Dear mom,
I'm sorry things didn't work out. I'm a 44 year old man now, and out of all that time here i only spent a short 13 or 14 with you. I know you had challenges, not enough money to be a single mom in the beginning, not enough confidence to date men that were actually good men and not just the man of the hour, and your upbringing left you woefully unprepared for the creature you created in me. You were raised in a religious family and you bore an autistic savant child. Speaking sentences before i was 2 and processing everything everything EVERYTHING in a way you could not possibly comprehend of be ready for. I don't think either of us was ready for what kind of life i would have. Severely sick and asthmatic. Allergic to the air. Almost killed just getting out of the womb with nerve damage that nearly broke my neck. The time, you know, didn't help. It being the 80's no one really talked about autism that much then, or knew much about it. Of course growing up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the shitcaked boots of local farmers didn't help one bit. I went to 3rd grade in a chicken coop. Yep. A chicken coop in a small town full of small minds and no place to run. I was hated, beaten on by kids in school, a teacher or two, and the men you dated, and the men you wed. Not the first man, mind you, not my actual father, but that will come later.
You seemed impressed by me when i was little. You were a protective mother and fought for me when i was little. That matters. You stopped fighting for me as i grew up, i got smarter and felt confined in a world and community that did not want me. You, changed to suit your surroundings. Became less city and more country. You worldview shrunk as you agreed more with your redneck husband, and no amount of a kid talking could convince you. You were not alone in that. It's not surprising how little value a child holds in the world, the minute they stop being little, they become problem children to be discarded, no longer kids to protect. Teachers didn't listen either, and students were constant antagonists. Small minded bullies and assholes that only responded when i fought back. I tried words mom, i did. I tried harder then any boy has ever tried ever. One autistic kid against the world and i was always always always treated like i was wrong. Like i was an experiment, a freak, a test subject.
You stopped believing in me, and started believing in the crowd, and that was it for us. The string cut and cord severed and i was off to learn to be a man alone at 14.
Oh sure, we tried a few times over the years to talk to each other, but you only got worse as time went on. You moved to Texas with the Redneck and got ever more hateful and racist. You got smaller while the world got big, you never knew that don't know shit. I did. So i was always reading always writing always trying to understand WHAT THE FUCK I WAS, long before i had a diagnosis. I was out there being messy, trying and failing. Alienating EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PERSON i thought i was friends with. Without understanding any of what i was doing wrong.
I'm sorry i was right about him. I sorry he died. I'm sorry you had to be the one to find him. I'd never wish that kind of hurt on anyone. I don't hate you, and for what it's worth i think i may have been a better man if i had parents. It just wasn't meant to be i guess. I was meant to suffer, to struggle to endure. That is what made me the man i am today. A force of will, a keen refusal to die. For better or worse, i just keep getting up and trying. I don't even know why anymore. It's just instinct and i have no hope but to follow it now.
Dear Dad,
I don't really know what happened, or why you left when i was 2. I know that mom claims you tried to kidnap me, but i'll never know that story for real. I grew up an autistic asthmatic kid with a mom who worked 2-3 jobs and didn't understand me at all and your absence made that infinitely worse. I don't know you completely as a man. I know OF you, and from what little i know you seem like a decent man. Clearly autistic as well, based on what mom and grams told me about you as a kid. I wish you would have made an effort to be in my life, or returned my efforts that i spent trying to get you to communicate with me. I've tried with you basically my whole life, and i usually get 1 phone call every 5 years and maybe one email or text every couple years. The men that were in my life in your absence were abusive, shitty, idiot man babies that my mother hastily brought into the fold in what was no doubt a desperate attempt to fix a bad situation. No dad, no money, no help, for a kid like me, must have been truly awful to manage. Especially without knowing what was wrong with me, WHY i was so weird, so different. Maybe if you were there i would not have endured such a horrible childhood.
Maybe i would not have been beaten by a stepfather in the grocery store parking lot, on the porch of our home, in front of a church. Maybe i would not have been bullied by the other kids if i had a role model that was LIKE ME. Maybe i wouldn't have to turn into the monster i became to protect myself in my youth, the monster i needed to be to survive being attacked from all sides.
I'm sorry you were in a bad marriage. I'm sorry carol was bad for you. It's hard to be with normal people when you are autistic, and i have the benefit of knowing, of having a diagnosis. You never knew, maybe you doubt that still. I'm sorry we never connected for more then a moment. I don't know if you care, have ever cared, will ever care, but just know that for a man to grow up without a father, is a profoundly miserable thing indeed. I am a good man. A strong man. A caring man. I did all of that in spite of having no real parents most of my life. But i could be better still, and if someone were to ask me what my biggest regrets are in my life, it would be growing up without a father.
I am still here, for however long we have left, and so are you. It's up to you how this story ends.
-E
