To Dad 2

(Real quick, the emoji's were from me. I hate messenger on the phone, it's so annoying to accidentally send that crap when you don't mean to.)

Dad, I didn't attack you for anything. If expressing my feelings towards how you treated me was an attack on you--that says more about you than it does me.

Yeah, you weren't the father you should have been--but my message wasn't about that, it was pointing out something that you and Susan must have forgotten--that I absolutely do know what it's like to struggle.

I don't blame you for anything--except my creation. You think I blame you for my mistakes in life? No, I look back at my mistakes and realize I could have done better, had I known what I do now. I accept my mistakes in life.

My telling you "you didn't teach me how to operate in normal society" was me saying that you don't have the right to judge me where I am now because you never tried to help me to begin with.

I accept my mistakes in life...but clearly you don't.

First of all--I'm not going to get into your crap with Momma. That's between you two, and I'm not going to debate or argue about how much you paid in child support, or when she allowed visitation.

But--even if what you said was true, Dad, the thing is, when you finally got visitation you should have been working like hell to try to fix the issues you had, not drowning your sorrows in booze and rage.

Going back for a second, I'd like to point something out that stuck out at me.

"Then...Peggy came into my life. She helped me with you as best as she could and we “sort of” bonded. Hell by this time you were 3 or almost 4. I was still drinking bad and a lot of times you didn’t want to even come see me because you were so much into your games that you didn’t want to leave your moms house because I didn’t have cable or internet or ability for you to have your games. And when you did come, you showed NO affection toward me at all. No hugs, no kisses no Dad I love and miss you. All you wanted was to go home. You have no idea how that broke my heart."

Do you want to know why this sticks out?

Because it shows me just how little you cared to look at what I was going through as a child--to learn what autism was.

Autistic children don't show affection--to anybody. Ask Momma, I did her the same way. I hated to be touched--I wanted to be left alone, and it wasn't that I didn't love her, or you, I didn't know how to process physical contact and certain emotions. The difference is Momma did the research. She came to understand that it would take time for me to be able to express love. As for gaming? Yeah, I was enamored with games--but that's a part of the autism as well.

An autistic child latches onto something, they make it a part of their routine, and they don't like it when that routine is broken. They build their routine around that subject. It could be anything; trains, boats, planes, bugs, cars, music, or in my case, games. It's not something we can control. It's just how we are. But, instead of trying to understand that, you decided to...what? Leave me be? You made no effort to get into my headspace. I can tell you right now--looking back--had you gotten a table-top game with a fun story behind it, like Dungeons and Dragons, or Pathfinder, hell, ANYTHING we could play together with a story that YOU could have come up with and controlled, I'd have spent every second I could with you. I've seen plenty of parents play those games with their kids--and they come up with the coolest stories.

For instance, I read about this father who played DnD with his ten-year-old daughter, and one of the encounters was a town that was being attacked by wolves. Instead of killing the wolves, she decided to befriend them and spent the entire game with a pack of wolves following her around and helping her fight.

As for why Peggy was able to get me to bond with you? She and Momma communicated with each other. She took the time to learn how to deal with me, to understand me. She researched the same thing that Momma did, she TRIED to teach you, but you barely listen. And that part right there--that shows it.

Continuing with the autism--"a rough time of it" would be a phrase you could use. Especially when your father, someone you're supposed to be able to trust, is telling you that you don't have it, that "real autistic people are in wheelchairs," and that your mother is lying to your face to get money from the government. I spent months trying to figure out who I was after that, by the way. I spent months trying to figure out who and what I was, and who was lying to my face about it. And that? That hurt like hell, because that was the moment that I realized that I couldn't trust one of my parents.

The whole message that you sent to me just proves to me that you never bothered to try to understand what I was going through as a child, and I doubt you care to research anything about it now--even though it would answer a lot of questions as to why I acted the way I did, and still act the way I do, because autism isn't something that just goes away. I'll always be autistic. It's something I can't change, and I don't want it to change.

Now, moving on--I didn't judge your life, Dad. Nowhere in my message did I judge your life, nor will I ever--because that is something you can't control. Your life is how it turned out to be. What I did say, however, is that you couldn't put your issues aside for the sake of your son.

No one but you is to blame for what happened between you and I. Don't you dare try to blame my mother for this.

Don't try to play the victim here. This wasn't my mother's doing. She never got me involved in the goings-on between you two, because she knew that children have no place in that kind of argument. Hell, the most she and I ever spoke about you--until now--was when she asked if I'd talked to you lately. She was the one who pushed me to talk to you more, to begin with. Don't try to insinuate that my mother was trying to turn me against you, when you were the one who told me that my mother was trying to get money from the government in claiming that I had autism.

Now--on the matter of you whipping my ass? Oh, no, no, no. I remember quite clearly--it was about my grades too and it wasn't just grades, because I remember you whipping me quite a few times when I had melt-downs, another thing that autism contributed to, as that's generally what happens when an autistic child gets overwhelmed in multiple ways. Christ, Dad, I even remember when you switched to using a belt--because every time you whipped my ass, your hand would go to hurting because you were hitting me so hard!

And even if it was true that it was about my bad behavior--that still doesn't excuse it.

By the way--do you remember when Momma called you after you sent me home one day when I was real little, and told you that if I ever came home with bruises from you, she'd press charges? Matthew remembers because he had to sit in the bathroom with me so she could make that call. I talked to him about it--he remembers it clearly, and so does Jessica.

There are much better ways to deal with bad behavior than bending a kid over and beating his ass until he pissed himself. That didn't teach me anything but fear. I feared you, Dad, for most of my life. I don't anymore, though, because I'm a grown-ass man, and I've come to realize that a parent shouldn't make their child fear them. Though, I will thank you for that--because it taught me how NOT to treat my children, if I ever have any.

Speaking of fear, it's why I never said any of this before, why I never poured my heart out to you, and told you how I felt. It's why I never expressed any of my feelings to you, because every time I was near you, it felt like I was walking on eggshells the entire time. One wrong statement, and you'd fly off the handle. I don't know if you remember this, Dad, but you weren't a particularly nice drunk.

Why did I drop out? Don't act like you knew why. It had nothing to do with me being man enough and not needing school.

No, you don't know what happened, and I guess that's because you never asked me why, or even tried to find out.

What happened was that in the 9th grade, Zachary decided that they didn't need to help me anymore. Despite the federally mandated IEP put in place--they figured I was a lost cause, because I couldn't figure out how to help myself.

Add on top of that, the kids in at least 3 of my classes bullied me in ways that distracted me and kept me from learning. Yeah, in the 11th grade, I gave up.

I gave up trying to succeed in a school that refused to do its damn job, and a school that didn't give two fucks about the students who struggled to keep up, and it wasn't just me. I had several friends who were in the same boat as me--autism included.

But you know what? I've been fighting like hell to make up for that these past years because after Travis, I realized just how fucked I'm going to be if I don't. "No diploma, no job," don't you DARE think it's from a lack of trying. No one's going to hire me if I don't have an equivalent to a diploma, or experience--so I stopped looking for a job and started putting all my focus into getting a GED.

If it weren't for this virus, I'd be studying my ass off in a classroom right now, trying to get what I need to succeed in life.

But, all things considered, I don't regret a damn second of it. Yeah, if I knew what I did now, I'd change things, but back then? I didn't know how to deal with what I was going through. I didn't know how to deal with bullies, how to deal with teachers who didn't give a damn.

Now, as for me not having any responsibility, how the hell do you know what responsibilities I do or don't have? Of all the times we've spoken, we never talk about what I have to take care of in life--and while I might not have a family to feed, or bills to pay, that doesn't mean I don't have responsibilities that I need to take care of.

And for people who depend on me? Yeah, I'll probably never have that. I'm not interested in having kids at the moment, and if I ever get married, I'm going to make damn sure that my partner has a job that can support them financially--because unless it's something that can't be avoided, I'd want them to be able to take care of themselves, money-wise.

I don't know where you got the idea that I'm judging people for making a living in this pandemic, but it ends, now. I never criticized anyone for wanting to work. Just because I'm against opening America back up, doesn't mean I'm against people working. I'm against people making stupid choices that put others at risk. Maybe I made a mistake and misjudged what you were trying to say in your comment, but I'm not about to go back and apologize for that, because it gave me the courage to finally speak up and tell you how I felt as a child, something I wasn't able to do in the past.

And that's where I'm going to leave that, and the entirety of your rant about globalists and Bill Gates trying to destroy the world.

Where the actual fuck did that even come from? No one brought that up--and I've already argued that shit with your buddy, and I'm not about to get into it with you. It's a stupid argument, and I'm not about to derail this conversation over some stupid shit that's not even worth debunking.

I'll end it with this, if anyone robbed you of a relationship with me, it was yourself. You sabotaged yourself over and over again, and you still can't bring yourself to acknowledge it. I am happy that you and Alan have a relationship, honestly, I am.

But you can't admit when you're wrong. I don't know if that's just a flaw with you--or if it's something deeper--but it's a problem. It's a problem, because instead of facing the truth, you put it off on someone else.

Have you ever heard of projection? It's when someone projects aspects of themselves onto someone else. It's generally a subconscious thing. And I'm seeing a lot of it here. You're projecting your lack of ability to take responsibility onto me, and God does it show. You're blaming everybody on your mistakes, on your misgivings, but yourself.

"I may have been a drunk, but that was your mother's fault! She took everything from me!" - She didn't, she and my sisters stayed in that house and you left to stay with a friend until she found a place to stay.

"You didn't know me from adam's ass because your mother refused visitation for a year!" - If she did, she had a damn good reason to--considering you were threatening to *murder her and two of her children and run off with one of them.*

"I was robbed of any relationship with either of my sons for years!" - Only because of how you acted towards us. I mean hell, Alan tried to kill himself and you called him, his doctor and his mother idiots and refused to see him. And with me, you wouldn't even tolerate the idea of me being different than normal. You even refused to let me take my Adderall when I was at your house. You ignored the signs you were given, refused to learn about autism, and then when I started one of the most chaotic points in my life--you tried to turn me against my mother and told me that I wasn't autistic and that she was lying to me because she wanted money from the government.

All of this is in the past, yes, and I forgive you for not being the father you should have been--I forgave you for that a long, LONG time ago. But for you to sit here and tell me that *I* need to take responsibility, that *I* need to accept the mistakes I made, when you keep blaming everyone in the world for the mistakes *you* made?

That is a level of hypocrisy that I've not seen in a long time.

Believe it or not, Dad, I want to have a relationship with you. I want to get to know the you that isn't drunk off your ass, or passed out in your recliner. And I want you to get to know me for who I am--because my 4-year-old self couldn't do what I can now. I've gotten past a lot of what held me back as a kid, and while I still have a lot that holds me back, I've come a long, LONG way from the kid who used to hide behind his mother's legs every time a stranger passed by.

I want you to see the man I am today.

But if you keep blaming my mother for your mistakes, if you keep with this condescension about me not having a job, judging me for not having a diploma--when if I remember right, you don't have one yourself--all you'd be doing is pushing me away, and I can't have a relationship with you if I keep pretending like none of this happened. And I don't want that. I want to be able to introduce my children--if I have any--to their grandfather. I want to be able to come and talk to you about things.

But I can't do that if you keep doing this. Don't sabotage yourself again.