I need to be vulnerable for a second.
My parents divorced when I was 4.
My father most certainly is an undiagnosed autistic (I was diagnosed in my 30's) who's mother died when he was young.
I was a "Mama's boy". I did everything to make her happy. But there was a point where she started having different reactions to my outbursts, that increased as I didn't understand social rules and was placed in advanced classes.
The biggest change was making a joke that apparently wasn't a joke in fourth grade but I had seen on Looney Toons.
I got suspended for a week. My dad left voice messages about how I scared his new wife (who was pregnant with my half sister I have only ever met twice, and didn't know existed until she was 7).
Both of my parents worked for my school district (at the high school).
May have been assaulted by a pedo that ended their life in their own car after getting caught by the FBI. I wouldn't know. I only remember half that mountain hike and I remember complaining I was tired on the way up and that butt hurt on the way down. But that memory was so far packed as "normal" because whatever it was, I couldn't be certain.
Pretty crazy start, right?
My mother and step father's family feel neurodivergent coded. I could be wrong. But their "social rules" didn't seem to reflect other families.
I was an only child. I was going into a teen boy. And my mother reacted like someone with untreated PTSD whenever I had outbursts and anxiety attacks.
She had dealt with them before. She knew that panic, that fear of losing control and bad consequences well. My father.
I could no longer be that Mama's boy.
She knew something was different. I dressed up in full feminine getup for two Halloweens in a row. I shaved. I did make up. Wore female costumes that were probably slutty. I wore thigh high socks. Alice in Wonderland.
As life moves forward, as most boys, there was a lot of masculine pressure. As an autistic that didn't present in the normal way, and more as how women present, I had already masked for a long time.
I knew if I ever tried to "be myself", I messed up and got shamed or in some sort of social trouble. So masks were the go to.
But as soon as I would let my guard down, I'd "be myself". And it was the definition of a record scratch moment every time.
I became fearful. I tried to people please and never so no so I would be wanted. I burned out of a half a dozen jobs after my fiance was knocked up by her ex. I cut that little girls umbilical cord and when I sent in a secret test, I drank two bottles of wine before opening it.
I should have a near adult daughter. What happened to the years.
I got married and it failed, both of us struggling to understand what to do with our life.
Me? I was promised college. Top 3% ACT in the country. I had worked to have honors. To make my parents proud.
They decided at the last moment not to pay for my college. Suddenly out and figuring out entry level jobs. Confused why I couldn't communicate with society. Correct peoples scientific inaccuracies makes you no friends.
I experimented with women's cloth and looks more. Tried college with loans and burned out because I had ballooned to three hundred pounds and was barely making it day by day with how many masks I had to manage, how many scripts that let me walk across social minefields just to make it to the end of the day without OCD grabbing ahold of something and strangling me with it.
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Then I started a job at the post office and met two people who diverted the direction of my life.
I lost that job (they weren't following policy and I was working 70 hour weeks for two years straight) and by lost I walked out because I just couldn't.
I proceeded to be high for five years as Covid hit soon after. But I moved across the country. Selling my condo to try love again, and somehow. Against all odds, she takes my outbursts, my autistic ego in stride.
TADC feels like it's a midpoint in a lot of stories.
And I didn't realize my midpoint had, HAD, been that. Scared.
Even the slightest chance of conflict or upsetting someone or not fitting the status quo.
I'm two years on estrogen next month. I'm getting my first degree in less than six months with straight A's. I've been married for nearly four years, and I'm still best friends with those two people.
No matter how many times I pushed them away. They did not. Would not let go.
Thank you, Amazing Digital Circus.
I never put my life in scope before. And honestly, I think I'm doing okay. To quell that hateful voice that I'm not doing good enough, because...golly. Look at it all.
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