The Traumatic Experience of a Clustereff Family (Enmeshment)

In 2019, I met some of my paternal family members, about a year after they found me on Facebook, two of the aunts. My father had never told the family about me, like my two half siblings of which he never spoke to them. May I say the sisters are closer to my age. As a result the oldest sister was under the impression that she was the oldest child and therefore gawd forbid your’s truly apparently knocked her off the pedestal in a March 2019 post of the reunion; but I had the class to use the hashtag #firstgrandchild because it was a) a fact and b) that sister is the first granddaughter, so WTF, right?

I realized that my paternal grandmother was this close to cheating death with a rare cancer. The family waited to an autistic blow up of yours truly (that if they would be open to say in the first place), that sign #1 was that they don’t see age in the grandchildren. The youngest grandchild is close to 16, while I’m the oldest (35.) The boundaries are, don’t tell the literal “children” about her condition, not even a yea or nay or any one liner at all. Maybe that’s a thing between us – the hierarchal children – and my paternal grandmother. This is the problem, selective boundaries to enhance control.

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Building Walls During a Pandemic

After the events in 2019, from the day program failures, to my agressive paternal family, and the issues in home, I started to pinpoint what was going on. But before I realized what toxic relationships really was; I figured it was too little, too late.

In the process of building boundaries, setting expectations, and hoping the other side will get it, I realized there was going to be challenges, such as:

  • You’re going to come off flip-flopping, and inconsistent. This is because you’re now setting new goal posts in different locations, so someone will see onto that, but…
  • The new boundaries should start to be seen, and be expected. However that’s wishful thinking. A toxic person hates boundaries, because they like to be in control, or get their hands dirty because they have nothing better to do. They want their reassurance, and I am not giving it to them
  • Building something 24/7/365 is just taxing. But this is superimposed against the COVID19 epidemic has made this worse. This is because when being destroyed by toxic people (that is taking the hits, accepting cheap shots, hearing the passive-agressive undertones, the lack of something that is critically constructive, such as substance over style.) In the nearly 700 days since the pandemic began, I’ve heard more destructive rhetoric than I have had of something that is constructive 
  • The pain of being statically calm and collective (and a bit vulernable). The other problem was the conflicts of when they do occur requires me to be calm, cool and collective and be extremely graceful. When I would hear a cheap shot, a passive agressive statement, attacking on style, extremely defensive on specific matters; not reflecting, not sympathetic, but project optimism by minimizing ones reality. Also spin phrases like “I can’t control how you feel” on the lowest end of emotional infractions; but often reacts without understanding what raw language, unfiltered thoughts could impact the other person in the name of being “real”

As a result, I had struggled to build boundaries, during a pandemic, I have not been able to always be calm cool and collective, and I have been Hoover’d in to cheap shots, blame shifting, scapegoating (to a mild extent), being exposed to projection (and if little) not understanding the sympathy of the people in my life who lack boundaries.

I will say that even though I may had these tendencies, it’s common in autism, but in most cases, someone with ASD will realize there’s a wrong and they’ll try to course correct, but for typical people it is never OK. I want people to know that I have been working extremely hard to be less toxic even if the toxicities was caused by being exposed to the worst egos out there. I’ll be the last to say I am the empath-type. 

The Crap that is “Family Supports”

For many years I have been familiar with the “Family Support” system. It’s exactly what you think it would mean, the family about the individual with a disability without the individual’s attention or presence. The siblings and other family members seem to have this obligation that they are supposed to be the only primary support for that individual. So what does that mean? A lot of stress to occur… so where do they go for respite?

Before COVID-19, there used to be annual conferences, again for the protected-class that is “family support” people, caretakers, parents, siblings, etc. For many years, I’ve been in arguments of why the hell the family should be the primary caretaker of a disabled hierarchal child? Where are family friends? Where is a friend-like figure? Where are cousins? Why the hell should families be the only ones?

For them families feeling obligated to take care of the hierarchal disabled child, this could be extremely taxing. As a result then you get parents that become cockier in age, with the dreams they’ll outlive their kids or hope to bury them because they won’t have to worry about who takes care of them.

What if I told you this could also apply to higher functioning people? What if I told you my family thinks they are obligated to take care of me? Can’t have a bae (err a “date” since I don’t even think I’ll be getting a temporary girlfriend at this point), can’t I have a bestie be there during one day a week or some crazy shit? Why is it ones I can’t eff with?

Maybe it’s by design. But I sure as hell hate “family supports” just as I fucking hate “nuclear families”. They can suck it!

Lacking Emotional Regulation (Surrounding People)

I am not allowed to be sad, not because of my autism, because it’s too-much for the people in my life.

I do not like to be depressed either, but sadly since my late teens, I have not been allowed the chance to emote properly. The highest range is happiness, and the lowest range is mildly sad. If I have long face, that sends triggers to the mama-bear who feels a need to “fix” the problem to make her feel better. Because the old woman cannot distance herself from the lower thresholds of emotion, I cannot be sad. And if I am sad, she becomes sad.

So sadly, I have been stoic for the last two years in an unique way. I am gracefully being happy while so much shit has been falling to the fan behind me. My mother prides on a quote from a no-name author with zero credentials of “Your only happy if you have the happiest child”, some random BS like that. And being the only child, just makes that pressure even worse, and the mother who can’t sympathize with the autistic child, I mean hierarchal autistic child, doesn’t get it and she refuses to understand.

I know i have a survival rate of 2 years if SHTF, but it has not been tested for a really bad recession (of which I had been calling since 2019) to follow a pandemic. I do not care how my mother wants to spin a version of reality, I want to be able to feel the way I need to feel, and my mother wants to project arrogance (masqueraded as “pride” – of everything’s chill.) At this point the ol woman is acting like a notorious abusive man.

The inability to have proper emotional control has made the situation inherently worse than like any child of any age, to have the self trademarked feelings of present events. To dismiss and project, is basically gaslighting. And if my mother is wondering why my contact has been limited, to even in some instances no-contact while living 24x7x365 for the last couple of years, her brused ego has gotten in the way for me to process the emotions I want to process.

I do not sense any level of recovery anytime soon. I think the best days of my life have passed by me by pure maternal politics and unreasonable control over autonomy and the only way to grieve is silence. Then she wonders why I am so quiet, but the moment I start talking, she goes back to the projection, unhealthy optimism and poor feedback when it comes to empathy.

As my mother would say (and I never use this personally) I cannot win.

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Happy Fucking Father’s Day…

After a situation in March of 2019, when my paternal family came for a “surprise” visit for my birthday along with my paternal grandmother… little would the rest of the family know about that surprise.

That also includes two half-sisters who had no idea they even had a half-brother. Not to mention these are adult siblings. Well into adults.

My cousin who used’a live the next town over, had posted this on Father’s Day 2020 on her Facebook. While I was no longer Facebook-friends with her; I saw this on her timeline…

She tags a boatload of Uncles and my father as one (redacted for the purposes of this site.) Even cousins acting like father figures. Her biological father is an apparent technophobe (guess Uncle Michael should’ve used a Macintosh instead.) that’s why there’s no mention of him in this post.

What do I have? Boston TV anchormen of the 80s and 90s? Yeah. My life is more shallow than a 20 year old. Most of my family in cousins are much younger than me leaving me to be the oldest grandchild of my Bachiyan, Japanese for grandmother.

Between March of 2019 and June of 2020, I was blaming myself for causing a ruckus on Facebook when my aunt and Bachiyan arrived for my birthday. But once I realized how my father didn’t tell the adult half-sisters, I started to realize something very telling…

I do not exist at all to him. That I am a dead fetus that should’ve occurred to begin with. And if I was born a female, perhaps the outcome would look more like the screengrab shown above from my female cousin! It was at that point I realized, there would be a different outcome if I was born a female. 

Excuse me while I continue to find someone whose got a great father-figure I long to have…

Relationships w/ Redundancies & Independencies

Today’s post can easily be taken as a business, technological or investment advice, but actually – it has to do with relationships.
I come from a small, but pretty tight knit family. That on the piece of paper might sound sexy, but in the reality in the bigger picture, and as time goes on is actually bad.
My mother had me more than 2 decades ago and basically has said on a number of occasions that I was the “best thing that happened to” her. Ok that’s nice and flattering, but that same mentality that went into my childhood, into my teenage years and into my adulthood sorry looses its relevancy. Why? Because my mother has admitted recently that she overprotected me. Factor that, and knowing my father was absent in my life then my mother loosing her high school friend, I guess she started to build her life around me. Then basically my life was built around my mother.
Is there something wrong in that picture?
The answer is “yes.”
As you probably learned in school if you are around my age, you are not supposed to be overly reliant on anyone, or depend on someone to love you or to live them. You shouldn’t be spending your entire life around one person and revolve around you two ether.
What if something happened to your family member, or even your loved one? I knew a guy who worked in my school who actually lost his wife unexpectedly. They went to lunch and said goodbye and I love yous and then got a telephone call from a hospital that she died (something like a heart attack.) He actually got so depressed he actually went psycho. I don’t know what happened to him. My school I used to go to doesn’t employ any of the staff I was close with anymore. They are all elsewheres in life. Anyways He was kinda chickie like guy, depending on his wife to do everything.
Ok, enough with independency what about redundancy?
You should never have just a first tier of social circles. It’s just like baseball or football, you should have second or third stringers and make sure those stringers have enough experience on the field just in case the first tier fails.  Can I say Tom Brady? You’d know what I am talking about If you have watched a few New England Patriots games.
For example: instead not just having one friend, or one BFF; take into consideration to have maybe two or three.  The average in my household is actually 2 – too me that’s unhealthy, but it shouldn’t be like 500 ether. Maybe 6 would be the best. Redundancies come into play in case one of your friends gets too tied up with a girlfriend or a wife, someone getting knocked up and then has to put 100% attention to the kid till s/hes 18, or even a job can distract someone.  By spreading out the risk to other people who might not be in a similar situation is strongly recommended. This requires your social circle to be as diverse and fault tolerant as possible – which goes to your advantage.
Having multiple levels of relationships and levels of backup and social failovers are the best way you can live your life healthily. It’s the same of putting too many eggs in one basket, or a Swiss Army Friend, they can do a lot, but if that one fails, then you might fail as well.

Birthday

My birthday is near and in the coming weeks I will be 26 years of age. It will be the 5 year mark where I had turned 21 and finished school on the same day. It is very scary to think how in half a decade how I have fallen apart and came to a hard realization about how I have to accept my differences, and accept my future outlooks in life. (I think you know its really about “relationships”.)
I don’t talk like I used to because I am tired of talking to slight egomaniacs. I am tired of hearing someone’s “honest” or someone pushing an agenda on me. I might be venting a little about my mother, but that’s really besides my point.
I am asking for much this year, nor do I really give a shit about it ether. As I wrote in last October, about my struggles of people remembering my birthday; I’ve just accepted the fact “its just another day”. That happened last year, I went on a trip to the mountains after doing some shopping at the state’s surplus agency getting networking gear. I brushed off the the 25th anniversary of my existence.
I am not happy about the big two-six. And this isn’t just the normal PDD obsession leading to one’s bday.  It’s actually worse.
I realize I won’t be happy. Its not because I choose not to, its because I am forced to not be happy. The leadership on the ASD self-interest has effectively slandered my group, and has effectively committed uncriminal behavior like psychological ID theft. These goddamned sons of bitches have forced me to grow up faster than my peers (since it is “normal” to still act like an adolescent at 35 years old, if you don’t have a disability) and yet these same sons – of  – bitches treat people like me as crap when they aren’t “on the clock”. These people insist we work for some corporation and be highly accountable at all times.
These freckin bastards also believe we should only fall in love in our own peer group. I’m talking about the PDD group. As you already know (I assume) the numbers of PDD male to female ratio is about 4 out of 5 male to female. I probably would say 3 out of 5 are females, since I see more of them in the adult services than I have seen in the special education. But still, I am put at a disadvantage.
My only wishes for my birthday is:

  1. Please, I ask the middle age women, who are ugly, bitter and hateful people  who act exactly the same as I just described: to stop acting as advocates for special needs! I also understand you might have an empty nest syndrome, but just stop saying for one example that autistic people can’t fall in love. DO NOT slander these people in private workshops BY CLEARLY saying its “not appropriate ” for us to attend when I feel you will painting EVERYONE with PDD with the most thickest brush to exist! Especially when WE STRUGGLE (in some cases for unneeded purposes) with RELATIONSHIPS and recklessly plan such workshop on mother fuckin’ VALENTINE’S DAY! It is your peers that have made me so mad and sad and not glad that the only life I can have is to be a fucking slave!I stand by my “fucking” beliefs, because you force me to use such needed coarse language! 
  2. I want people to LISTEN. Especially WOMEN! I don’t give a shit you have a cunt and tits, to me its sexist for me to expect me to listen to you and its fine for you not to listen to me and go off and talk, talk and talk and push your egomaniac agenda. If you want to be treated like everyone else, you have to not label yourself and act like everyone else, and sadly in this case men. (I hate using gender/age specific language, but it is these overeducated punks from Harvard, and other Middlesex County, Mass like regions around the world that unnecessarily done this reversed sexism!)
  3. As narrow-minded and possibly sexist and racist as it is, I would love to have a woman to be my romantic mate. (I can’t say “girlfriend” without being charged for “hate speech” because you can’t say a “girl” to a “woman”.) Therefore, I would like to have an adult female companion  I should just say, look into a slow relationship. For all I could know, having a romantic relationship may not work at all, and I could’ve wasted 10 years for nothing!
  4. The “experts” need to get their head out of their asses. I can’t say this enough. I also ask for paraprofessionals, professionals, teachers and other cold-hearted people between the hours of 9:00 to 5:00 local time to maybe learn that autistic people are just like you, and instead of not having friends in your outside life that are autistic, to maybe give it a chance? I’m not talking about HS aged people or current professional relationships, but have some freckin unity as we desperately need in my country! I only wished I could be integrated with “normal” Latinos, Blacks, Asians and other people of various backgrounds, and not be forced into a group I find is regressive and a group that won’t rightfully go forward according to my social, political and systemic standards.

I’ve realized I have done some bitching, but many punks in my life have no idea what they have done to me, and how its ok to not be accountable of their actions, their words and their actions. It is men with a certain social standard who have wrongfully been abused and used!
I do not hate women! And I mean that. I respect them! They are very caring people, and they have great talents! Younger ladies is rare, thirtysomethings you have better luck I only have a problem when they go on a political or systemic tirade against one social class for no realistic reason in the general population, and get away with it. Sadly, many are near or post menopausal and they generically look ugly, because they act as if they are fat and ugly.  I hate to be so biased, but since ASD and PDD individuals are mostly male, I feel so personally offended to be an adult male because we have to treat women as God.
I only ask to be somewhat happy for my Birthday. But apparently in America that is asking for too much according to all the experts I have to comply since America is now a “1984” society.
P.S. there is one other thing I would want for my birthday. To have more traffic on this blog and more discussions from my readers, because if it weren’t for you (if you even read my blogs) this blog wouldn’t exist.
End of my political/personal rant.

My mother

I am going to speak as general as possible, as I do not want to exploit my family, as they don’t pefer me to write about them to the whole world. And given my traffic, the whole world does follow this blog.
Earlier tonight, my mother came home from work. On Tuesdays she works down at the Massachusetts plant. She comes home a little later than usual. I don’t know why I have a mood when she comes in. Maybe its because its a change of environment because she comes home and I’m home alone all day.
Or maybe its because I have sucked at doing chores at home. Maybe my mother sucked at being a mother. Or maybe my mother shouldn’t raised me at a young age.
Within 2 minutes after she came in, she noticed I left a couple plates on the kitchen counter. She  started to point to the dishes and was going to mention it. I felt offended, and I started to get very upset and started to throw things and started to yell at her (and swore too.) I blurted out that she doesn’t fully love me in response of why I can’t do a simple thing such as moving dishes to the dishwasher.  I lost my patience and I felt really hopeless.
She also started to say that for the last couple of years she has tried to discretely hint me of my cluttered style in the dining and kitchen areas. I can’t explain why because a) I can’t articulate, and b) I can’t explain myself.
Unlike my mother, I don’t explain things, in this example, I don’t want to make excuses and another example I don’t want to degrade or come off as condescending.
I got very upset and cried in pain after. She avoided talking to me for the rest of the night (as I did as well.)  My mother also threatened me that she was going to move out and transfer the house under my name.  She things like that all the time during an intense argument  in which they aren’t as intense as they used to be, though I have gotten more physically aggressive to inmante objects. That really hurt, because I am not trying to take over the house or my mother. I feel that this desperate remark makes me come off as a spoiled brat, which is not my intentions. And I am not trying to “insult”, to use her words herself. I am trying to be fairly critical and also expecting the words to come right back as her counter response.
She also said that she wants to live with me, but since my organization is so bad, it bothers her so much that she was thinking of moving out.
I wished I could move out, but I can’t financially.
Given my current relationship with my mother, and my realization of not understanding what she sees through me, its like – what girl wants to be living with me if I am so emotional, fragile and messy? 
A part of my brain is ether dead or not working properly. And it’s so embarrassing  I know I offend my mother, and I feel some remorse but I can’t feel how bad I ether hurt her or how bad I have disrespected her.
In anyway, this story should had explained how I suffer with my autism and how my autism effects the relationships around me.
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