Tag Archives: Family Relationships

The Cruddy Granite State Mental Health System turns 1 Year Old for fam (V2)

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Editorial Note: I shouldn’t be sharing this, but obviously i am staying very generic as possible, to the point I am leaving state agencies out just so it doesn’t look so obvious. Second version corrects initial typos   

Somewhere in the largest city today; we went to see my family member transitioning from mental health needs to early stage dementia. It has been one year since they were brought in, quasi voluntarily. Ironically this family member wanted to go to this facility prior to and was turned away within a month before.

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“Hangry Dinner” (Mother Bitching and Refusing to Take Stock)

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Our conflict has been known early on as “typical adolescent/parent” dynamics according to “Doctor” Teresa Bolick. Now I look back and saw through the implicit bias against the hiarchial child. For years I’ve been drilled in the “go with the flow” logic when “zigger-zaggers” happened with scheduling. I felt for so many years I’d be pulled by strings and was unable to think for myself because my mother did all the instructing, I mean “programming” me.

She keeps on prodding things down my throat. Such as my mattress and pillows where I cling onto it longer than it needs to be. I guess I’ll be going to Bob’s Furniture sometime soon. But apparently it smells and I know it’s not the first time, but then my mother will then dilute the argument and say she has the same thing. But she had to throw the pillows into the smelly mix narrative today. Ok, I get it, but I won’t tell her why I don’t because she’ll dismiss my reasonings. I should’ve washed the pillows in some capacity during it’s over used life. But I am tired of being controlled because I had been disabled to think for myself.

I bought burgers more than a couple weeks ago, and bought onions and lettuce (yes I am trying to eat greens!) and that was delayed, delayed and delayed because my mother was concerned she had to seriously clean the grill, then she got a some stomach virus and so it got delayed to lunchtime today, then it got delayed until 5:00 pm because she was working through the lunch at home.

Then I got jostled in the brain when I was about to cut the onions and lettuce on the stove to which I said “Jimmy Crickets” (the other name in vein) which triggered her and I admittedly said out of the blue that I was disoriented and didn’t applause at that point. I already apologized for not closing an internal drawer in the fridge no less than a minute before.

After getting doused in gaslighting, after the burgers were cooked, I suggested we eat by the pool. While I savored the meal, I heard my mother moan and bitch about work today and her Teams call she had to be downstairs for. She was moaning and bitching about how one co worker was out but the boss wanted everyone else to be on the call, then bitched about some form of in house survey conducted while my mother was on bereavement leave, but never realized that the reason why she missed it was because she was not monitoring emails. I asked one challenging question to her theory of mind, of which I can’t even remember. I let her bitch, but of course if I do the same, I expect the masculine “fix” approach of generic advice that wasn’t solicited for.

More in part 2.

Loosing Gram: 9 Months later

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Just as the standard FYI meets CYA: the opinions below are my own and not of those of family, and stands by of a strict no-family discussion in detail unlike the Age of Autism unless there is a justification

The fall solstice will mark the one year anniversary that my gram is no longer with us. I really kept things silent to let the thoughts marinate in my head before I start putting into words. Yes was I shocked at how quickly her health decelerated? Yes. Did I feel sympathetic during the early hours of her hospice care? Oh hell yea, I think her “restlessness” was her fighting to stay alive. Do I remember happier memories? Oh hell yeah, in fact it not even several weeks before?

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The Traumatic Experience of a Clustereff Family (Enmeshment)

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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

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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”

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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)

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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…

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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…