Did I have a tragedy happen to me?

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I never had the opportunity to tell someone the whole story, seeing as I have no one close. I always had to leave out part or parts or change the story or hide it altogether, depending on who I was talking to. No one ever heard the whole story, so it only just now dawned on me that I may have had a tragedy happen to me. Sounds strange, but I had never noticed before. So I had never connected my social failure of the last few years with this. But maybe having a tragedy affects one's social life...

I just want to write out what happened, the whole story for once, and ask if you think I had a tragedy happen to me...

Seven years ago, my mother started getting very sick, but she never received an exact diagnosis. She gradually became non-functioning (except her mind) until a year ago she died of asphyxia (when her lungs stopped working too). Now, seeing the whole story before me, I believe what she had was ALS. But we never got any help or advice from any doctor. My father became gradually non-functioning too - he can hardly see, hardly hear, hardly move only one hand, and the rest of his body is paralyzed. When my mother got very sick, I was co-renting with my parents (I paid 1/3 of the rent and expenses), but my siblings suddenly one day threatened me with physical violence if I didn't leave the apt. within 60 days. Turned out they wanted no witnesses that might spoil their plan to steal our parents' lifelong, extremely hard-earned savings for old age. They stole the money from them once I had left the apt. and they had convinced our parents to distance from me. They also convinced all extended family that I had done "something" (they never said what) horrible so I should be ostracized. So I don't have any extended family anymore, seven years already. I practically didn't hear from my parents for 2 years, until my father called me to say that my siblings had cut contact with our parents, told the grandchildren that the grandparents and I were evil (we had co-raised my sister's kids and they adored us), and my sister had stolen their savings. My parents were paralyzed and alone, and they don't speak the local language nor do they know anyone here who might help them. I took pity on them (even though they had sided with my siblings to outcast me from the family) and took on their cause, full force. That was about 3 years ago, and since then I have enormeous amounts of very emotionally and logistically hard work to do for them, because they're so totally non-functioning. In the meantime, I've had to get involved with the police to prevent my siblings from killing our father when our mother died - they wanted the tiny sum still in his savings account, so they were playing dirty tricks to institutionalize him so he'd die quick). Everyone commends me for being such a miracle of a daughter (my father doesn't; he doesn't even take an interest in my personal life, he never liked me and though I'm all he has nowadays, and I take care of him as no child does nowadays, he doesn't like me any better for it). I don't expect it, I'm used to it. And I won't abandon him, because it'll hurt ME unbearably to know that he's abandoned. I refuse to put him in an institution, where he'll simply die in a couple months of abandonment and bad service (we can't pay for a good institution). As all this was happening during these years, I was at the same time coping with constant abuse and humiliation at work and being fired from one job and the next and the next, in spite of working 12 hours a day average. I don't have any friends, and all my immense efforts to make any in the last 10 years ended in total, very painful failure. During the last 2 years I've been coping with repeated operations on my eyes, due to an illness. That's the whole story.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a great tragedy. The issues you are dealing with are many, and complex and painful.
However, it does not surprise me at all that your reaction to fully understanding all of this has been delayed in the manner it has been> Often, we ASD people can go through life dealing with it, and the emotional and summary responses to what we are contending with can be delayed.
Sometimes, I have a delayed emotional reaction of months or years. In the first half of my life - I did not process emotionally (in the normal sense ) and the second half is better, but there is often a kind of delayed emotional reaction to things. (unless it is instant sensory meltdown stuff, or meltdown due to overwhelm with processing.)

You and I are the same age - 47 - and i wonder if this dawning on you regarding the complete story and its redefinition as "A TRAGEDY" is this kind of processing.

reading it objectively, the situation you describe is ugly, abusive, manipulative and hideous. I am glad you told this story in completeness Greentea. You've told me bits and pieces here and there - but to read it all in its entirety is very powerful.


No two ways about it.
This is a tragedy, for you and also for your parents.
The pressure on you has been enormous. Just incredible.
Take care.
Write your Jerusalem book and let yourself be truly cared about by your aspie friends. We are here. And many of us LOVE GREENTEA!

This delayed reaction issue...I've always had it. But I thought it was due to having been neglected as a child, and therefore not having learnt to notice my own needs and rights and the severity of my problems... Millie, do you think it indeed may be rooted in our neurology? Interesting...!

Golly kiddo, no wonder. (((hugs if ya want 'em)))

Thank you, southwest. Can certainly use one right one!

I had always more or less thought that's life, and life is tough for adults, but now that I think about it, not everyone has to take care of TWO parents paralyzed from head to toe. My mother wasn't able to communicate for years, I had no idea if something hurt, or anything. She couldn't move anything to make a sign. It was horrible. And not everyone is dealing with AS and being abused and fired constantly while having this family illness ordeal, and at the same time dealing with the police about siblings that, instead of helping, become extremely dangerous enemies. Not everyone has to run to make a will to make sure her siblings won't try to kill her for any few pennies of inheritance she might leave. Not everyone is cut off for money from the nephews and niece that she helped raise and that adored her. Not everyone has a direct and an extended family where you're as good as how much you've been escalating lately by stepping on everyone else, including your old parents. These are NOT standard problems of an adult's life. These are all extreme cases, and all together.

double post, and wouldn't let me delete one.

yes...i do think it is rooted in our neurology. It can often be misdiagnosed in adulthood as a dissociative disorder.
But I think it has to do with our inability to multi-task.
So, i can focus on the task at hand and the practicalities, but my brain struggles to process the emotions IN TANDEM with the events.
We need a slower processing pace than the world and all its antics offers us.
I firmly know this in my case and I do know this is the approach my sister is using with her son by way of RDI and it is really helping him to contend with the world a little better.

I have always been like this. My sister who was up from Sydney last week talked about me in childhood and how I did not respond emotionally and in tandem with others. Later I would process things on my own.


I have learned to articulate and id feelings to some extent in the past decade. It has taken YEARS of intensive therapy and I am still at a rudimentary stage with it, compared to other NT women I know who are my age.

And yes...not EVERYONE has to look after two paralysed parents without adequate funding to do so and with a family who has robbed the elders of all their savings.
It is a very extreme situation you have been living in. I think it is very important to get an understanding of this fact.....it is a very dire and awful situation you have had to contend with.

I can totally see its root being in the inability to multi-task. I know that my hyper-focus is the most accute and pervasive of my AS symptoms and the root cause for a whole amount of maladaptive social behaviors. I know hyper-focus is not given the central importance in AS traits as it has in my life, but hyper-focus is my biggest problem. Very, very interesting! I wouldn't have discovered that, as I was always told by therapists that the root is in childhood trauma. However, you're right - my dad calls me and tells me the first bit of good news in 7 years, and I automatically discover the tragedy issue, which had elluded me for all that time. I think the reason is that my focus changed from HIM to ME, due to the relief, and I was able to see a different picture I hadn't seen in years.

Greentea, yes, you have been through a terrible tragedy. Hugs from me as well. It's not too surprising to me that this might cause even more social problems than you have with AS, since there must be a lot of trust issues involved (edited to add, in addition to the delayed reaction mentioned earlier).

I'm so sorry this terrible thing happened to you.

It makes sense to me that this delay in realization could have to do with a problem multi-tasking, too. They say that's the key to PTSD in soldiers, that they're so busy surviving at the time that they have no chance to process the emotional content of tragedies that occur to them or the things they're forced to do in war.

Thank you, Spirit. Indeed, we were discussing the other day on my Yahoo list for people who were diagnosed late in life, how it's so hard to discern whether a symptom is rooted in AS or in PTSD... I think it may be both. Maybe if I didn't have AS, the whole process would've been different.

This may sound unimportant, but I've been thinking I wish my therapist had mentioned the fact that I'd had a tragedy happen to me; it would've helped me put things in the right framework and deal with things from the perspective of someone who had a tragedy.

I am posting this, Greentea, in the interest of defining for myself what a tragedy actually is. It is not to detract from the tumultuous and unique issues you have had to deal with in your life, however, I am not certain tragedy is the word to describe the experiences you have endured. Of course, it is up to you to decide if what has been is defined by the word "tragedy."

Merle

Considering Merle's post, maybe a better term is calamity, resulting in psychological, emotional trauma. In any case, this is big, a considerable loss and misfortune much more than the run of the mill "life's misfortunes" that most of us expect.

Greentea, I think sometimes we do need someone to state the obvious for us. When we're in the middle of a disastrous situation for a long time, then someone outside that disaster is much better able to see it for what it is. Perhaps you adapted to the disaster so well you got lost in it, like the little fish that doesn't understand what water is.

I agree, that's why if she had mentioned the fact that it was a tragedy, seven years ago, then she and I could've worked on reacting to it as what it truly was - rather than me being surprised each time I didn't cope with something well, or blaming myself because I lost my job shortly after the tragedy, or because I wasn't able to start a new romantic relationship easily at the time, etc... I now look back and see how I kept demanding from myself to function in the same level as usual... I'd even blame myself for buying take-out food and not cooking. And I didn't even take a few days off from work during the worst part of the ordeal of being kicked out of my own house!!

I feel sorry for you Greentea, that things have happened so terribly between you and the rest of your family.

That being said, one thing that wasn't quite clear to me was whether your dad actually wants you to take care of him? I mean, you make it sound like he is really unappreciative of what you're doing for him, and it sounds like your siblings don't want you to take care of him. Yet when you describe taking care of him, you describe it as

For whom are you taking care of him, for his own sake or for yours?

At his age and current physical condition, would it be best to support his health/physical needs to live longer, or to support his mental well-being such that he is happy with the remaining time he has left? If it were up to your dad, what would he want?

What he wants is to live as best as possible with my help, of course. Just now he called me because I didn't come visit today, after driving him back and forth these past few days like crazy between cities for all his hospital appts. (when I don't work and don't have money for gas), apart from taking care of him after his operation, taking him out for lunch to cheer him up, dealing with all his logistic issues and doctors, making all the difficult decisions and taking responsibility for them, supporting him emotionally, and taking good care of his very little remaining money, running to buy him warm slippers because his legs don't work so they get cold in winter, making sure he has nice movies at home to see, solving his quarrels with his nurse, searching the whole country for his favorite imported food because he whines he's miserable missing it, going back and forth to buy and change his new winter underclothes, etc etc. - and all this just the last 4 days. Would he be happier if I abandoned him to die in an institution? No.