On Wednesday, it marked the 3 month mark of my gram passing, and actually the 3 month mark fell on the same day of the week. I’ll refrain myself from using “13 weeks” as “13” was not her lucky number.
3 Months Following Gram’s Passing…
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Tag Archives: Family
On Reserves (August – September 2023)
Just over a couple weeks taking a 2 night stay in Keene, my grandmother started to develop her issues that resulted her untimely death in late September. For more than 1/2 of August, she had stayed at the nearby hospital. The 2nd stay was for 2 straight weeks going into September. Then not only 4 days later, she got brought via ambulance, then was basically on her death bed, unbegntost to us, then about a week later (would’ve been a day earlier but due to the alleged storm that was Hurricane Lee, the homebound trip via a private ambulance, and little would I know that it would be three days later she’d be gone.
This narrative is not about my grandmother, but I am not also trying to come off as a victim or whining. This story is what happens when you have no one else to fall on, but then you become someone else’s “rock”, being the default manly figure, to a guy that’s already been depleted. Hence, why I refer this to being “on reserves”.
Non Autistic Mothers Trivializing Autistic Sons (for Power?)
The headset port on my Mac mini (as you may know if you own one from the early 10s) “pops” out audio as probably for some energy consumption to only send audio electrons when it thinks there’s audio to playout. Because your’s truly forgot to turn off the receiver for hte stereo system the Mini was plugged into, as I use that to playout edits, my grandmother didn’t get sleep last week, called the mother and the ol woman went to check it out. It does sound like a critter noise, but regardless overnight, my mother doesn’t just go in the room, she goes right to where my keyboard is in the heart of the edit bay, the sacred location to where i am now just doing editing for newsgathering.
I did believe the claim the following morning the old woman said that she didn’t look, but that center spot where my Aeron sits on, is something that only a true professional amateur would get. My mother is like the ignorant director who thinks magic can be done by a keystroke. The living room is a screening room. Critiques for the sake of critiquing. The passive agressive nature has gotten so bad, that I wouldn’t even share my work – even to my own grandmother who often is like the middle person in many of these spats.
It makes me wonder how much I got fucked over in the last couple of decades where the crown was given to my mother and any king status (that is nothing in 2022 compared to the stereotype of being a “brat”). Worse is just how I have less support than I had 3 years ago. I also have people who are just so out there. It’s like I am cheating with two women (my mother and a support staff) that are almost identical, but it varies by day. But I can’t bitch about either one too much, because both women are allies and enemies at the same time.
It’s so crazy.
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Where’s my mother?
If I had to point to a lineup to identify my mother, I wouldn’t be able to.
Nor can I identify her presently. I am not sure who my “real” mother is but I am lonely and confused, but such fuzzy memories of being a toddler has since vanished in reality.
The other day, my mother was supposed to go to work up in Manchester, but overslept (which was highly ironic because MNF ended early, for a Monday Night standard, 11:10 ET if you are keeping tabs.) So I was expecting to do some work in the basement to tidy up the place because I have too much crap and not enough time to do anything w/ them.
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!
When my Mother Lost Me…
My mother’s social network is very small, mostly two couples, that lean hard right. That barely understands this hot mess of my ASD, that is slightly below typical, but slightly above the average atypical. One of her “friends” has an un’dx case of ADHD, because of course it’s just like ASD. Notice how sarcastic I mean… it’s completely different. While the Fraud on Broad is dead, I believe this what infers to my “low-average IQ” that Ms. Bolick was selling to “the system” as broken-goods.
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.
Christmas, part two
Christmas is a hard thing for me to understand. My autism doesn’t help manners. Part of it is I wasn’t exposed to faith and religion at an early age. Another part is my difficulties of relationships, especially to family.
I’ve mentioned earlier today that I’ve had family issues in recent years relevant to Christmas. Another part of me is I can’t turn-off things i.e. “letting troubles be out of sight”* I also believe given my my strong emotional bond with my mother makes anything tick. I find such chemistry has made our relationship even more difficult. Such emotional similarities would not be an ideal match for any other relationship.
*verse of “Have Yourself A Merry Christmas”
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On top of that, I’m just struggling through life almost being unemployed for 5 years straight and now mounting concerns for me to get that new annual contract for certain services where there is more goals compliance and accountability on my end and I can’t just shut it off on one day.
I think being an adult is the worst feeling to have. I don’t see really anything good out of it other than I have a teensy bit of freedom (i.e. unemployed for almost 5 years) and just having the time to yep about my frustrations of life.
I’ve lost the meaning of Christmas. After what happened to me personally to the last 9 months of this year and seeing the elections going the wrong way and seeing the economy stalling for another 4 years and seeing how social media, “the cloud” and iDevices killing possibly U.S. I.T. or even service jobs, makes me just feel even worse. Going back to micro-view, I feel looking forward, I just don’t see any future for any new relationships. I may get a job and seek professional relationships, and getting a job and maybe loose some services (the system for special needs is totally fucked up here in the States – I’ll leave that part out.)
On top of that, I don’t see any future for “friends” or even a girlfriend. Remember, I live in a suburban area of Boston, and often its a bunch of rich brats or anyone that is underage, since there are so many school age people who live around here. And if there are people my age, then they are like my cousin, taken and happily married. There aren’t that many single 25 year olds – lets be frank. All the good looking (read: bad ass girls) are taken, the not so pretty live with their parents, and the truly loving and caring girls are extremely rare. I’m looking into taking an indefinite break of dating and going into relationships, something that was in place since birth, if you really think about it.
This is coming on the heels as allegedly the world is supposed to end tomorrow. Its all over cable TV right now of the fear of it. I’ll say this I was born on the 12th, my worst years of my life were 12 and 21 and 2012 wasn’t the best year ether. I hope nothing severe happens in my area in the event of a disaster.
But I’ll say this – my life is over. Whether or not I die or not, my life is figuratively dead. There is no way to revive. I was pronounced dead back earlier this year. 2013 and onwards is going be a challenge, and something I have to do, but maybe it won’t be as painful. Maybe its a sign that I won’t have to endure pain as being someone that has a “disability” that only a “doctor” with a PhD degree can treat. Maybe I’ll get paralyzed, and maybe that will be the best moment in my life (as fucked up as it is) and actually have empathy of the masses for the first time. Maybe there will be friends and a possible girlfriend and maybe a future wife that would love me for who I am, since again a disability is typically not observed by society as something in the brain.
Whether or not the world ends tomorrow, I will put more resources into this blog. My plan is to decode what I had experience for relationships and again analyze it. Sadly, I am not getting those beloved search terms like “can autistic people fall in love” “why don’t autistic people fall in love” “could I date someone with autism”. Oh, I make that up with my experiences of ignorant people not wanting to date someone like me.
Well hopefully, I’ll see you people tomorrow. Bye!