TheRadicalAnxiousLefty
Well-known member
My mother does. But not intentionally:
She told me that I might be a "little bit autistic" in front of her boyfriend
This is one of the very few memories of my life that makes me mind-shatteringly ferocious, to the point of fist clenching and teeth grinding, just by the very act of recalling it in my mind. In fact, its probably the only one.
I reluctantly admitted to her when I was about fourteen that I thought I might be autistic (I certainly thought I displayed some of the character traits). I begged and pleaded her to keep it between us, and to not tell anyone, not even her de-facto partner (someone who I am very fond of). At the time, she agreed to honor my wishes and keep her lips sealed tight.
I can only conclude she thought I must have not been all too serious about it, that I was just portraying a false veneer of desperation to elicit her sympathy, given what occurred 4 months later.
It was the day prior to my beginning of university, about three in the afternoon. Mum, her boyfriend, and I were all in the car, trundling through a slow-moving line of traffic in the inner city. Having just inspected a share-house we liked (incidentally the one I live at to this date), we were headed to check out a second place for me to possibly stay at. We wanted to determine all of our options before choosing. During the inspection of the first house (the one we eventually chose, and the one I occupy to this day), I was very shy and reserved, not even looking the landlady in the eye when she talked to me, letting my mum and step-father do all the necessary conversing.
Mum had obviously picked up on this. In doing so, she ostensibly thought it was such an important issue to raise, that she completely forgot about the pact she made to me 4 months previous. The following conversation takes place in the car, about 10 minutes after we had left that first house.
[Note: I'm not using my real name on purpose]
"Jared?"
"Yeah"
"You have trouble looking people in the eyes, I think you might be a little bit autistic."
It was not condescending. There wasn't even a worried or sympathetic inflection in the tone of her voice. It was just so....****ing blaze!!! It was like she mentioned that she had to go pick up her basket from the Laundromat, or that it was going to be mildly rainy tomorrow.
I remember my response. First a surge of insurmountable fright exploded in my stomach, like a volatile stun grenade that just had its pin ripped out. I felt literally gobsmacked, flabbergasted....STUNNED. The monologue running through my mind at the time was: "wwhhat...what--the--**** MUM!! WHAT THE ****?!?! WHY THE HELL DID YOU JUST SAY THAT?!?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!" As soon as some semblance of coherent thinking began to return, my whole body immediately flashed with white-hot rage. "How dare you." I thought furiously. "How dare you. I put all my trust in you, sharing a genuine moment of weakness and vulnerability, and not only did you not take it seriously, you regarded it as so trivial that you forgot that it even ****ing happened." Then my overactive, racing brain immediately began generating rationalizations: "That stupid dog bitch has a mental illness. She is utterly incapable of feeling empathy for a struggling family member. I knew all along that she was bat-**** **** nuts. This just confirmed how utterly how much of a headcase she is. She should be thrown, kicking and screaming, into a mental asylum for the rest of her life. Now I can see why so many people can't stand that hare-brained bag of trailer trash."
Of course, I didn't want to actually express how I felt at that moment; I did not want to accuse my mother, out loud, of revealing a deep secret of mine to her partner, in front of the Man Himself. If I did so, that would be the nail in the coffin; Mum's boyfriend would know, beyond a doubt, that it was so likely that I was a headcase, I had figured it out myself and complained to mum about it.
So mortified about that possibility, I was, that my irrational, reptilian sponge of neurons and synapses conjured up a scenario in which Boyfriend could still be unaware, despite Mum's outburst, that I was a mental (however unlikely in reality) if I just pretended, if I just acted like this was an entirely novel, bizarre idea that mum had brung up out of the blue. "Let's see..." I ruminated in my mind. "How would a perfectly, bratty teenager act if his mother had accused him of being autistic? Ah, got it!
"Er, WHAT?" I remarked to Mother, with a purposely quizzical, scrunched look on my face, feigning total and utter befuddlement, as if she had told me that giant Kodiak bears were going to rule the universe.
"I think you might be a little bi-"
"Yeah I heard you! Why the heck would you even say something like that? Take it back! TAKE THAT BACK!"
"Alright! Jeez....."
Mum's boyfriend was quite amused by my reaction. I immediately realised that I had projected genuine, hysterical, personal offense by complete accident. Unfortunately, I think it led Boyfriend to be even more deeply entrenched in his conviction (I was now convinced he was convinced) that I was autistic. Thanks mum! After all, if someone accused me of being a schizophrenic, I would not take offence. Because I know beyond a doubt that I do not have that condition. I would just give the accuser a wierd stare and be done with it.
Although at the time what she did infuriated me beyond my wildest imagination, to this day I have not confronted her about it. I am no good with the confronty talky stuff. At all. She is always the one that has to basically wring my neck to force a deep, meaningful conversation. And even then, it is very half hearted; I do not feel like I am expressing myself at all. During those times, my brain decides to become an inarticulate lump of goo, and refuses point-blank to verbalise my stream of consciousness at all. Instead, my gray matter desperately swirls, crackles, fires, and strains, trying to generate words. "Words, words, WORDS! Cmon, WORDS! What does she want to hear. Think! What DOES SHE WANT TO HEAR?!?!?"
One time, during one of these forced, deep conversations--about an entirely unrelated topic, and one which I will probably ending up sharing here on S.A.F.--my turn to talk came, and I generated such a contrived, hideously fake performance, that my mother, obviously bewildered by it, asked me outright: "Are you ACTING?!?!"
To sum up, I don't blame her entirely for it. But if she has a fault, it is her cluelessness on some of the things that really matter in life. I know, beyond a doubt, that if she knew my experience, and how I felt about everything, down to the last detail, she would be so apologetic, and forgiving, in the totally unqualified sense, for every mistake I have ever made. This is far from the only dead-**** serious issue I have with my mother. I'll post something tomorrow if I can. It wasn't expected: I over-wrote this post by about two miles.
She told me that I might be a "little bit autistic" in front of her boyfriend
This is one of the very few memories of my life that makes me mind-shatteringly ferocious, to the point of fist clenching and teeth grinding, just by the very act of recalling it in my mind. In fact, its probably the only one.
I reluctantly admitted to her when I was about fourteen that I thought I might be autistic (I certainly thought I displayed some of the character traits). I begged and pleaded her to keep it between us, and to not tell anyone, not even her de-facto partner (someone who I am very fond of). At the time, she agreed to honor my wishes and keep her lips sealed tight.
I can only conclude she thought I must have not been all too serious about it, that I was just portraying a false veneer of desperation to elicit her sympathy, given what occurred 4 months later.
It was the day prior to my beginning of university, about three in the afternoon. Mum, her boyfriend, and I were all in the car, trundling through a slow-moving line of traffic in the inner city. Having just inspected a share-house we liked (incidentally the one I live at to this date), we were headed to check out a second place for me to possibly stay at. We wanted to determine all of our options before choosing. During the inspection of the first house (the one we eventually chose, and the one I occupy to this day), I was very shy and reserved, not even looking the landlady in the eye when she talked to me, letting my mum and step-father do all the necessary conversing.
Mum had obviously picked up on this. In doing so, she ostensibly thought it was such an important issue to raise, that she completely forgot about the pact she made to me 4 months previous. The following conversation takes place in the car, about 10 minutes after we had left that first house.
[Note: I'm not using my real name on purpose]
"Jared?"
"Yeah"
"You have trouble looking people in the eyes, I think you might be a little bit autistic."
It was not condescending. There wasn't even a worried or sympathetic inflection in the tone of her voice. It was just so....****ing blaze!!! It was like she mentioned that she had to go pick up her basket from the Laundromat, or that it was going to be mildly rainy tomorrow.
I remember my response. First a surge of insurmountable fright exploded in my stomach, like a volatile stun grenade that just had its pin ripped out. I felt literally gobsmacked, flabbergasted....STUNNED. The monologue running through my mind at the time was: "wwhhat...what--the--**** MUM!! WHAT THE ****?!?! WHY THE HELL DID YOU JUST SAY THAT?!?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!" As soon as some semblance of coherent thinking began to return, my whole body immediately flashed with white-hot rage. "How dare you." I thought furiously. "How dare you. I put all my trust in you, sharing a genuine moment of weakness and vulnerability, and not only did you not take it seriously, you regarded it as so trivial that you forgot that it even ****ing happened." Then my overactive, racing brain immediately began generating rationalizations: "That stupid dog bitch has a mental illness. She is utterly incapable of feeling empathy for a struggling family member. I knew all along that she was bat-**** **** nuts. This just confirmed how utterly how much of a headcase she is. She should be thrown, kicking and screaming, into a mental asylum for the rest of her life. Now I can see why so many people can't stand that hare-brained bag of trailer trash."
Of course, I didn't want to actually express how I felt at that moment; I did not want to accuse my mother, out loud, of revealing a deep secret of mine to her partner, in front of the Man Himself. If I did so, that would be the nail in the coffin; Mum's boyfriend would know, beyond a doubt, that it was so likely that I was a headcase, I had figured it out myself and complained to mum about it.
So mortified about that possibility, I was, that my irrational, reptilian sponge of neurons and synapses conjured up a scenario in which Boyfriend could still be unaware, despite Mum's outburst, that I was a mental (however unlikely in reality) if I just pretended, if I just acted like this was an entirely novel, bizarre idea that mum had brung up out of the blue. "Let's see..." I ruminated in my mind. "How would a perfectly, bratty teenager act if his mother had accused him of being autistic? Ah, got it!
"Er, WHAT?" I remarked to Mother, with a purposely quizzical, scrunched look on my face, feigning total and utter befuddlement, as if she had told me that giant Kodiak bears were going to rule the universe.
"I think you might be a little bi-"
"Yeah I heard you! Why the heck would you even say something like that? Take it back! TAKE THAT BACK!"
"Alright! Jeez....."
Mum's boyfriend was quite amused by my reaction. I immediately realised that I had projected genuine, hysterical, personal offense by complete accident. Unfortunately, I think it led Boyfriend to be even more deeply entrenched in his conviction (I was now convinced he was convinced) that I was autistic. Thanks mum! After all, if someone accused me of being a schizophrenic, I would not take offence. Because I know beyond a doubt that I do not have that condition. I would just give the accuser a wierd stare and be done with it.
Although at the time what she did infuriated me beyond my wildest imagination, to this day I have not confronted her about it. I am no good with the confronty talky stuff. At all. She is always the one that has to basically wring my neck to force a deep, meaningful conversation. And even then, it is very half hearted; I do not feel like I am expressing myself at all. During those times, my brain decides to become an inarticulate lump of goo, and refuses point-blank to verbalise my stream of consciousness at all. Instead, my gray matter desperately swirls, crackles, fires, and strains, trying to generate words. "Words, words, WORDS! Cmon, WORDS! What does she want to hear. Think! What DOES SHE WANT TO HEAR?!?!?"
One time, during one of these forced, deep conversations--about an entirely unrelated topic, and one which I will probably ending up sharing here on S.A.F.--my turn to talk came, and I generated such a contrived, hideously fake performance, that my mother, obviously bewildered by it, asked me outright: "Are you ACTING?!?!"
To sum up, I don't blame her entirely for it. But if she has a fault, it is her cluelessness on some of the things that really matter in life. I know, beyond a doubt, that if she knew my experience, and how I felt about everything, down to the last detail, she would be so apologetic, and forgiving, in the totally unqualified sense, for every mistake I have ever made. This is far from the only dead-**** serious issue I have with my mother. I'll post something tomorrow if I can. It wasn't expected: I over-wrote this post by about two miles.
