autism-and-autotune
A musical mind with recent revelations
This may be a bit long-winded, but thank you all for reading in advance.
I don't even really know how to begin, so I may just info-dump. It's very ironic that recently it was National Family day in Canada. I don't live in Canada but I'm pretty close to it. My mother is a narcissist with her own baggage while my father (I'm almost one-hundred percent certain) has autism. The childhoods of both of them were tumultuous, at least my mother's was. But having a bad childhood and marrying someone who is a mirror of your own mother is no excuse for taking it out on your children.
I don't want to go into the details of the mental, physical, or emotional abuse which my older sibling and I went through. Taking the past two years to work through my own issues and discover my own autism has been work enough. I grew up as the scapegoat child who always had to live up the to expectations of the older sibling, who was smarter than me and more adventurous (but these were most likely forms of escaping from the house). Seeing as my autism wasn't ever picked up on and I was blamed for my sensory issues, rather than being given understanding and support, I've been feeling very resentful and hateful of my parents now more than ever.
Does the good wash away the bad? Do we feel that 'we deserved' whatever punishment or treatment we received? I'm just so angry. My older sibling loathes our mother for giving them body issues, and for accepting our old childhood friend and her husband as our mother's 'adopted' children. My mother treats her dogs better than she did us. My father was abusive and physically violent towards me, but my older sister? Never. Even spelling it out to her in the privacy and safety of my own home, she only sees him as the victim and not an enabler. "He's clearly being abused by mom," she told me one day after informing me that he'd confided to her once that our mother acts exactly like his mother did. So what? How would you feel if your earliest memory of him was anger?
What puts the nail in the coffin is the breaking of boundaries, for the only and final time. My father emails me often, asking to call, or asking to see me. I decline, as I'm not in the mood, and I say so. I'll reach out when I feel like speaking, I respond. This clearly means nothing, as they made an unannounced and unauthorized visit to our home to inform us of my aunt's death. "We didn't hear from you and I wanted to see you!" was his defense. My fiancee and I live two hours away and we were cooking supper.
I'm proud of myself for not having a panic attack and for grey-rocking the entire time. "We never hear from you! you never call home, You never get back to us. We miss you!" were the words of my mother. "Communication has been difficult lately," I said, stating the obvious and offering nothing in return. All they did was nitpick and interrogate and bully me...at least until my fiancee stepped outside to protect me. Complete 180 from both of them.
That evening resulted in a barrage of emails from all three of them. "Dad needs the support and I can't be there for him," my older sister wrote. I wonder if you'd feel the same if he'd ever spanked you? You hate our mother for reasons of physical and emotional abuse, after all.
"I just wanted to see you and we hadn't heard from you!" from my father. Maybe you should never have been so furious in my childhood.
"It's so hard. We miss you. Family is all that matters. You'll have nothing but regrets one day." from my mother. Maybe you should never have hit me in the garden one summer when I was in my twenties. Maybe you shouldn't have yelled at me about my grades every morning and told me "I'm just looking out for you!" Maybe you shouldn't have ever questioned if I was on drugs during bouts of depression. Maybe you should've been kind and compassionate and understanding and willing to change.
I hate that I have all of these things I wish I could say but am so afraid of doing so.
But no matter what you do with your evidence of abuse, they'll dismiss it; they'll never admit to it. They'll justify it. I'm just so furious and angry. All of this affects my fiancee as much as it does me, and it's just so not fair. Short of ordering a restraining order...
They know nothing of my disorder. I wanted to tell them, and to admit to them that the heart of my fury resides within them; why did you have children in the first place? I wanted to tell them not out of the sake of comfort and confiding, but to scare them, and to unsettle them. Children are extensions of parents, and my parents cannot be vulnerable and cannot have flaws of any kind.
I'm getting that silly pre-regret feeling of typing all of this and neglecting to hit 'post.' Oh well. Thanks for reading. I'll try to get back to as many responses as I can; I'm just...so frazzled right now.
I don't even really know how to begin, so I may just info-dump. It's very ironic that recently it was National Family day in Canada. I don't live in Canada but I'm pretty close to it. My mother is a narcissist with her own baggage while my father (I'm almost one-hundred percent certain) has autism. The childhoods of both of them were tumultuous, at least my mother's was. But having a bad childhood and marrying someone who is a mirror of your own mother is no excuse for taking it out on your children.
I don't want to go into the details of the mental, physical, or emotional abuse which my older sibling and I went through. Taking the past two years to work through my own issues and discover my own autism has been work enough. I grew up as the scapegoat child who always had to live up the to expectations of the older sibling, who was smarter than me and more adventurous (but these were most likely forms of escaping from the house). Seeing as my autism wasn't ever picked up on and I was blamed for my sensory issues, rather than being given understanding and support, I've been feeling very resentful and hateful of my parents now more than ever.
Does the good wash away the bad? Do we feel that 'we deserved' whatever punishment or treatment we received? I'm just so angry. My older sibling loathes our mother for giving them body issues, and for accepting our old childhood friend and her husband as our mother's 'adopted' children. My mother treats her dogs better than she did us. My father was abusive and physically violent towards me, but my older sister? Never. Even spelling it out to her in the privacy and safety of my own home, she only sees him as the victim and not an enabler. "He's clearly being abused by mom," she told me one day after informing me that he'd confided to her once that our mother acts exactly like his mother did. So what? How would you feel if your earliest memory of him was anger?
What puts the nail in the coffin is the breaking of boundaries, for the only and final time. My father emails me often, asking to call, or asking to see me. I decline, as I'm not in the mood, and I say so. I'll reach out when I feel like speaking, I respond. This clearly means nothing, as they made an unannounced and unauthorized visit to our home to inform us of my aunt's death. "We didn't hear from you and I wanted to see you!" was his defense. My fiancee and I live two hours away and we were cooking supper.
I'm proud of myself for not having a panic attack and for grey-rocking the entire time. "We never hear from you! you never call home, You never get back to us. We miss you!" were the words of my mother. "Communication has been difficult lately," I said, stating the obvious and offering nothing in return. All they did was nitpick and interrogate and bully me...at least until my fiancee stepped outside to protect me. Complete 180 from both of them.
That evening resulted in a barrage of emails from all three of them. "Dad needs the support and I can't be there for him," my older sister wrote. I wonder if you'd feel the same if he'd ever spanked you? You hate our mother for reasons of physical and emotional abuse, after all.
"I just wanted to see you and we hadn't heard from you!" from my father. Maybe you should never have been so furious in my childhood.
"It's so hard. We miss you. Family is all that matters. You'll have nothing but regrets one day." from my mother. Maybe you should never have hit me in the garden one summer when I was in my twenties. Maybe you shouldn't have yelled at me about my grades every morning and told me "I'm just looking out for you!" Maybe you shouldn't have ever questioned if I was on drugs during bouts of depression. Maybe you should've been kind and compassionate and understanding and willing to change.
I hate that I have all of these things I wish I could say but am so afraid of doing so.
But no matter what you do with your evidence of abuse, they'll dismiss it; they'll never admit to it. They'll justify it. I'm just so furious and angry. All of this affects my fiancee as much as it does me, and it's just so not fair. Short of ordering a restraining order...
They know nothing of my disorder. I wanted to tell them, and to admit to them that the heart of my fury resides within them; why did you have children in the first place? I wanted to tell them not out of the sake of comfort and confiding, but to scare them, and to unsettle them. Children are extensions of parents, and my parents cannot be vulnerable and cannot have flaws of any kind.
I'm getting that silly pre-regret feeling of typing all of this and neglecting to hit 'post.' Oh well. Thanks for reading. I'll try to get back to as many responses as I can; I'm just...so frazzled right now.
