Why can’t you just be like the other children? Late diagnosed or self diagnosed adults, Can we forgive parents?

My relationship with my dad was very distant and strained. My parents divorced when I was tiny and he had been abusive towards my mum for years. The final straw for my mum was when he threw me, a defenceless baby, across the room. I resented having to spend one day a week with him, as directed by the courts. As soon as I was old enough to have a say I put a stop to that. I never did forgive him, even when he died.

My mum was a mess because of everything she had endured. Even at a young age I could clearly see that. She cried all the time and was agoraphobic. She had suffered poor mental health for years before I was born and was hospitalised several times. Despite very likely being autistic she acquired various wrong diagnoses, including a personality disorder. Throughout her pregnancy and most of my childhood she was constantly drugged up on high doses of antidepressants and Valium.

As a result she wasn't really there for me and it was more like I was her carer. However when she was in a relationship with someone she seemed to change and that's the part I struggle to forgive. Her endless pursuit of the perfect nuclear family was actually very damaging for me. When the relationships inevitably broke down, after numerous frightening arguments, I was suddenly needed again to pick up the pieces.

I don't think my mum saw me as strange. I was an only child and she had no-one else to compare me to, so in her view I seemed normal. It was other people that didn't see me that way. I endured repeated punishments from teachers, on a daily basis, during my early years of education. I endured much teasing and bullying for being different throughout my school years.

The teachers were constantly contacting my mum telling her that something was wrong. My mum took me to the doctors repeatedly, as instructed by my teachers. However they had probably never even heard of autism and if they did thought it only affected boys. The teachers even tried to get me transferred to a special school but that failed. If things at home were bad school was worse and it's the attitudes of and punishments from the teachers I can't forgive. My mum did her best in fighting them when she could, or keeping me off school when she couldn't. We became a very insular unit, it was us against the rest of world.

Much of this matches my own childhood in Rural Ireland in the 1970’s as my Mum was in the same situations as a result of being sent to nuns after grandad abandoned the family home where traditional Irish Catholic Social teaching was used to mete out abuse as part of Irish law - I was punished for being bullied in school by being sent to a child residential centre (state run) for 9 months and the bullying got far worse, with further punishment for the bullying, which after that as I was seen as the problem for having invited and attracted the bullying - my Dad’s side of the family were strong advocates of severe corporal punishment to “correct” my childhood behaviour and still advocate ultra strict discipline to this day 

Much of this matches my own childhood in Rural Ireland in the 1970’s as my Mum was in the same situations as a result of being sent to nuns after grandad abandoned the family home where traditional Irish Catholic Social teaching was used to mete out abuse as part of Irish law - I was punished for being bullied in school by being sent to a child residential centre (state run) for 9 months and the bullying got far worse, with further punishment for the bullying, which after that as I was seen as the problem for having invited and attracted the bullying - my Dad’s side of the family were strong advocates of severe corporal punishment to “correct” my childhood behaviour and still advocate ultra strict discipline to this day