A Survivor's Story- Anonymous (Female)

This story was sent into me by a reader. To send your story, contact me at stargee@me.com    I grew up with an autistic brother. Well, I guess you can’t really say I grew up with an autistic brother so-to-say since it took the doctors so damn long to diagnose him properly. Just to list a few of the things he was once diagnosed as: ADD, ODD, ADHD, high functioning aspergers, and a few more that I can’t remember the exact name for. It wasn’t till about 5 years ago when they finally realized he was autistic. Anyways, my brother is two years younger than me and from the time he was 2 my mother knew there was something wrong with him. He learned how to talk and did for awhile, but then all of a sudden he refused to talk and it went on that way for years. That was the first sign my parents had that something was wrong with my brother and since then it was a continuing search for an answer.    Because he had been diagnosed wrong for so many years, he had always taken medication that caused the opposite effect of whatever they were searching for. He went through a dozen elementary schools alone, just looking for a teacher that could handle his outbursts and his social (or lack-there-of) skills. Because my parents were so busy always focusing on what he was going to need and worrying about his disability I always felt cast into the shadows. I remember being a really young child and getting in arguments with my mother about how she loved my brother more than she ever loved me. Funny thing is I still have those arguments with her. Having a sibling with mental disabilities puts a lot of stress on the family. My brother has the kind of autism where he goes completely out of control and gets extremely violent. Currently I have a huge hole in my door from where he tried (and succeeded) to break it down with a pot about 3 years ago when he decided that I looked at him funny. Then there was the time when we were about to go on vacation and my mom was extremely nauseous (she gets panic attacks before trips) and something she said pissed off my brother and he threw a remote at her and cracked her head open. There have been many nights of fighting, hospital visits, and police phone calls going on here at my house and my parents still don’t understand how to control him properly.    With my parents always having to keep an eye on my brother, they were mostly there for me to be the authority figure that always told me “no”. In reality, I know they were there for me in my upbringing, but when I try and remember my childhood, the only times I remember them are when they were giving attention to my brother, scolding me, or telling me I couldn’t do something. It’s still that way today.    The kind of parents that I have can be classified as “over-overly protective”. As in I wasn’t allowed to go out with friends until my senior year in high school (even then my curfew was 8pm). I’m now 18 and am expected to be at home by 11pm every day. They installed a tracker on my phone so they know where I’m at at all times, and if I don’t respond to a text within 30 minutes I can kiss my plans for the next two weeks goodbye.    I guess that can be blamed on how they were raised. My father grew up smoking pot and just recently quit about 5 years ago when he got a great job that (thankfully) does random drug testing, but when I was a baby he was addicted to meth. My mother did a good job hiding that from me since I didn’t know about the meth thing until recently. As for my mom, it’s not that she did anything wrong when raising me, she just tried to over-compensate. My mom was molested by her father when she was a child and her mother did nothing about it because both her parents were alcoholics. She only recently began to re-establish a relationship with her mom. But because of what she had to deal with when she grew up, she feels like being overprotective to the point of being psychotic is the right thing to do. She still has some emotional issues when it comes to it though because when I do get into arguments with her she always throws the fact that she was abused and had alcoholic parents in my face and that I “should be lucky I have a mom who gives a shit about me”, although I wouldn’t say kicking me out into the streets without a car or a phone at 10 at night means she gives a shit about me. But I digress.    I work full time and go to school full time, so I have a lot on my plate. I pay for my own food, clothes, gas, and most other necessities. I go days without seeing or talking to my parents due to my busy schedule, and, really, the only time my parents are involved in my life are when they tell me “no”, which to me is the biggest “fuck you” anyone can give. They don’t know anything that goes on in my life, yet they still feel the necessity to tell me “no, you can’t go out”, “no, are you stupid? You can’t go to college there”, or, my favorite, “no, I’m not helping you out with shit, so do what I say”.    I’ve been trying to move out since I was 12. And it’s not just the “I hate you (for the rest of the day), I’m leaving (and coming back in 2 hours when I’m not mad anymore)!” type of move out. It’s the “I hate you, I always will, now I’m trying to move in with someone else” type of move out. I’ve thought over my options: if I could move in with a grandparent or an aunt, although it’s never worked out. And now that I’m a legal adult I’m trying harder than ever. However, my job has a shitty salary and living in California is impossible when you make $8.30 an hour. Right now I’m trying to get out of this hell-hole that I call “home”. But it’ll never be MY “home”. Home isn’t somewhere that you should dread going to everyday after work. A place where you sit in your car in the parking lot of your job as long as possible just so you don’t have to deal with seeing your parents’ faces. A place that you hate going to and having to deal with people you don’t like and that don’t give a shit about you and try to tell you what to do, or a disabled brother that gets angry and violent at any little thing that is said or done. One of my favorite quotes right now is actually a line from a song that goes, “Home is where your heart is but what a shame, cause everyone’s heart doesn’t beat the same.”    My heart isn’t here at my so-called “home”, and as long as I’m stuck here, I feel pretty much deserted. Like I don’t really belong anywhere. When I’m not here I’m happy and I’m myself. But here, I’m empty.