I want to let you, my dearest friends, know that it is with a heavy heart and a troubled mind, I have decided to erase my you tube channel. This decision has been very difficult for me and I have thought about it for a long time.  I never expected it to become what it is today.  I started the channel with the simple goal of posting a few videos of my son being just a boy like any other boy who also happens to be autistic.  All I've wanted was to touch a few people, especially parents of newly diagnosed children as well as find other autistic adults.  However, the channel has mushroomed into something I don't feel as though I can emotionally tolerate anymore and has become in some ways self-destructive.

A person I consider a friend, from overseas, sent me a recent email in response to an email I sent to her about me being sad recently.  In her comments back to me she wrote something I felt was a very insightful observation about me.  This is some of what she wrote back:

"I have always appreciated that a lot of your work is directly related to your own experiences and is very emotional, the images you show, how you like distorting them, the use of music, the use of repetition, hammering a painful message in, and often I think you are self torturing, even though you probably only do this, to stress particular sensitive issues to others.

I often think that sometimes perhaps your own experiences may influence too much your interpretation of events and people. Or rather makes you put an imbalanced focus on certain issues, missing out on other that are possibility more representative of the current developments.

Feeling is good, feeling sad is a feeling, and like any other feeling it is good. I do not fear sadness. Some artist even seeks depression to be creative and feel more alive. For me most emotions are fuel to creativity and changes. I am fine when I face the storm of a child, because it is an expression and it gives me means to understand his struggles and with means we can help and act. Sometimes for some persons though the feelings are unbearable, and consequently it is distressing, depressing, or confusing, and functionality may be lost. This is particularly the case when we feel powerless, and we tend to feel this way when for what ever reasons, means of expression and action have been removed from us (like in abusive relationship, or when someone's needs are not met). Sometimes this lasts for a long time and we think there is no end to it. Sometimes it is so strong, that we cannot get out of this without help."

I have reached that "state" (loss of functioning) that my friend so eloquently described. I'm tired of all the conflict and attention.  I'm tired of the misunderstandings and the constant monitoring I have to do with the comments.  In early 2007, someone found my home address and sent me a bullet in the mail.  Others have found out my son’s name and published it on the internet. Most recently, I was at a school playground speaking with another parent who has gone through the IEP process with her autistic daughter and another parent showed up with her autistic son.  I knew this parent from a few years ago.  She tried to sign me up on her biomed list to purchase vitamins.  She also belongs to a group called Moms Against Mercury.  She treated me very coldly and told the other parent to call her when she gets home.  It takes a lot for me to notice when someone doesn’t like me, but I could tell this was the case.  I asked my wife on the way home if she noticed the same thing as I did (e.g. the mother was acting with contempt toward me).  My wife confirmed my impressions and said the woman probably recognized me from Youtube.  While I don’t care about myself in this circumstance, this woman could make it hard for my child because she is in the same school and I don’t need my child shit on like so many of these mercury parents have done to me.   This woman 2 years ago prevented my child from entering a church preschool because she didn’t want her son in the same class as my “severe” son.  A boy that now speaks, reads at above grade level, and is very gentle with other children.

I'm also embarrassed at some of the comments I have made to others out of frustration.  The videos have been copied and linked all over the world now so they will be out there somewhere.  What saddens me most is that some of my videos have really changed some people to view their children as they once did pre diagnosis.  It saddens me because of the many friends I have made and especially the people in academia who have reached out and watched my videos.  There are various doctoral students who have contacted me since I removed the videos, pleading with me to post them again because it was a part of their diversity studies.

The countless school teachers who have contacted me with such heartfelt thank you's.  I think about all the children who are suffering needlessly from a lack of understanding. I've met some wonderful people, including you, my dearest friends.

I have had so many high points during this time.  Like Teddy Willis, the boy in the 5th grade, who took a stand to be understood when his principal refused to allow him to talk to his peers about his disability.

Exposing a broader world to the crimes of the Judge Rotenberg Center.  The countless number of parents who have contacted me after lurking unheard thanking me for giving them something positive to look at.  I think of the autistic people who have emailed me from Israel, Japan, France, Germany, England, Austrailia, Denmark, Phillippines and even Egypt, all yearning for a voice to be heard.  For many, I became something I can no longer be, their buttress against the negativity because my walls have cracked.  As I've written to others, I have felt for sometime that the walls are closing in on me.  For every inspiring comment I receive from another autistic adult or parent who has felt the same as me, both the newly diagnosed and the early diagnosed, I receive 10 emails that accuse me of being a threat.  A threat I think only to their own conscience.  But these tiny knives over the period of 2 years have seriously wounded me now.  I need time to heal and decide what I need to do.

These thoughts as well as thoughts for my own child's future overwhelm me and have started to close the walls on other parts of my life. 

I seem to start something but never finish it.  This has been my life.  Much of this has been a perserveration for me, one that has consumed me too much.  I physically ache and quiver when I see injustice.  Its as if the world stops for me, and I stand up to say enough.  I do this a thousand times and then, I crumble at a feather.  I have simply crumbled.  Because the issues I publish on are so very personal to me, every comment I have received I have internalized.  Both the good and the bad.  I can't compartmentalize my passions. 

I have for decades suffered from depression.  I can't even begin to remember when it started but I seem to think it started very early in my life, perhaps 4 or 5 years old.  I didn't realize I was depressed until I turned 29.  Realizing I have depression didn't come to me in any sort of crystalizing moment.  It was a series of thoughts and pictures I had been storing up from 8 years of being a recluse.  One day, I just finally found the missing piece that I then realized I had been depressed.  It seems it is often triggered by regrets and anxiety.  As I have aged, my anxiety has only become worse and I find myself just simply conceding to it rather than fighting it.  I have never been one to just laugh it off like so many people seem to be able to do... Oh, what I wouldn't give to lift this very dark and heavy blanket from me... (update:  I feel great now)

Some will consider me a coward for leaving, some will be very disappointed and angry with the suddenness of my reaction and think I am having some sort of tantrum.  Some will simply not care and many will be glad I'm gone.  I imagine that some will think I have left for reasons unrelated and merely speculate falsely.  There will be one particular individual on Youtube who will seek to destroy any goodwill I have left, but they will do this by manipulating the emotions of autistic people and their natural allies, like he/she did with me (its all a little game for them).  If you have ever been a trusting person, you know what its like to be fooled over and over again by people’s intentions and words they tell you because they know how to manipulate your emotions.  They’re very clever.  But I neither have the time nor the inclination to explain this as my emotional capital with this person has been spent (I may be slow in this area, but I eventually learn through repeated trials).  I believe in Karma, and it has a tendency to follow you and catch up to you when you least expect it.

No, the decision to leave was a very long process.  Also, a very unsatisfying one.  I've always been naive and gullible about people's intentions. I see the same in my son but at a much more fundamental level.  A little 5 year old me in some ways.  I so desperately just want to advocate for him.  To save all my perserverations for him, because I know he will need it.   I want the same for every child with a disability.  The world can be a cruel place for those that are different.  Like my friend who wrote earlier, my own experiences can often cloud my judgment.  However, I know if I don't take the drastic move of erasing my videos (a step I cannot reverse), I won't have the discipline to stop.

This ability to perserverate is something that can be both a gift and a curse for me.   For the most part, it has been how I have managed to adapt to the world.  It has helped me many times when I have found myself in a situation surrounded by people far more intellectually and socially gifted than I am.  Such as the time I had to defend my dissertation.  If it weren't for my perserverations, I could have never advanced in both my academic and professional career.  However, the gift comes with a high price.  A price I have paid for in the relationships I have with others and how I can get stuck in some very unhealthy relationships.  As I have aged, I have come to understand that moderation is not within my abilities.  Its not something that can be analyzed or counseled out of me.  It just is what it is.  Thus, the erasure.  It's final, I can't go back and this is good for me if I want to move forward.

I realize this is a very long explanation and it doesn't touch on but about half of the reasons but I haven't fully formed my thoughts on the other half.  They only exist in brief and incomplete pictures and emotions now.

I temporarily leave you with a quote from Hillel,

If I am not for me who will be.

If I am not for others, who will be for me.

If not now, when?

Your friend,

Kent Adams

(update)  I’ll be back, but not on Youtube.  I haven’t really decided when, how or in what form I’ll be back, but I’ve learned quite a bit from this experience.  I hope next time I’ll be able to use some of that experience to get involved in more meaningful and creative ways.