To Dad

Dad, I love you to death, but this mess of "you just don't understand what it's like to struggle" needs to stop.

Yeah, I may not work for a living, yet. I might not understand what it's like to have to work 3 jobs in order to keep the lights on, and I might not ever know what it's like to have to work my ass off to feed a family (Mostly because I have no interest in starting one), but there's something you're forgetting.

You never taught me how to function as an adult.

You spent most of my childhood in your chair, asleep, with a can of Budweiser in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It wasn't until Susan came around, and even then things really didn't get better until you moved to Texas.

You want to talk about struggles? How about the struggles that I faced as a kid.

Having to sit in my room, alone, nothing to keep me company but my toys and my gamecube, because you were passed out in your recliner.

Or what about when you decided that whipping my ass was a better instructor on how to do better in school, than actually teaching me what I was doing wrong in the classes I was failing in?

Or how about listening to not only you, but Susan try to convince me that I'm not autistic, based on her FRIENDS experience dealing with the severely disabled. Listening to the gaslighting that you tried to do on a teenager, because you couldn't accept the simple truth, that I have autism.

The thing is Dad, I DO know what it's like to struggle. It might not be the struggle that you knew, but it's just as valid. I know the struggle of being different. Of having children laugh at you, and treat you like some alien, because they didn't understand you.

I know the struggle of failing in school and not knowing how to fix it, because I wasn't able to keep up with the other kids, and the school didn't want to bother to slow down and help a student that didn't know how to help himself.

I know the struggle of having an alcoholic father, who refused to believe that his son had autism, who refused to accept that his son was different, and refused to learn any other way to teach him, other than whipping his ass when he started to fail in school.

I remember that, by the way. The days you would bend me over the knee and whip me until I pissed myself because I came home with bad marks, in elementary school.

I know a struggle, it's not the same struggle that you knew, but let me tell you something, the majority of the kids that were around me when I was growing up? They wouldn't have lasted a second in my shoes, because they wouldn't know how to cope with half of the shit I dealt with as an autistic individual growing up.

Instead of criticizing me for how I am now, pointing out the fact that I don't have a job, something I AM working towards, and that I "don't know the struggles", you should be congratulating me on how I've overcome the struggles that I had in the past.

Instead of looking at what I have now, you should be looking at what I've overcome.

You never once tried to teach me how to operate in a normal society.

While most kids were being taught how to shave, I was being told that I'm not who I am. I was being told that I am not autistic, that everything I learned about myself was a lie, and that it was all because my mother wanted money from the government.

While most kids were out playing ball with their dad, I was alone, in my room, because you couldn't get control of your own issues for the sake of your son.

I love you, Dad, and I understand that you've changed for the better--but that doesn't make what happened go away.

And I'll say this and leave it here--you don't know me.

You may think you do, but you don't, because you never bothered to get the help you needed until you moved out of Louisiana.

Don't act like I've never struggled in my life. Don't act like my struggles don't matter. This condescending attitude of "People who don't have to work for a living just don't know what it's like to struggle," that's the kind of shit that pushed me away from you to begin with.

I love you to death, Dad, and I always will, but don't ever tell me that I don't know what it's like to struggle again.