Navigating Autism, Addiction, and Trauma Through Art, Psychology, and Love: Memories of a 29-Year-Old Woman Just Trying to Figure it Out

I want to write. So, I will. I skipped class today for the third time this week (it’s Wednesday), and for some reason, instead of the mountain of homework I have growing on my desk, I’m going to sit here and write about myself. Cool, cool, cool.

My momma’s childhood has been painted to resemble perfection. The house they lived in was out in the country outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their backyard was (and still is) a seemingly endless strip of tall green grass preceding a dense forest line with openings for crunchy little paths to nowhere. Her parents upheld (and still uphold) traditional Southern Baptist values of 1960s America. Gangan, stoic and hard-working, bred and trained labrador retrievers for competitive hunters nationwide. Grandma watched the kids, cooked, and kept the kitchen sparkling and bursting with lemon-scented Lysol. Their carpets were always perfectly vacuumed and the windows, invisible. My mother grew up the second of four children. Debbie was first, Chuck was the only boy, and Kelly was last. I honestly don’t know much more than that, except that they used to chase fireflies and that every single one of those children grew up to carry around a deep sense of shame and a need to put on the bravest face possible. They all seem to feel that they must be perceived as… perfect. Perhaps this is just how it seems from my perspective, or it’s the evidence of how we -and millions of other families- were damaged by poor parenting techniques that seemed effective at the time but have since been proven to be rather traumatizing. I remember my mother often advising me not to share my feelings with my friends. During one particular instance at the last possible minute, after an hour-long car ride to school as she was looping through the carpool circle and spraying us with OZIUM, she begged, “Please don’t tell anyone what happened last night. Not even Katie. I know she’s your best friend, but she’ll just tell her parents and that won’t make me look very good, will it? You might not be able to go to her house anymore if her dad found out, okay? Just go have fun!” And with a final spritz or orange-scented chemicals at my backpack, she’d unlock the door and I’d make my way to the playground, silent and confused. It’s not like she was abusing me or neglecting me… She and MJ loved us very much, but sometimes would just get fucking wasted and fight or make a mess or yell at us or something. I wanted to tell my friends! To get it off my chest. To feel less alone. Because of that and many other reasons, I used to feel so shitty at school that I would make up stomach aches and end up actually getting them from the stress of trying to get away from everyone. I didn't know how to express that I wasn't physically sick, but I wasn't okay either. I spent a lot of time hiding in the bathroom and walking as slowly as possible to the nurse to get my perfect 97-degree temperature taken and sit on the quilted couch with Mrs. Stockinger until she convinced me nothing was wrong with me. Eventually, the counselors noticed and pulled me into a small office to talk one day. Two genuinely concerned adults and one troubled kid who thinks it's wrong to talk to her friends, much less strange women asking the questions she was taught to avoid answering. I was probably eight or nine years old. I remember just staring at them, red-faced. Wanting to scream, but thinking about how Mom would feel and holding it all in. I remember feeling so bad for faking illness and putting myself in the position to be examined. If I told the truth, Mom would be so mad, I would lose the few friends I had because their parents wouldn’t like me anymore, and my life, as I knew it, would end. So, I told them I was fine, and they sent me back to class. How could they have known that I was autistic? That I was confused and scared all the time? That I was taught not to talk about my problems? I just seemed like a traumatized little girl. Everyone knew- teachers, administrators, coaches, and counselors- all knew about the dead brother and the divorce. What they didn't know was that my mother was an alcoholic and my father thought money solved everything. They probably saw my symptoms as the expected psychological results of a traumatic childhood. Still, no one sent me to therapy. Weird, right? Maybe not in the late ’90s/early 2000s. We were taught to suck it up and be quiet. Perception is everything. They did send me to etiquette classes. I learned how to dress, how to sit "like a lady,” and how to conduct myself around “people of importance.” I was kicked out for lack of attendance. My mom encouraged me to talk to her. But only her. She said she’d never judge me and still claims that no one will ever love me as much as she does. She's usually great about the first part, but is that second part healthy? I guess she wants to control the narrative. Not that long ago, I confronted her in a manic outrage about why she never sent my sister or me to therapy. She and her husband still think psychology is bullshit. You know, the science I’m most passionate about?

My dad’s childhood is even more of a mystery to me than my mom’s. I know he was born in New Mexico in 1946. He had a sister named Rachel, I think. His mother’s name was Laura; she died from Alzheimer's in a nursing home in Carlsbad when I was 15 (she was 96). I can’t remember my grandpa’s name- probably because I never met him. The few things I ever heard about him were not-so-flattering to his character, so it never felt like much of a loss, but it does explain a lot.

My dad over-compensated for his natural lack of warmth by spoiling us rotten with his riches as children. It was his way of showing love, so it's hard to fault him for it. We went to Mexico, Belize, Puerto Rico, Canada, and even spent two weeks in Italy. My sister and I had a computer to share when we were 7 and 9, which was wild in those days. I always thought that my siblings and I were my dad’s priority. But now, I know his love for his kids is equaled only by his love for his money. It's a hard, sad truth I've been forced to accept because he has Vulcan-gripped every single one of his millions of dollars since the day he found out I was having sex at the age of nineteen. Well, when he found out I was living with my boyfriend. Same thing, right? I was still going to school full-time and working part-time, so I don’t know why he felt the need to cut me off other than the implied sex thing. But the cool thing is that he didn’t tell me he was cutting me off or why. He just stopped paying my bills. I’ll never forget getting my first URGENT letter from the water company. The shitty little apartment complex near LSU campus that I lived in had these narrow pebbled concrete paths, surrounded by patches of dying grass, buckled by great oak tree roots, and zig-zagging between each out-dated building, the algae-stained pool, the empty laundry room, and the mailboxes that inhabited a wind-prone brick archway near the pool. I remember walking barefoot along that rocky path from that windy tunnel of mailboxes, worried about nothing other than dodging the sharp edges below my blistering toes when I saw it: red ink. I was standing in front of my neighbor's door when I ripped the envelope open, and immediately called my dad, shaking. I'd never seen a letter like that before and might have been a little too aggressive when he answered. I frantically exclaimed, “Hey! They’re gonna cut my water off! What happened?!” He acted like I should’ve known it was coming: “I’m not helping you anymore... I thought I told you… No? Oh, well you can figure it out. Joe can take care of you now if you can’t do it yourself.” I was SO confused and beyond scared. The last time we spoke was when I told him about my new living arrangements. I chose not to mention Joe’s problems with addiction and mental health. If I had, I’m sure the reaction would have been worse. But I was still naïve and expected my dad to be happy that I’d found love. As he raised us, my dad continuously reminded us that as long as he’s our dad, anything that’s his is ours and that his love is absolutely unconditional, and that he’d never let anything bad happen to us. I guess I took that quite literally because when he relinquished his support so suddenly, it felt like I wasn’t worth his love anymore. After all, I was sexually active. He must have been beyond disgusted to act the way he did. The idea was that if I did everything he said, I'd be taken care of. If I disagreed with him, I was on my own. What choice did I have? A life with strings is no life at all.

I don’t blame my dad for that (anymore), but he didn’t exactly set me up for success with his kick-out-the-nest parenting method. At the time, I was a drunk, unmedicated, undiagnosed autistic teenager who was used to swiping Daddy’s credit card for every need and whim. I was pissed! But it didn’t take long for me to realize that with financial responsibility came actual freedom. Not the perceived freedom of letting someone else run the show. I already had four years of experience working in retail and restaurants. So he was right. I figured it out. I didn’t want to study psychology anymore. I was way too apathetic at the time and I wanted to change my major to photography. My dad said, “You want to take pictures? There's a major for that? Isn't that more of a hobby?” or something like that… He said he’d keep paying my tuition if I kept studying something “real”. So at the wise age of nineteen, I chose to drop out of college and get my first full-time job. I had to make way more money now that Dad catapulted me from the gilden cushions of the 1% club and through to the pits below the poverty line. I must have been even more psychologically lost than I remember because that was when I went back to work at AT&T- for my dad. He ran a small chain of authorized retailers in the south, and he put me in a store and tried to prune me for management. I had come groveling back to his feet, willing to work for what he had always taught me was inherently mine. He presented an opportunity for me to make a lot of money and win his affection back simultaneously. I wanted to be good at that job so badly. I wanted my dad to see that I was worth his love/money. I was so preoccupied with impressing my father that I was a nervous wreck walking into work every single day. My thoughts consisted of things like, “I hope I look ‘adult’ enough… Do I smell like smoke? Better go wash my hands and chew some gum… wait, chewing gum is unprofessional, spit it out… okay act grown-up, act grown-up, act grown-up…” Needless to say, it was exhausting and I did it for two years. And when I wasn’t working my ass off, I wanted to play. I was fragile and in the budding stages of alcoholism. Which for me, was the second-most fun phase of my drunk years. I was having way too good a time with my boyfriend and his bull-shit buddies to give a fuck about anything but that. And I was free to do it. I was finally able to do everything I had always longed to do before, when I was under my dad’s thumb. I worked for him, but my money and time off the clock were mine to waste. I didn’t have to worry about school anymore! All I had to do was show up to work. No more homework or studying or supply shopping or preparing. Just go to work, come home, and spend your time how you please. I was really smart. Clock-out time became synonymous with drinking. I started taking Adderal and Vyvanse to stay up all night, made a habit of driving to New Orleans with a car full of idiots to rave until sunrise, and went on multiple psychedelic journeys each week with strangers who stole from me and broke my shit. Every day was a party, and every night was a fucking mess. I loved it. Needless to say, I called in to work a lot and got away with more than I probably should have. Things got worse, naturally. Joe and I split up, I saved up some cash with a buddy, and she and I moved to Chicago right before my 24th birthday. That didn't go so hot either, but that's a story for another time.

I think my dad really was trying to help me, but he did it in a way that was not super effective for me as a person. I see it as... kind of lazy? I guess that tracks since I found out in my twenties that he almost abandoned us as children. My mom tells a story about the time she was at home watching five of us when he went to Florida and didn’t come back. She tried to get in touch with him for weeks before finally resorting to sending him divorce papers, sufficiently motivating him to return at last.

My dad is human. But he’s a human who respects money more than any living person. And that’s why I don’t want to call him. I know he’s quite ill and I love him very much. But wow the anger is still so strong. It had almost completely faded before this last November. I was pretty much over it- I felt grateful that he’d forced me to grow my wings and create my own life. But then something happened that made me feel like I was getting that first water bill again. Suddenly, we’d rewound ten years, and my dad wanted to use money to teach me a hard lesson. But I was twenty-nine this time and had been on my own for a decade. Also, he wasn’t only trying to control me this time- my partner and my unborn baby would be affected too. It was one of the worst phone calls of my life. I told him I was pregnant and that I didn't know what to do. I said it would help me make a better-informed decision if I knew how much financial support I could expect from him. At first, he said he had to think about it while his wife wailed in the background and tried to convince me to give "him" to her. She said that if they helped with money, she'd just raise “him”. I shot that shining offer down. My history with Holly is s-p-e-c-k-l-e-d. She physically assaulted me when I was 18, doesn’t believe in evolution, and genuinely thinks the entire world revolves around her. So, no. You can’t have my kid. I gave my dad a couple days to think. Then, he dodged my every attempt to contact him for the next couple of days. When I finally got him on the phone, he acted clueless. He sounded exhausted when he answered, “What’s going on, Abby? What’s so important?” I’m used to it, but with pregnancy hormones rushing through my veins and decade-long dreams of becoming a mother dangling in his answer to the question I asked him almost a week prior, I tearfully said, “Well, I’m pregnant. Remember? I need to know if you’re willing to help me support this kid until Ryan gets his master’s in a couple of years. We can figure out an arrangement, but we need to talk about this now!” He’s always slow to respond: “...okay… yeah… uh… I want you to stand… on your own two feet.” Question answered. I don’t want to say that my decision was based on my ability to secure resources from my father, but it sort of was. I know that doesn’t make it his fault. If I’d been better prepared with a savings account, made better choices, x, y, z, and fucking etcetera, then maybe I’d still be pregnant today. So, I guess you can call it a combination of failures between my father and myself. My mother has been in debt since my dad fired our nanny and forced her to leave her job 23 years ago, so she’s never been someone I go to for anything financial. The night before our flight to St. Louis for my scheduled abortion, my dad sent me the longest text he’s probably ever written, trying to convince me to change my mind. It was about five lines of iMessage packed with the most condescending, disrespectful, and threatening words I’d ever received from a loved one- this one message broke a lot of records. All he wrote was that he would help us, but that his money came with a lot of rules- rules that I was NOT going to like. He told me not to get on the plane and that I’d regret it if I did. He tried to buy us. So… a little less forgivable than not paying my water bill.

Mom also piped up that night. I had blocked her number already because I had tried calling her for emotional support the previous day only to receive nothing other than resentful remarks and a plea to reconsider the toughest decision I’ve ever made in my life. So when she couldn’t call me anymore, she called Ryan and drunkenly told him what a mistake we were making. She said that god wants her grandchild to live and that she’d take care of it if she had to. Ryan tentatively passed the message along to me when we were grieving in our hotel room across the street from the closest place to New Orleans that we could get an appointment for an abortion in 2022. It was a small town in southern Illinois whose name I don't even remember. That trip was a blur, but I think it was the night before the big event when I learned how insensitive my mother had been. That was it. I didn’t talk to either of my parents for three months after that. Usually, I talk to my mom every week and my dad every two or three weeks. At least now I can say I really don’t care what either of them thinks.