You will never really get to know another person until you spend time with them and get to know their story.

But many people pass judgment quickly just because someone is diagnosed with a label.

This girl was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

She was sent to a group home where teachers thought she and the other kids were mentally incapable.

She wasn’t but she acted like one just to annoy them.

Read the story below for all the details.

My act of petty revenge made them send me for a psych eval.

I grew up in a really messed up situation.

I was diagnosed autistic at a young age.

I was adopted and considered a defective product.

And abused consistently for being “so dang weird.”

This girl had a rough childhood.

At 13, I was given some tests.

And put into special college courses.

My mom beat me for thinking I was better than everyone.

So I ran away from home at 14.

She was put into a group home.

By 16, I was caught and put in a group home.

There were several houses—two for boys and one for girls.

All the kids in my group home had to go to the same continuation school.

The first day of class, the principal addressed our home room.

And said, “I am here to teach you to speak with complete sentences and use words that have more than two syllables.”

She was annoyed that teachers in the group home thought they were dumb.

I can’t tell you how much that annoyed me.

I wanted to tell them to get out.

How could you just discount all these kids when you know nothing about them?

Most of the kids in the class came from situations as bad as mine, or worse.

It doesn’t make us stupid!

So she acted like an idiot and made stupid mistakes.

However, I was just tired of having to constantly advocate for myself.

So I said beat it, and decided to just act like a total airhead.

For an entire quarter, I asked the dumbest questions I could think of in class.

I made stupid mistakes.

I even talked like an airhead instead of my natural, more autistic diction (think Brennan from Bones).

She wrote a really good story though.

Honestly, it was fun and so much less pressure than trying to excel academically.

Ironically, it also made me more popular with the boys.

Anyhow, one day we got a creative writing assignment and I was just really inspired.

I wrote a parable about a boy who lived in the jungle and befriended an alligator.

It was basically an allegory about toxic relationships.

But the Principal assumed she plagiarized.

I was called into the Principal’s office for plagiarism.

They couldn’t believe that I wrote it and wanted to know where I stole it from.

I told them they assumed I was an idiot, so I’ve been acting like one.

If they cared to look at any of my transcripts, they would know I’m not an idiot.

They thought she was a psycho and had her tested.

They were annoyed and thought I was psycho.

So the group home made me meet with a psychologist for a day of testing.

He said I had an IQ of 152 and borderline personality disorder.

Later, the diagnosis was changed to autism/adhd with CPTSD.

Anyhow, I got to be the first group home kid in Redding, CA to go to the public school in 1992.

Let’s check out the comments of other people about this story.

Here’s a positive message from this user.

This one shares their observation.

This person was also accused of plagiarism in middle school.

A trauma counselor shares their opinion.

Finally, here’s another positive remark.

Cliché as it sounds, do not judge a book by its cover.

People who work with children should know that.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.