How Dare You?!

How dare you? How dare you make my autism, anxiety and physical health all about you. Do you hear how tone deaf your message reads? I have been unwell because of you. You are so controlling it is insufferable! I can’t take it anymore.

I am not allowed to go home, when I want to go home. I am not allowed to walk to the train station on my own. I am not allowed to walk on the side of the road by the curb. I am not allowed to cross the road without your permission. I am not allowed to buy myself a cup of tea, when we are sat outside, at the airport for six whole hours in the freezing cold. I am not allowed to then get the bus home without you. You dictate to me what bus I can and cannot get onto based on how you think I will cope. I have to wake up at 5am, to walk two hours to meet you, and you make us meet up 45 minutes before the coach leaves. Why? Then you keep buying me things. I don’t want you to keep buying me things. The more treats you buy me, it isn’t going to make me like you more.

Three weeks ago was very hard for me. It was wet. It was cold. There aren’t even many aeroplanes to watch now that airports are running to their winter timetables. And I am going to remind you, this is your hobby, not mine. Me tolerating it, is me masking and being a nice person. Wasting my entire Sunday, every Sunday has had me dreading weekends. I dread the week, because I have been trying to get another job all year long, and I have only managed two interviews all year. This workplace is draining me and you know it, which is why I need Saturdays as my autism overload recovery days. They are not “Lazy days,” as you word them. They are essential for my recovery. And I am not staying in bed all day, just because I am at home all day. I have chores and DIY that need doing and I have to cram it all into Saturday, because I spend all day Sunday with you.

You could see that I was struggling, yet you dragged it out and dragged it out. When you suggested cutting our usual six hour airport watch to four and a half hours, I was very grateful. All I wanted to do was to go home, put on more layers, make a hot water bottle and put on my electric blanket. I had been shivering so much during the past three weeks of our airport visits, that I have further damaged my knee, and will not need that knee operation sooner. But no, leaving the airport early did not mean that I was allowed to go home.

You had already tried to get me to set your phone up for you, while we were in the middle of nowhere. News flash, there is no public wifi in the middle of Birmingham Airport Car Park! How was I supposed to set your phone up without wifi? Then you kept growling like a frustrated child at me, because I couldn’t do the impossible task that you had given to me.

Then, when I thought I was free to go home, you made me walk around town with you to all of the phone shops, asking them if they stocked a phone case for your phone. You wouldn’t listen to me, when I told you that they wouldn’t, as the phone is second hand and not a new enough model. But you eventually listened to the four shop workers, after you made me do all of the talking.

Then, you made me go into CeX with you, where you bought the phone from, and you made me do all of the talking again, when I had to tell them you had no idea how to set it up. We were in there for over one hour, talking to the guy who worked there. One whole hour. I could not cope. I don’t do confrontation. If the phone didn’t work, well you only spent £75 on it. Throw it away and just buy a new one! But, no, you wanted to be that difficult customer. So, not only did you make me stand in a noisy shop for over an hour and you would not let me wait outside or even look around, you made me do all of the talking, then, when the customer service assistant didn’t help fast enough for you or simply because it wasn’t done right the first time, you spoke to them in a condescending, patronising and spiteful tone. You caused confrontation. I do not cope with confrontation. I do not cope when two people are having a confrontational moment on the opposite side of the room that has nothing to do with me. This confrontation had nothing to do with me. I won’t even join my mum on confrontational conversations like this one. I won’t even endure this type of conversation for my own purchases. But here we were in the centre of the tills, with you causing so much upset to the person that was kindly serving us and who kept his patience with you, and those around us. I kept having to apologise to the person helping us.

You put me in such a horrible situation. I couldn’t cope. By the time we left, I had become mute, was sucking my thumb and rubbing Snuffles across my face. You could see that I was struggling. You even said, “You’re struggling, aren’t you?” As we left, rather than helping me, you scolded me for not telling you the scale of which I was struggling, and you were determined that I was struggling because the nice person who has just been helping is for over an hour wasn’t being helpful enough. You keep telling me that I have to tell you, in detail, when I am struggling. You do not accept when I keep telling you that I can’t. You keep saying that because we are friends that I have to tell you, or else it means that I don’t trust you. No, it doesn’t. When I have become mute, I have become mute. There isn’t a specific, magical lead up to becoming overwhelmed, especially not when I am with you, where I can just say, “Hi, I am overwhelmed now.” That is not how being overwhelmed works. And you make things worse when you think that you know everything that is best for me. Just because you have read a book about autism does not mean that you know me nor what is best for me.

After you could see that I was struggling to contain myself, as I was on the edge of a meltdown, you still wouldn’t let me go home. You insisted that we had to go for a cup of tea and that a cup of tea would make me feel better. Are you completely mad? Going somewhere with more people, more noise and delaying returning to my safe place is supposed to help a person with sensory autism? Is it?

If you hadn’t have stopped outside to have a cigarette, I would have been trapped with you for even longer. It is only because the religious preacher, on the microphone, was so loud that I completely snapped, couldn’t take it anymore and I burst into tears that you finally let me go home, however, you were still insistent that I stop with you for a cup of tea. I couldn’t say no, as I have already pointed out, I had already become mute. I managed to shake my head and finally, you let us get the bus home together.

After that ordeal, I still had to go to work the next day. The one place where my anxiety is constantly high and I do not feel safe there. You know this. I struggled all week at work, but I was still able to text you multiple times every single day.

On Saturday night, I texted you saying that I still felt really poorly from last Sunday and I was going to stay at home. I did just that. I didn’t respond to anyone’s text messages.

I do not believe your daughters are real. They only text me from your phone. They text me exactly the same way that you text me. They are in their 20s yet they have no social media, they never use their own phones, they have zero presence online. They don’t even have a Spotify account or a YouTube account to listen to/watch things. Does it not seem a little odd to have a 26 year old daughter who is a musical prodigy, has taught in universities all across America and Italy and is now the most sought after university music lecturer in the whole world that she is moving to Australia, in January, and has already bought a five bedroom house over there and she owns a house in Worcester, which she is keeping, when she migrates to Australia. I do not believe that your 24 year old trans-son exists either, because they only existed when I opened up to you about my struggles with gender identity and that if becoming transgender was more heard of when I was at secondary school then I would be male right now. He apparently only turns up to the airport on days when I am sick in bed and they bring a llama with them everywhere they travel, yet no one in Worcester has ever posted a photo online of seeing a young man with a llama, just walking around. No photos of either exist. I do not believe your £7,000,000 bank account is real. I do not believe you bought a three bedroom house, around the corner from work, for £75,000 two years ago. Every single story you tell, you change it slightly when you repeat it to other people. You even forget that you have told me the same story before, however, this time it is different. I do not believe that your one-of-a-kind British Racing Green Range Rover exists, as I have Googled it and there are plenty of Range Rovers that exist in that colour. I don’t believe that you have met Damen Hill, as you were only interested in Formula One after learning that I used to follow it from the age of sixteen. I do not believe that you ever had a canal boat, as when we all planned to take you up on your offer for the ride, you had conveniently sold it.

Nothing you say adds up. It is all just a fabrication in your mind.

Now we get to the part that pushed me over the edge. I didn’t text you, or anyone, on Sunday. I arrive at work on Monday morning and you had texted two colleagues, asking them if I was at work, if I was okay and if I needed an ambulance. I had one day to myself. One day. I was going to reach out and message you, only to find you had texted me saying, “Are we not talking anymore? Going to tell me what I’ve done wrong?” I didn’t text you on Sunday, because I had taken migraine medication and was sleeping on and off all day. You knew this! So, on Monday, I ignored you. I took a piece of my life back. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like a really heavy weight had been lifted and I had a piece of my life back. Yet, you chased multiple people at my workplace about me. You had your phone number passed to others. The one lady that I can trust, you bombard her with text messages between 10pm and midnight, demanding to know everything about me from the past week.

Then, I woke up on last Saturday morning to the postman bringing me a giant box. Guilting me with Temu junk is not going to make me want to talk to someone who has been so controlling. Still, I reached out and thanked you for the kind gifts, explained that you didn’t need to, and told you that I am struggling with my anxiety, autism, job search and how much I still have to do to my maisonette, that I have been in denial about being in autism burnout for some time and I just need a little space. Your reply made me angry.

First of all, two weeks? You say you hadn’t heard from me in two weeks? It was one day. I didn’t text you back for one day. And how dare you make my struggles all about you! You have been worried sick? I am a bad person for not constantly updating you on my mental wellbeing? I need to tell you these things? You even confirmed that you have been texting and phoning everyone you can to find out about me, when it hasn’t even been a full week yet. And ending your message with, “So does this mean I’m not going to see you then?”

ARGH!!! I have never been so angry or so infuriated with anyone. Ever. I literally just told you that I am struggling with my mental health, and I need some time to recover. And you twisted everything I said to make it all about you. You are the reason why my mental health has been suffering. You are the reason why I am struggling to cope with everyday things. You are the reason why I am so incredibly tired and drained all of the time. You are a fully grown adult. You need to learn to handle your own actions and emotions. I am not being held responsible for you waking my colleagues up in the middle of the night and for not being able to cope with me not messaging you for one day, when I told you I would be heavily medicated and sleeping.

You have pushed this communication beyond controlling now. It feels scary, stalker-y and dangerous. I even had a colleague, who is one of your friends, quietly tell me not to talk to you anymore, because he was worried for me. I then opened up to him about how I feel like I am going mad, because everything feels so controlling and so scary, and he said that I confirmed what he was worried about. I have barely explained half of my concerns to people, and I have done it because I feel so trapped and scared by this, that I don’t know what to do. This is controlling. This is stalking and this is getting really scary now.

Please, leave me alone. I do not want any more text messages from you, or from your supposed offspring, from your phone. I do not want any emails. I do not want any phone calls. I do not want any gifts. I do not want you turning up at my front door. I want to be left alone. You have no respect for my mental health, my privacy or my wellbeing. You showed that in your email. I have never, ever been more disgusted by the manipulation used in your email – and I thought my father was a controlling and manipulative man. In the words of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes: you repulse me.

 

- Josie -