When Monkeys Fly ...

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Maybe my dad will pick up the phone and call me. Maybe he'll treat me like a real person. Maybe he'll say sorry for disowning me. Maybe he'll get a DX for AS. Maybe he'll stop being sexist. Maybe he'll stop talking so god damn loud. Maybe he'll learn what Theory of Mind is. Maybe he'll make a correlation between AS and me. Maybe he'll stop and think about how he treated his mother. Maybe he'll learn that he can't control every situation that angers him. Maybe he'll make more than a forced smile. Maybe he'll start making better eye contact. Maybe he'll stop drinking. Maybe he'll stop walking pigeon toed. Maybe he'll realise that he could have supported mine or his education with the money he spent on his boat. Maybe he won't have flat effect any more. Maybe he'll stop his rigid thinking.

And maybe I won't be so much like him in so many ways that we are alike.

Don't put your life on hold waiting for him to come to his senses. He may never see reality. I hope it happens for you, but don't let it mess you up if it doesn't ever happen.

I'm sure you already realize this but I wanted to say it anyway in case you're in denial.

I spent the first five hard years after he disowned me, going through crisis issues that stemmed from many different things. My dad is actually the least of my problems, to tell you the truth. I have huge issues that I haven't even really started to think about discussing on WP yet- too personal right now, but eventually yes. Man, he would really have to delve to make things right with me. I'm coping quite well, it's coping with the AS type stuff that is really messing me up. I'm the kind of person that needs everyone I know to want to discuss their problems out in the open and not hold back. I'm learning that people can't do this. I'm also learning that I have to assume that things will be better than they are for them to get better, and that is so hard.

I spent years trying to get my parents to change, to be real parents. Then one day in my early thirties, I was reading some self-help book and a sentence clicked (I think it was about a man who wanted to salvage his marriage but his wife had already moved out and filed for divorce, so it was too late at that point), and I realized it had been too late to salvage my relationship with my parents 20 years earlier - the writing was on the wall then. If they'd wanted to come through for me, then would have been the time. And obviously they didn't want to.

It's tough putting this stuff in perspective, though.

mixtapebooty, I can't even imagine what you haven't got to yet.

You have flat affect? But yeah, it's weird how we take after our parents. Same deck of cards, slightly different shuffle.

You're so sweet.