Non understanding people!

I was at my parents house for two hours earlier. They kindly invited me for Sunday dinner and as it’s Mother’s Day I wanted to call with a small gift anyway.

My family is a weird mix of energies, half aligned and half jarring. Every conversation feels like we’re stepping on each other’s toes even with the rhythm of things. I’m out of practice. So it has tired me out but also left me jittery more than usual because my shields were down when a couple of well meaning but nonetheless triggering things got said. 

One was about how I’m very bad at letting go of things. Not really true as I’ve let go of many ‘couldn’t be helped’ things over many years. But one or two bigger things were clearly being included, and I suddenly felt like I was being called abnormal - like everyone else let’s go of even the most distressing things and greatest emotional fallouts, injustices, or cruelties from the people you thought least capable of that after a universally standardised cut off point of, dunno, let’s say 240 days max or something. It makes no sense to me. I tried to let the comment pass, but my stomach was in knots over the strangeness of it.

So I pushed back a bit, explained that for me I don’t just flick a switch one day. Or have it all ebb iteratively  away in some precisely ratioed linear fashion. Instead, when do energy is left to sustain distraction, those hurts are always patiently  waiting to be re-experienced with just as much intensity as on day one. Even a stray thought when on my own can start the hours of days of rumination and despair and confusion and desperate longing for answers and the compassion of the few specific hands that can reach out and pull me out of the drowning. I may not have put it quite that full-on! 

But even now, some time after getting back hom, My heart is pounding and my head imploding. Clearly even my (in my opinion) somewhat neurodiverse parents - they collectively have a cocktail of traits even if not a specific ‘ism’ each-  are sufficiently different from my wiring to leave me feeling weird, and even in renewed shock at how the rest of society can shrug indifferently in, let’s say, week ten about something they still tormented about in week eight. And that’s that. And normal apparently! Moving on, letting go. It’s so… permanent and easy to them. After a fashion. It gives me the horrors that this is so. I on the other hand will never recover from some things and expect to be regularly floored by them afresh between now and the grave. Does anyone get this or am I sounding like a nut even in this most understanding of forums?

I was at my parents house for two hours earlier. They kindly invited me for Sunday dinner and as it’s Mother’s Day I wanted to call with a small gift anyway.

My family is a weird mix of energies, half aligned and half jarring. Every conversation feels like we’re stepping on each other’s toes even with the rhythm of things. I’m out of practice. So it has tired me out but also left me jittery more than usual because my shields were down when a couple of well meaning but nonetheless triggering things got said. 

One was about how I’m very bad at letting go of things. Not really true as I’ve let go of many ‘couldn’t be helped’ things over many years. But one or two bigger things were clearly being included, and I suddenly felt like I was being called abnormal - like everyone else let’s go of even the most distressing things and greatest emotional fallouts, injustices, or cruelties from the people you thought least capable of that after a universally standardised cut off point of, dunno, let’s say 240 days max or something. It makes no sense to me. I tried to let the comment pass, but my stomach was in knots over the strangeness of it.

So I pushed back a bit, explained that for me I don’t just flick a switch one day. Or have it all ebb iteratively  away in some precisely ratioed linear fashion. Instead, when do energy is left to sustain distraction, those hurts are always patiently  waiting to be re-experienced with just as much intensity as on day one. Even a stray thought when on my own can start the hours of days of rumination and despair and confusion and desperate longing for answers and the compassion of the few specific hands that can reach out and pull me out of the drowning. I may not have put it quite that full-on! 

But even now, some time after getting back hom, My heart is pounding and my head imploding. Clearly even my (in my opinion) somewhat neurodiverse parents - they collectively have a cocktail of traits even if not a specific ‘ism’ each-  are sufficiently different from my wiring to leave me feeling weird, and even in renewed shock at how the rest of society can shrug indifferently in, let’s say, week ten about something they still tormented about in week eight. And that’s that. And normal apparently! Moving on, letting go. It’s so… permanent and easy to them. After a fashion. It gives me the horrors that this is so. I on the other hand will never recover from some things and expect to be regularly floored by them afresh between now and the grave. Does anyone get this or am I sounding like a nut even in this most understanding of forums?

My family situation is different to yours (for one thing, I live with my parents, at least for now), but I also feel that they don't really understand me. Although they don't understand my personality as much as my autism. I've been thinking about this a lot lately due to some family "drama" around my upcoming wedding. I actually posted elsewhere on the forum about it today, but I think writing that post was a mistake.

The other thing said was would I consider a bigger house on the future? I made it very clear when I bought the bungalow i am in that it was to be my final move, a ‘forever home’. I got second opinions from everyone in the family that the place I was buying was of sufficient size, robustness, suitability, would not be judged as silly or ‘it’s ok … for now’ etc. permanence was at the forefront of my mind and I wanted the peace of mind that nobody could think otherwise  about the appropriateness of my choice. 
So why suddenly bring up this ‘yes, but in the future…’ when they know my thinking and intentions, and also how unsettled I am by both implied judgement and threatened upheaval? It’s a kind of restlessness of mind in themselves I think - there must be a future project! But also it implies that their agreeing with the house’s suitability for ‘always’ was merely to humour me, an inauthentic yes when a sincere one was what I then needed and still need. I know in the end I have my own self agency in this, but I suddenly feel very threatened and unsettled. Probably disproportionately so. But I’m feeling crap generally, so the little seed of implied ‘yes, but we didn’t really think you were serious’ (when I made it extremely clear that I was) is the last thing I need on top of my other spinning mental plates. Aaaaargh!