. Fortunately, the kid was alright. However, after removing the crumbled desk, they didn't replace it until after a couple weeks, and I was in there during that time where there was no desk, which caused me to uncomfortably on the lino floor, with my back supported by the cinder-block wall.
That was uncomfortable and kinda reminded me of a medieval dungeon cell, the only difference is that it lacks the one positive aspect that a dungeon cell has: the ability to look towards the outside world in some sort of way. The door was made of solid wood, and there was no window, since it was a room that did not share the exterior wall that the room it was connected to.
This made me feel like I was imprisoned, like nobody even wanted to see me. I usually try to calm down by pacing when I am in a room by myself, since that releases any excessive energy I may have at the moment. However, due to the small dimensions, I couldn't. Any type of physical activity I tried to do was restricted by how small the room was.
I eventually did calm down sometimes in the room, but it took a long time for me to do so. After a while, I have learned the skill to very convincingly hide my signs and how I felt from people around me after a few minutes of feeling a ton of anxiety, which is a skill I still have, and I have used it when doing group projects in middle school so my ideas looked more convincing to the peers that I was working with (although, since everybody I worked with in group projects turned out to be a group of slackers, I did all the work, and got all the credit, while the slacking students got none, so I had all the creative freedom in group projects), I would say it was a very beneficial skill to have, and will be even more beneficial in the future due to me also wanting to be a role model of sorts as well as a game dev, so my aside comment makes sense. I'd hopefully be working with people who slack off less whenever I work in a team.
Because of this skill, I could just knock on the door to get the attention of my teachers who were on the other side, and then tell them, in a tone of voice that was extremely close to the one I naturally use when talking in much less stressful situations, that I was calm and wanted out. This was a nice "get the hell outta there" tactic I created for myself whenever I was in that tiny room. It worked most of the time, too.
Eventually, the teachers caught on somehow, and stopped listening when I used the skill to my advantage, and still made me go inside that anti-safe room whenever I acted out. I am pretty sure that the teachers tried to make this a sort of safe room, but it felt like it had the opposite effect of one. Also, aren't safe rooms much larger and a bit nicer?
Anyways, that was just me rambling my thoughts. Thank you for reading this far.
.
