Perhaps it sounds silly - a 20 year old scared of children and teenagers but it is the reality of bullying. It is a fear that stays with me every time I meet new people, in particular children. With autistic children and adults, the impact of bullying stays, everyday, and is a weight you have to carry through life. The impact of bullying does not stop when you leave school. I try to explain how bullying slowly destroyed my self-esteem and any sense of pride I could feel, and my ongoing struggle with self-loathing. The happier drawings usually represent the deep sense of relief felt when I managed to convince my mum not to take me to school, and to instead let me spend the day with my dog, my best friend.

Through drawing, I show the terror I felt every morning when I had to go to school, knowing I would be bullied for hours, and aware of the distance I felt when I was trying to make friends, the pain of masking my emotions, the panic caused by sensory overload and the power of social media as a tool for bullies. I draw things I never thought about telling anyone because I didn’t know I had to tell them. Observing Trying to Make Friends Alone Again A compliment would upset people a joke would create awkward silences, a fun fact, boredom a genuine answer to a question, anger and so on. I always tried to communicate with my peers and socialize, but there was something different, always something wrong. I try to show the feeling of utter loneliness that persists even when constantly surrounded by people because I was muted by an invisible difference. The lack of a mouth represented my inability to express feelings, and the deep frustration of not having a voice. The main character took shape slowly, without a month, and with two great eyes to observe the world. The monochrome characters, straight forward scenes and absence of details frame particular moments of my life and focus on the emotions and feelings. Using a simple and minimalist aesthetic, I drew to represent daily life during my middle and high school years. It soon became the central feature of my drawings. Slowly a small character took shape, at first walking around the trees, sitting down and resting.

I drew to release all the tensions and to avoid stimming, and every line I drew on the paper helped me cope with the suffering, emotions and anxiety. I was sketching trees in my notebooks, covering my bedroom walls with a forest of black and white trees. They are calm and constant, and they have an aura of serenity I have always been searching for. It began with me drawing trees every time I felt unwell. This blog has been translated into Arabic.

Lonely osketch