Was My Father’s Abuse Tied to Undiagnosed Autism? A Survivor’s Reflection
I always knew something was wrong with my father. Now I understand just how deep it went.
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⚠️ Trigger Warning: This post contains discussions of childhood trauma, emotional and physical abuse, family dysfunction, gaslighting, and going No Contact with toxic family members. If these topics are sensitive or triggering for you, please take care while reading. Your well-being comes first. Feel free to skip this post or return to it when you’re in a safe and supported space. ❤️
There are stories we bury so deep within ourselves that unearthing them feels like digging up our very souls. And this is one of those personal stories.
For decades, I've carried the weight of my childhood like a stone in my pocket—something I constantly touch but rarely examine in the light. Today, I'm finally setting it on the table before us both, for everyone actually..
This isn't written to shock or to gather sympathy. Rather, it's a project of reclamation, a purposeful act of separating truth from the heavy layers of gaslighting that once convinced me my perceptions were flawed. My father's actions. His absence of a diagnosis that I genetically passed on. My mother's silent complicity and enablement. The family dynamics that taught me to doubt my own reality.
We all grow up believing our family's version of normal is universal until something cracks the foundation of that belief. For me, those cracks appeared early on, but I learned to patch them up with explanations that protected the adults around me while dismantling my own sense of trust.
Now, I'm allowing myself to trace those cracks back to their source to recognize and understand the generational patterns flowing through my family tree. And to acknowledge that my "crazy" perceptions were actually clarity trying to break through.
This old diary entry is my story of reclaiming what was always mine: the right to trust my own experience.
Diary Entry Posted to Social Media From 2022
I always knew that my household was different… it had an insidious secret that, as a child, I knew not to fully come to awareness of it--just for my survival. I knew it was wrong, that there was something wrong with Dad (and then Mom, too) when I mentioned that he rightfully deserved to die one day in junior high, and my friend in the seat next to me said that she would be ready to call the police on me if she found out that I did anything to him. To him… I laugh at this now that I’ve seen the other side.
Mom started slowly introducing me to the dysfunctional side of Dad well before I was in the double digits of age: I remember riding around on the front seat next to her driving… all while out searching to find her husband cheating on her again. Once she stopped his car along Florence-Byram Road, and I watched as traffic on both sides came to a halt as they both fought each other in the middle of the road there. One time when she caught him out at it, I made sure to write down his tag number in a note for the certainty of future use… I thought I was just helping Mom out by discovering another efficient way to identify his car when she would go out looking for him. She thought it was sort of cute and actually showed some appreciation at least. I’ve also been with her to see her bust up in some vague woman’s house while out looking for Dad once. My Weird-O-Meter noticed nothing yet. Men do cheat.