I Guess

I may be too young for this challenge, I'm only 20. My parents were not bad, were never "bad-bad." Just, dumb.

In many respects of how the world went round and the rules of things I knew more than they did. I knew my maths and my reading and my science better than they did. I like to think I know a bit better about how kind people are, how I won't be raped or murdered to spend a few hours with a friend out in public. And I do know that using medicines as they're meant to be used, how much are used is important. It's safe.

They were not bad, really they weren't.

A bad parent wouldn't take the primary school teacher seriously, a bad parent would belittle and demean me when that word slipped from some professional's mouth I couldn't give you an answer to what she looked like or what her grand, important job title was. She may have even been a man, but I do more often remember women being my primary caregivers for my medical issues and my disability.

You see, I have a disability called autism. But my parents caught it early and just as quickly had me enrolled in all the proper classes, with all the proper people at the clinic and at school, and wouldn't you know-- each and every one I remember as a properly kind and properly speaking adult.

What I mean, I was never talked down to. They talked with me and let me talk about what I wanted to. They never said my answers were wrong, but then again, I did know some answers were-- tedious-- to expose in the first place. Nevertheless we made progress.

Even if I did always know by my classmates' rolled eyes and their disdainful tones, from my emotions that were too big and always turned to the most minimal, most detrimental thing of my character, to my absolute apathy towards others-- on good days-- and on worse days utter ineptitude despite the present desire, the completely absent, innate ableness of interacting with others... is how I knew I was an anomaly. A freak.

Perhaps to others I may have seemed normal or perhaps the adults were politely lying for my sake. I did always believe I had wonderful teachers burdened with the most awful and ungrateful litter of students. After all, much of the class were bullies.

My professor just last year would beg to differ. About the yelling the teachers did, but that isn't really the point.

My parents never did tell me-- not until a therapist required the information when considering medicating a growing, parasitic depression that had siphoned the wonderment of summer to a numb not black but rather grey, dullness of a void-- my parents never did tell me that I had autism.

I couldn't tell you what equated with my autistic traits to place me in the Special Ed STAAR test group. Simply that I finished in an hour and liked the room and the time and the books-- since we conducted affairs in the library.

I can tell...

Autism is what equated the scripts inside my head of dialogues with adults and classmates, what could work, what could be, all in vivid detail. Since my brain is quite dysfunctional, wired incorrectly in the ways of social grace and etiquette.

Autism is what attributes to the emotions throughout my childhood that were so big and so vile and so wrong that they showed on my face and made my kind mother profess her daughter would be ugly if she continued to be so ghastly.

I don't hate her but I consider saying such a thing just a bit unfair. Certainly not healthy. Certainly not, I can confirm once I have read the experiences of other women.

Which professes the power of our ire as exactly what it is-- a ghastly, exquisite inevitability of being born and being wronged. A dragon that only a woman-- "delicate, weak, dutiful"-- woman is expected to chain up. In the basement, in the bowels of shame. Without light, without attention and care and affirmation. Without food, without touch. With the implicit hope that it would shrivel and die.

That then, is more society than her.

I didn't-- I still don't-- like my Dad in many ways.

He treated me, as an amusing little thing. Constantly joking, constantly whining and wanting from me. While my brother and sister, older than me, were allowed to refuse. To preserve and stash their snacks.

Not everyone has to share with you, not even family.

Only, I can't say no when Daddy wants. Wants my chips, wants my pastries, wants my hugs and my attention, wants the sodas he doesn't even like.

If I do say no then I'm the one wanting.

If I say no then no chips, no pastries, no peanuts or goodies from my Dad's bag. Because I am in the wrong.

That is, if he doesn't count down, tell me I have offended God and need to say sorry.

Once I'd spilled soup, I was four and it was by complete accident, I tried to tell my mother her yelling was really loud and it was hurting me. I was sorry and it was an accident and could she please not yell at me?

I was rebuffed with sarcasm.

But, I was told not to get angry and speak with my voice politely and intelligently. The way an adult does.

Adults as a whole never do seem to listen to the kid who speaks well with their inside voice much less take them too seriously.

Then I guess it's more that since we're kids, promises and ideas and opinions don't mean anything. Anything can be said to get the kid quiet. As long as they're quiet it doesn't matter the what or how.

And anything the kid "thinks it thinks" is cute, so adorably funny and a little dumb. A nuisance and an "attitude" at worst.

Is it infuriating when you're the one who requests time in the green and to commune with nature at the park? Or want to get and return books responsibly? Or want to share a new idea, at least talk, if we can start recycling or I eat just greens and veggies for a bit, since that is better for the Earth and the Earth is in danger? Sometimes they'll say a little lie and promise. Sometimes they'll laugh. And sometimes they'll give that look that says you're in over your head, way, way over your head from what makes sense or of reality.

I don't think I trusted the words "I promise" too much after that.

I didn't trust where my parents said we were going or even what we "would" do.

Sometimes, Daddy admitted, he just liked to laugh and see the look on my face.

"I promise."

"If God wants."

"Maybe. Could be. Possibly."

Spoiler: they mean to say no but hey, their English wasn't good back then. Maybe they didn't know what they were saying meant or wanted a kinder way to shut me down.

Then again, flippantly lying to silence their voices, their "ideas," is mostly society's idea. A grand, big idea that is carried by the adults as simply a thing to do.

Which is why I guess, I can throw my Dad-- stupid as he might be about a great deal-- the occasional compliment. I guess, well he did, help me at my worst, kept me stable, kept me safe and supervised when I wasn't in the best condition to be left alone while my Mother slept.

Which again, they helped me, sought out help in the ways they knew how. Ultimately made sure I was safe and that the risks were understood.

It's society, I think, that brought the other stupid stuff. That for a long while made me feel inferior and made my parents a manner of untrustworthy, if a most of all benign sort.

But the flavor is still bitter.

And there was still arguing and catastrophizing and screaming matches and crying done in front of me when it certainly shouldn't have been.

I don't want kids.

That's just a non-starter for me. As a person excluding my issues I am quite selfish and spoiled and inept when it comes to life skills.

Still, I want to listen to my cousins. I don't want to lie to them. I want to give them a reason if there's something I can't tell them.

Because kids aren't listened to, they aren't taken seriously and grow up rightly believing that their voices amount to nothing in the larger world, because why would they? When all the "golden rules" don't apply to the adults despite how important they supposedly are?

I've known quite acutely for a long while, it doesn't matter when a kid speaks or about what. It's an easy notion to believe when your anger is called ugly outright without a chance to even try parsing and cutting to the grievance, or promises are made simply to get you to leave or then be forgotten. To be treated as an imposition when reminded. Perhaps if memory had struck five hours ago.

Or when edicts and nuggets of wisdom and empathy don't apply to you if the lesson proves inconvenient to immediate pleasures of food or time or care. Nevermind that child's love language. Never mind the misgivings or inner deception occurring to do so from their valid emotions.