...a familiar voice called me from a car parked outside the house. It wasn't a voice I would have expected to hear, so it took me a moment to work out why it seemed so familiar.
It was my brother - with whom I'd had no contact for about four or five years. Not that we're estranged as such, just that we're not a terribly close-knit family, and I have been incommunicado in general for a rather long time (a couple of e-mails about having moved house a couple of years ago is the most recent contact I've made with any of my family).
Strange and awkward as this might seem, this is not the oddest such occurrence. The last time that my brother ventured forth on a quest to determine whether I was still alive or not, I had to be asked by my line manager at the JobCentre I was working in at the time to identify him through an interview room window, as they suspected he might be a delusional stalker.
So what kind of conversation does one have at a moment like this?
As it happened, a very interesting one. As his mission had been somewhat spurred by other family members wanting to know where I'd disappeared to (my Mum in particular), I did my best to explain how my autistic traits and mental health problems were somewhat the cause of this (though I admit, my aversion to such communication still mystifies me a great deal). In fact, we discussed autistic traits in great detail; the kind of detail that only two people who have both experienced them can muster. I was already aware of strong signs of autism in previous generations of the family, but it now appears that I may not be the only one of my generation, and that the next generation also features Aspies and BAPs.
Neither of us ever considered ourselves particularly alike as children, and our adult lives have panned out very differently - yet the underlying similarity in our traits (and the consequences for our mental health) are strikingly similar. It feels rather unreal to have discovered this connection and to have had by far the deepest conversation that we have ever shared now that I'm nearly half a century old, and he only a few years behind.
I don't want to write too much more right now - it's been a very weird day, and surely needs some time to sink in. I have no preconceptions of what, if any, responses I might get, or quite why I'm even posting - I don't feel upset or in need of help, just a bit discombobulated.