Sometimes A Mistake Is A Lit Cigar

No part of my life has ever been nice and pretty or even neat and tidy. That being said, as with all my memoir entries, everything that follows is true as far as I know, even if certain events might have happened at slightly different times. That comes with the territory from my perspective. I will always come back with an addendum or correction of some type if I find I have made a mistake.

Why have I, in the last year, concluded that my mother both bears the brunt of the responsibility between my parents and most certainly knew what was happening to me when it was happening? Well, I have been getting my memories back is the short answer, I suppose, but I want to outline some of the reasons. Not specifically to shame someone you don’t know and will not be reading this, but to raise awareness for a far too common experience. Because these situations look far different than you might expect in action.

My mother comes from an abusive household, emotionally, physically, and sexually. Months before she got married, she fought with her parents to stay behind in California when my grandparents moved halfway across the country to Missouri with the GM layoffs in the 1980s to have some semblance of a normal life. It appeared to have worked until I came along, at least.

While she was pregnant with me, my grandmother had a minor stroke she called a TIA, and my mother, eight months along, was called home to care for her enfeebled mother. Moving herself, my father, and the future me halfway across the country and right back into their reach. At least, that is what I have been told.

We lived in an apartment until about the time my brother was born; around this time is the beginning of my memories, few as they are. A lot happened then. For one, I was pretty much just abandoned to my grandparents’ “care.” I was diagnosed with Autism just prior to his birth, so the follow-up appointments with new doctors to get me re-diagnosed had to wait until after his birth, which just happens to have been just two weeks before my fourth birthday. It wouldn’t be until I was just about to go to school or in school that I got a somehow more palatable set of Tourette’s syndrome and ADHD diagnoses. My Mother used that time between appointments and before I made it to school to coach and “train” me into the beginning of masking.

Again, I don’t mention this to point out something I find fault with or am angry with, although I do, and I am; hiding my autistic diagnosis made me indescribably easier to abuse, especially hiding it from me. I wouldn’t have been able to entirely mitigate traits such as coaxability, the ease with which someone could trick me with apparent evidence, or the extent I would trust those I believed were my family and friends, but at least knowing ones exploitable “flaws” is the first step towards protecting oneself.

Oh, and did I forget to mention we all moved in together? One big happy family. When my Great Aunt came to visit for my brother’s birth, she pointed out the obvious fact that ( well, obvious to anyone who didn’t also know that I am autistic) I am visually impaired, legally blind, it turns out, so my mother had the perfect cover for a while.

The other substantial waving red flag that popped right up when the memories started flowing in was the fact my mother constantly complained about how abusive her own childhood was, not only after I made my accusation in my teens my entire life. The amount of work she and her siblings had to do and the mood swings she endured from my grandmother. She described extreme punishments such as being given cod liver oil, leaving all three of them unable to eat seafood, and being forced to take on unnecessary and punitive cleaning tasks like one might have gotten in the military, not ones needed to care for the home.

Yet she sent me to do arguably more work than she ever had to do for my grandparents; also, all the work at home she expected of me because “she had to do it, so I should too.” Not to mention, I went to public school and had an added load with advanced classes, unlike her and her home-schooled siblings. It was terrible for their education, but it sure gave them many more hours in the day to do the labor.

I will save the jobs and workload I faced for a different time as this is becoming lengthy and rambling. There have been many odd and telling statements my mother has made over the years that, taken on their own, would mean nothing but, with the knowledge I have now, are pretty damning.

The things that keep coming to mind are all the times she would use the R-word and compare me to other autistic people, saying how I wasn’t like them when I am, in fact, exactly like them. I, of course, don’t mean that I act exactly the same as the next person with autism and so on since each person with autism experiences each of the autistic traits at different levels and in their own way. What I mean is I am not some special sort of autistic that is either more or less, or better or worse. I just am; in fact, I have found I am pretty “normal” when comparing myself against a group of my autistic peers.

Recently, in one attempt to destroy my marriage, she complained that my husband reminded her of my grandfather, claiming his scent was “just like the way I used to smell when I would come home from being over there.” she went on to say “she could barely stand to hold me” at the time it upset me, as she intended. As I started thinking more clearly, I realized that was a clear indication that she had always known what was happening and even treated me poorly because of what she allowed to happen to me. Not only that, I distinctly remember what my grandfather smelled like, and she is wrong, which is what I initially latched onto and argued.

This is just an intro into the reasoning and events that have led me to break away from my family and realize the toxicity extended much farther than the seeming origin of that poison. You can’t detox yourself from a substance if you still keep taking small amounts of it in. I couldn’t see how sick gluten or coconut was making me until I thoroughly flushed every trace of those things from my system, then testing them showed the unbelievable amount of damage those foods were doing to me and making me sick for months after exposure.

Toxic relationships are like this. We don’t see how badly they affect us, how sick they are making us when we exist in the atmosphere every day. This is why sometimes just a weekend away can be enough to help you see how much better you feel away from the toxicity and how badly they are treating you when you return. Of course, that is usually only step one; at least it was for me.

I will not repeat the same detrimental behavior pattern my mother displayed. Returning to the burning roost like a brainwashed homing pigeon. I was almost caught in that cycle, but not anymore. Now that I have managed to get to the bottom of the reeking stench, I will cut the rot out at the heart and heal in peace.

K.B. Silver