Firstly, i want to say that i was very happy to participate in Autistics Speaking Day on November 1st. I wasn't feeling well that day, because i was already in the midst of alot of stress because my internet and digital phone service kept going out on me, beginning on Thursday night, with one outage a day, and then, by Monday and Tuesday, the outages were constant. I did post alot on Facebook and did also try Twitter, but i found Twitter to be too complicated and frustrating, so i went back to posting here on FB. I wanted to blog, but again, i wasn't feeling that well, due to a lack of sleep over my internet isssues. I don't know about you, but i really am quite attached to the internet.....i like to know that it..and Facebook..is here for me when i come to my computer. I love to watch YouTube, stream my favorite music stations, and interact with all of my autistic and non-autistic friends here on FB...and i like to also be able to call my mom, who i sometimes will call several times a day, if i am having a bad day. I also like to be able to call on Garrison as well..he's my kind neighbor who is like the brother i never had, who helps me with the mean bully monster issues i have.
I never got to do a blog that day. By Monday night, my internet and phone service were totally down.....and all that night, it kept going down.....it was a dark night for me. With my landline out, all i had to rely on was my little tiny cell phone, which only has 450 daytime minutes a month..and i can hardly see the screen, i can hardly hear on it, and i can't hear when it rings either.
I got forced into my own communications shutdown that night..and it was unbearable. UN-bearable. I never slept. I was on my cell phone, making repeated calls to Comcast all Monday night long...to try to get my freedom back..and got a very frustrating mix of good and bad customer service. Some of the phone techs that i would speak to, were very clipped, uncaring and unhelpful...but others were so nice and kind..and really went out of their way to try to help me.
Digressing back to Saturday evening, a very nice young technician came and changed out all of my connections and ran thorough tests on my phone/internet modem. On Sunday, i had NO problems. But on Monday morning, i lost my phone and internet again..and after that, it just got worse and worse. Tuesday afternoon, another tech and a tech supervisor came here and changed out the wire that goes from the cable outlet on my house to my computer and phone modem. The tech gave me his business card and tokl me to call him directly. They also gave me a brad new phone/internet modem. I had no more problems until Tuesday night, when it again went out..and then it again kept going out all night long. I finally gave up and slept very fitfully for about 5 hours, with just my TV to give me background noise..but i had to go without my music completely..and so that made for another rough night. On Wednesday morning, it went out again..and i had to hear the mean bully monsters' loud hot rodding as a result. But the tech supervisor was now working on the area outage..and it did turn out to be an area outage. I went to do my SSA payday stuff and came back and have had my internet and phone service ever since...even tho there are still some unresolved issues that they still have to take care of.
I am still in close communications with the local tech supervisor..on Tuesday afternoon, he gave me his business card and told me to leave him voice mails if my service cuts out again...and he told me this afternoon that he will keep doing tests on my modem throughout the afternoon and evening. IN addition, he is going to schedule another appointment with me to change out the wire that goes from my outlet to the utility pole, as he sees that it hasn't been changed in a long time. it is ppl like these that give me faith in companies like Comcast.
I do think that Comcast as a whole, do care about their customers. All of the techs who have been to my house over this latest issue, have been so very nice and very understanding. About 50% of their phone techs are also extremely nice and helpful and caring....especially when i tell them about my health issues and autism. I think that Comcast tries to be friendly and accomodating to the special needs community. But i have had some real bad customer service reps too..and they only make my plight that much harder to bear.
Today, it is 90 degrees outside. I have my window A/C unit cranked, but am still hot. Today, the mean bully monsters are all giving me hell again..they are roaring up and down this street like demonic banshees....and they will not stop. But at least i have my internet and phone again...and i can blog and vent about it today, and listen to my music too. Now that i have had a computer for the past 4 years, i have come to really depend on it..and the internet, to be my way to communicate with my wonderful autism community friends who i have found here on FB. My internet and phone outages that happened these past 6 days....is an excellent illustration of how i feel it would have been wrong for anyone of us to do a communications shutdown of Facebook, Twitter, etc. on November 1st...because i really felt like i was muzzled and in jail when i went offline...and kept going offline..and couldn't even use my landline to call Garrison and my mom. I had only that teeny little cell phone with hardly any minutes on it to use.
I am glad that Comcast is, for the most part, a company that cares about its customers. But they do need to work on the ones who don't care. We all need to do better to care about one another and listen to each other..to be here for one another, and to let each other vent when we need to.
I have NO PROBLEM with being autistic..i am PROUD that i AM!!!!!! It's the ones who will NOT open their minds and hearts to us..the ones who refuse to work with us, who refuse to be accepting of us and the ones who refuse to accomodate our sensory issues, that make it so hard, even impossible, sometimes to be an autistic........and....those ppl need to take a step back and really open their hearts and minds to us. It could be their sister or brother or neice or nephew or aunt or uncle, or friends who could be autistic. We are all human beings..and we have the right to BE who we are!!!!!
This is the kind of along the lines of what i wanted to blog about on Monday night when my internet went down and i couldn't.
Thank you all for reading this. God bless you all, my dear sweet angel friends!!!! I love you all!!!!!! <3<3<3<3 <3<3<3<3
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Autistic I Am
I Am Autistic...I am Not Shutting Up Or Going Away
by Melissa Fields on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 2:00pm
It really pains me that in today's world, that there are still so many people who still see those of us who have any special needs, or different ability....as burdens who they do not have to treat with respect or dignity. I know. It happens to me all the time. I have no one to go with me to all the places that i am afraid to go because i know i will have my voice silenced, squelched, by people who just do not want to take the time to open their hearts and minds and souls to me.
I am afraid to see any doctor..because most doctors's offices are set up to shut up the voice that i have..to hurry me thru their day, so as not to upset the schedule too badly.
When clerks in supermarkets lack patience, i end up with change that is dirty, wrinkled and stained..and then i have an upset, because i have a very painful sensory issue with money that is like that.
I know when my socks aren't on right..and i literally cannot walk straight because of that.
Am i a princess just because i have all of these hang-ups? No..i am autistic. I was born this way. For the past 19 years i have had to live, trapped in a neighborhood where i have been getting bullied and terrorized on an almost daily basis for all these long, 19 years....so, it has now affected my physical health to where i now have to become a burden to the doctors. Yes, i may be morbidly obese, with chronic lymphodema on both of my legs...but i am still pretty inside. I still have a personality..i still have a sense of humor, a kind heart, a kind spirit..and a soul. I still have feelings too...feelings which do get hurt.
I thank God that i do belong with all of my wonderful autism community friends here on Facebook..and all of the non-autistic friends i also have here on Facebook.
But to anybody out there who still wants to squelch me and make me feel like i am less than human....i hope you all know that there is indeed a God in Heaven who sees how those of you treat me and try to rob me of my voice and dignity. It is a terrible insult to He who made me this special way.
I so dread having to go to the doctor...because i have yet to find one with whom i feel welcomed by in their office..by all who work there. At one doctor's office i go to, there is a room full of very prominent looking women that i have to walk past when i have to use their restroom....and these ladies all give me real Stink-Eye when i pass their door. They will only half-smile at me, that kind of smile that is very cold and aloof...the kind of smile that tells me that i am someone who is considered "not in their league"...and..i won't pretend that this does not hurt. There are others in this office who are very hurtful towards me too...but i have to go again, so that i can walk on my left foot without twisting up into a pain so terrible that it literally cripples me.
People of this world..please stop trying to take our voice and our dignity away. We who have special needs, are human just like you are. Maybe some of us don't have a nice thin body or whatever.....but that is NO reason to treat us abusively and dismiss and hurry us along like we are a piece of dirt. This world needs to revisit the art of being kind and compassionate.....patient, and accepting. It means embracing people who are of ALL abilities..not just what is considered the norm.
Thank you and God bless you.
·
by Melissa Fields on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 2:00pm
It really pains me that in today's world, that there are still so many people who still see those of us who have any special needs, or different ability....as burdens who they do not have to treat with respect or dignity. I know. It happens to me all the time. I have no one to go with me to all the places that i am afraid to go because i know i will have my voice silenced, squelched, by people who just do not want to take the time to open their hearts and minds and souls to me.
I am afraid to see any doctor..because most doctors's offices are set up to shut up the voice that i have..to hurry me thru their day, so as not to upset the schedule too badly.
When clerks in supermarkets lack patience, i end up with change that is dirty, wrinkled and stained..and then i have an upset, because i have a very painful sensory issue with money that is like that.
I know when my socks aren't on right..and i literally cannot walk straight because of that.
Am i a princess just because i have all of these hang-ups? No..i am autistic. I was born this way. For the past 19 years i have had to live, trapped in a neighborhood where i have been getting bullied and terrorized on an almost daily basis for all these long, 19 years....so, it has now affected my physical health to where i now have to become a burden to the doctors. Yes, i may be morbidly obese, with chronic lymphodema on both of my legs...but i am still pretty inside. I still have a personality..i still have a sense of humor, a kind heart, a kind spirit..and a soul. I still have feelings too...feelings which do get hurt.
I thank God that i do belong with all of my wonderful autism community friends here on Facebook..and all of the non-autistic friends i also have here on Facebook.
But to anybody out there who still wants to squelch me and make me feel like i am less than human....i hope you all know that there is indeed a God in Heaven who sees how those of you treat me and try to rob me of my voice and dignity. It is a terrible insult to He who made me this special way.
I so dread having to go to the doctor...because i have yet to find one with whom i feel welcomed by in their office..by all who work there. At one doctor's office i go to, there is a room full of very prominent looking women that i have to walk past when i have to use their restroom....and these ladies all give me real Stink-Eye when i pass their door. They will only half-smile at me, that kind of smile that is very cold and aloof...the kind of smile that tells me that i am someone who is considered "not in their league"...and..i won't pretend that this does not hurt. There are others in this office who are very hurtful towards me too...but i have to go again, so that i can walk on my left foot without twisting up into a pain so terrible that it literally cripples me.
People of this world..please stop trying to take our voice and our dignity away. We who have special needs, are human just like you are. Maybe some of us don't have a nice thin body or whatever.....but that is NO reason to treat us abusively and dismiss and hurry us along like we are a piece of dirt. This world needs to revisit the art of being kind and compassionate.....patient, and accepting. It means embracing people who are of ALL abilities..not just what is considered the norm.
Thank you and God bless you.
·
Black And Gray....With Red-Hot Pain
Black And Gray..With Red-Hot Pain
by Melissa Fields on Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 7:40pm
Depressed...i hurt from all sides tonight..i am in this house all alone....
the air outside is cold and gray...it was a gloomy day today
and the street monsters were all here in the cage across the street
screaming in and out like demon banshees again......i just want to
roll up in a tight ball and fade into the corner and go far away
from here to somewhere where i will feel and have peace...where i can
hear and see water, green lush grass and trees, and hear the birds
singing in those trees..real birds....not the awful sharp hostile
loud crows that come onto this street...i wish i had someone here tonight
to physically talk to and who would take me out of this pit...i wish i could go
somewhere where i could be healed and healthy again....
i so wish my family would see my plight and how deeply they
hurt me by the way they always snub me and turn their backs on me
I just feel so numb with the pain tonight.....
How much longer, Father God, must i endure this?
Please......i want to dream again...please God...take me where i
will shine again!!!!!!!! Primally i scream this to Your very
Throne Of Grace......
God....please, oh, please, make this STOP!!!!!!!!!
In Jesus' awesome name...amen.
·
by Melissa Fields on Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 7:40pm
Depressed...i hurt from all sides tonight..i am in this house all alone....
the air outside is cold and gray...it was a gloomy day today
and the street monsters were all here in the cage across the street
screaming in and out like demon banshees again......i just want to
roll up in a tight ball and fade into the corner and go far away
from here to somewhere where i will feel and have peace...where i can
hear and see water, green lush grass and trees, and hear the birds
singing in those trees..real birds....not the awful sharp hostile
loud crows that come onto this street...i wish i had someone here tonight
to physically talk to and who would take me out of this pit...i wish i could go
somewhere where i could be healed and healthy again....
i so wish my family would see my plight and how deeply they
hurt me by the way they always snub me and turn their backs on me
I just feel so numb with the pain tonight.....
How much longer, Father God, must i endure this?
Please......i want to dream again...please God...take me where i
will shine again!!!!!!!! Primally i scream this to Your very
Throne Of Grace......
God....please, oh, please, make this STOP!!!!!!!!!
In Jesus' awesome name...amen.
·
Ever Since
Ever since i was a little girl
I have always longed to see
so many far-off places, so many new
fresh vistas.....
Though i don't believe in reincarnation
for some strange reason whenever i
have watched TV and seen places like
New York State,
New York City, New England, Michigan,
Wisconsin, the Great Lakes, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia,
and Washington DC....i have always
had the strange feeling that i lived
in these places in other times....
And so it is my fervent dream today
that i will get to someday soon
be able to have the freedom to go
visit these beautiful lands, where they get
to experience all four seasons,
where the food and architecture is even different
Dear God, i know You hear my daily cries
and that someday soon, i will have these dreams
fulfilled, in Jesus name i pray, amen. <3<3<3<3
·
I have always longed to see
so many far-off places, so many new
fresh vistas.....
Though i don't believe in reincarnation
for some strange reason whenever i
have watched TV and seen places like
New York State,
New York City, New England, Michigan,
Wisconsin, the Great Lakes, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia,
and Washington DC....i have always
had the strange feeling that i lived
in these places in other times....
And so it is my fervent dream today
that i will get to someday soon
be able to have the freedom to go
visit these beautiful lands, where they get
to experience all four seasons,
where the food and architecture is even different
Dear God, i know You hear my daily cries
and that someday soon, i will have these dreams
fulfilled, in Jesus name i pray, amen. <3<3<3<3
·
My Father's Love That I Did Not Have
A Father's Love Is So Important--But I Didn't Have My Father's Love & Approval--I Had His Rod!!
by Melissa Fields on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 7:59pm
Today i had a bad nightmare about my strict, stern father. Well, let's put it this way, it wasn't a pleasant dream, but i think i had it for a reason, because my Higher Power, whom i refer to as God, wants me to make peace with my past, once and for all.
When i sleep deeply, i have lots and lots of really vivid dreams..most of them are really pleasant dreams where i am able to escape into them and be somewhere else where i am happy; i even get to travel in alot of these dreams, to places where i have never been, that, in real life, i absolutely dream about visiting.
But sometimes my dreams are not pleasant..like the dream i had today. Sometimes i dream about the very unpleasant things in my life that have happened to me, either in my past, or things that haunt me now.
As most of my friends know, i grew up in an era, the '60's, where not alot was known about high-functioning autism, or that autism is a spectrum of different levels of a very complex disorder.
Because i was highly intelligent from the get-go, my quirks and meltdowns always came as a total shock to all of my family, and i often got misinterpreted and misunderstood as being spoiled and selfish and lazy--and as just a brat.
I was always close to my mother..and my grandmother was very nice too, to a point, but she, also, could never seem to wrap herself around the fact that i was "differently-abled". Neither could my father..and this is why i am writing this note.
My father was a hard-working and very strait-laced Catholic, who came from a family who also had very high standards and ultra-strict morals. He was honest and loyal to his family and wife....in that he treated my mom like gold, provided all of us 7 children with all that we needed..and some of our wants too, and would take us for Sunday drives and picnics every Sunday afternoon/evening.
~~~~ <3<3<3 I always wanted to love my father. <3<3<3 ~~~~
But he was very harsh and had a quick temper and very little tolerance and patience for anything out of the norm. His children were always expected to behave and mind him, but there was little in the way of affection and warm and fuzzyness from this man..or tolerance for anything that he deemed nonesense.
He did have that nice side, but it was only sometimes seen.
We children could never talk or converse at the dinner table, because that seemed to really irritate him.
Too much horseplay, giggling, and running around also irritated him.
When he watched his baseball, football, basketball, auto races, and nightly boxing and wrestling matches...we children had to keep quiet for those too. He had Master Control over the family TV, and we could only watch things that my mom would talk him into letting us watch. He also never believed that we should ever have a color TV, so we never had one. I got to watch color Tv when i'd go to other people's houses, but at home, we were a black and white TV family, whose children also had to be black and white and subdued.
We were never allowed a voice with him..or to debate him, or disagree with him either.
We were all expected to attend 8:00 AM Sunday Mass, or sometimes we'd go on Saturday nights at 6 PM. No ifs ands or buts.
All oif the above behaviors would bring out that ferociously hot, loud, hair-trigger temper..and he would yell SO loudly and SO sharply that it felt like a sharp burning whip to my back..we were always being sent to our rooms as a punishment, and then, if he got pissed off enough, he would give us the awful lickings...."lickin's", is what he would call them...and i can remember LOTS of times where i would actually have huge red welts on my buttocks and thighs from these lickin's; i would always be made to go to my room after these, and i remember sitting there on my bed, sobbing, and trembling in pain and raw fear, with snot pouring out of my little nose, feeling like total worthless garbage. From early on, i knew my daddy hated my guts. And it used to hurt my littele-girl heart so badly, as i would sit on my bed, wondering why my daddy was like this, why he hated me? Mixed in with the smell and taste of my tears, woukld be the afterglow of his scent, which was a mix of tobacco smoke and aftershave, and Brillcream or Vitalis for his hair.
One day as a little tiny girl, i was watching a baseball game with him. We were playing, and laughing...but then all of a sudden he grew angry and pinched me on the arm and yelled at me to "Go away!!" At first i thought he was still palaying..but when he yelled harder and pinched me again, i KNEW he was NOT playing..and off i went down the hall to cry, my little heart and spirit broken again. It was a Sunday, so my mom was at church, so she didn't witness this incident.
One night, he had punished me for making noises he didn't like, so i thought i'd stick my tongue out at him..i did, and told him "I hate you, Daddy!!" He lost it and before i could ge away from him, he lunged at me, yanking me around by my ear, then threw me over his shoulder, and then threw me in my bedroom, where he pulled my pants down, and gave me one of his horrible lickin's.
On another afternoon, i was outside our ranch house in the carport, kneeled at the back of our family station wagon, fascinated with the license plate, so i was playing with it, pretending it was my imaginary friend. This "friend" got mad at me, so i yanked the plate off. My dad came out and saw what i did, and not even bothering to find out why i did that..he again lost it and yanked me by my ears and braids, then picked me up by my arm and threw me onto his green easy chair in the family room, and gave me another awful lickin', which left horrible red raised welts on my buttocks and thighs. my mom tried to stop him, but he wasn't about to stop. he kept hitting me...and it hurt!!!!
There were times that he would be kinda nice, too, like that brief period of time when we were watching that baseball game. When he got a little red Honda motorcycle, he would take me and my siblings for little rides to the end of our street and back. And around the mountain roads on the mountain property we had. And sometimes he would give me a little affectionate hug and kiss. Sometimes he would play the upright piano that was in the dining room of our ranch-style house, and i would be allowed to climb up on the top of the piano to listen to him play and sing his old songs. Sometimes he would take me to get a bunch of popsicle trearts for us kids at the grocery store. Sometimes he'd treat us kids to McDonalds hamburgers and soda pop.
As i grew older, those nice times grew less and less, and the walls between he and i grew taller and deeper.
In June of 1970, after school let out, we moved to our mountain property 22 miles East of town, where he had built a cabin and a Big two-story house two years after that. I had to now attend a country school where there were no more special ed classes for me, and i floundered on all levels there.
It was at this school that i discovered that hair shines in different colors, like almost a rainbow and prism, and boy, after that, i became totally enraptured with shiny hair!!! I just loved to play with the other girls' hair at school recess, and they all let me do so, too, but my sisters would always shoo me away and one of my sisters would actualy yell at me and hit me if i tried to touch her hair. I was teased mercilessly for this, by alot of the kids at school...but my father's reaction to this new quirk of mine, was to always yell at me for looking at my shines in my hair.... i wuld actually sit there on our country living room couch, and pull my hair in front of my eyes to look at the beautiful shines in it, and i'd do this, it seemed, like for hours on end. But because this was not normal to my daddy, he started threatening to take the cow clippers to my hair and give me a buzz-cut if i didn;t stop playing with my hair. And he was NOT joking!!
Neither was he joking when he kept after me for the arm-swinging (stimming) i was doing. He kept threatening that he would make me stay in my room ALL DAY LONG, if i kept this up..and because this was stimming that i was doing....i couldn't stop it..and he made good on his threat one Sunday after church when he caught me behind an old house trailer we had in our bacxkyard, swinging my arms in private, so as to not have HIM see me and punish me!! Well, that didn't matter to my dad, and i had to spend the whole rest of that day in my befroom..so, no playing Tonka trucks with my little brother that day..however, i was allowed to go with him and my mom to a nearby ranch several times that day as an outing, so that i wasn't having to be in my room all the time..and i was also allowed to go to the bathroom too.
My mom was able to talk my dad into relenting and letting me go on the little mini-trips to the ranch, where my dad was taking care of some livestock for the owners, who were away that weekend. Because she felt his punishment was too unreasonable and harsh.
From 6th through 9th grade, i withdrew into a quiet shell, so as to not upset anyone. Oh, i still talked and interracted with everyone but i moved heaven and earth to be as non-obtrusive as possible so as not to piss off my dad and make people call me different anymore. I also stopped liking country and western music in the 6th grade, which also irritated my strait-laced father, because he now hated rock music..even the lighter pop Top 40 tunes!! He and my brothers and one of my sisters all called it hippie music now....and i was now a litle mini-hippie-teenager in the 6th grade!!
I did discover, too, that i had allies in my mom and two of my older sisters, and they would allow me to sneak my music when the others weren't around. But my brothers were also alot like my father, very harsh and rigid, too.....and i never got along with them either. Nor the one sister who had the long silky shiny hair.
I felt so stifled and oppressed growing up. Never allowed to have a voice and never allowed to be me....
And as my older siblings became teenagers..guess what? My intolerant father began letting them have more privileges. They could now talk and joke with my father, even at the dinner table..and even my little brother began doing the same!!!!! He could get away with anything!!!
But i was still being squelched by my daddy!!!!
Needless to say, i grew to have an intense HATE for my father. Even as i still had to live at home with my parents through my twenties, i still had a very stilted, stiff relationship with my father.
When i was a sophomore in high school, my father was eatting a box of Sees candy in front of all of us, and wouldn't offer us any. Most of the time he would offer us a few pieces. But this night he wouldn't, and my mom pled with him to pass the box around. My older brother jokingly called him mean, and he laughed and shrugged and continued to eat his candy. I chimed in, agreeing with my brother..."Yeah, Daddy, you're mean!!" THAT did NOT fly with daddy..he immediately yelled "Hey, young lady, you nincompoop, GO TO YOUR ROOM!!!!"
My mom goes: "Dad, she was just joking!!"
His loud retort: "Well, I"M not joking!!! She needs to shut her smart mouth!!"
In My Sophomore year of high school i ran away three timnes toi try to get away from my hateful father and narrow-minded family.
Even after high school, when i got a small job cleaning house for a doctor and his wife and their boy..i wanted to wash my hair one Sunday afternoon, but he was eatting dinner, and would not allow it, said it would upset him to have me do that, to wait till the next day. I told him that i would have to get up earlier than normal to do it then, and he lost it, and started to lunge at me...i tried to run out the door, and he caught me by my hair and, literally screaming in my ear, yanked me inside the cabin, and to my room, where he roared at me that he wanted no more flack from me ever again..that he was fed up with me and would not tolrerate anything from me anymore..i felt that he was actually going to KILLL me that night. I manged to escape out my window and go to the Big House, where i called the doctor and his wife, and they let me come over and spend the night. After that, i moved my bedroom out to the Big House and got away from him that way. I didn;t speak to him for a long time after that incident with my hair.
Then, in the summer of 1983, when i was going to go on a trip to Indiana to visit friends, he came home one evening from work, my mom and i had been shopping in town that day, and we were unloading the family station wagon..and being i was so excited about my trip, i was in a friendly mood, so i asked him how his day at work went.
" I DON'T THINK THAT'S ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS!!", was his snotty reply, as he slammed shut the refrigerator door, my mouth popped open in utter shock, and i turned on my heel and ran out to my grandma's room which was downstairs in the Big House, running into her open arms, sobbing, my heart broken yet again by my daddy. My grandmother was shocked and upset too...she and my mother both felt he was out of line.
Many other simliar incidents followed, until one day in 1986, he and my mom saw a man with an oversized white cross walking down Broadway Street as they were stopped at a traffic light...and my father suddenly told my mother that he realized that he wasn't being kind to me. He told her that day that he was goi ng to make a concerted effort at being nicer to me. He did get alot nicer after that..but i still was afraid of his temper, because he would still get grumpy with me, so i still stayed my distance from him.
After all of our black and white TVs finally died and couldn't be fixed anymore, he finally went for a new 19-inch color set for him and my mom. Since i was now on SSI, i also had my own 17-inch color TV and a stereo now too..and i now had my bedroom out in the big house across the yard from my mom and dad's cabin, so i could stay seperated from him and have my music. But then, he started asking me to let him watch Monday Night Football on my TV, so my mom could watch The Bob Newhart Show..so i let him do that..with the provision that he not touch my rock posters that i had all over the walls of my sanctuary. Or my stereo. I had to have my mom tell him, because i was still not comfortable talking directly to him. He still would threaten to take his shotgun to my posters though, and kept accusing me of being a bad person just because i loved hard rock and heavy metal.
In 1987, i was finally able to move back into town next to two old ladies, a mother and her daughter, and they and their family and i became very close..and i began going to their Southern Baptist church and making more friends and blossoming out more. My dad and i would see each other on occasion, and he was always so nice to me now....but, still, i would never let my guard down, because..the damage had already been done...
My father had a stroke in 1989..and alot of his behavior reverted back to the old meaner version of Daddy again. But he also became less of a threat to me physically, so his and my blowouts were different now in that i could now tell him off and he'd shut his mouth. it still affected me, though, that he was always wanting to be harder on me than the others. I no longer hated my father..but i still wasn't close to him.
He died in February 2000.
Since then, he has periodically come to me in my dreams, sometimes they are peaceful dreams, where he is uber nice and accepts me and my music and ways of thinking..and other times he is the old mean daddy who would break my heart into little tiny pieces, time and tine again.
My father was a very good-looking teenager and still was good-looking in his twenties and thirties.
~~~~ <3<3<3 I wanted my father to love me...and he just couldn't do it.... <3<3<3 ~~~~
In the dream i had of him today, he was in his thirties and it was 1967 again...i had gone to the store to get the family groceries. Only i had gotten the wrong kind of milk, and my father didn't like that, and began lecturing me in his loud voicxe, and in this dream, i was fed up. I turned around and stood up for myself....and..THIS time, as i looked deep into his handsome blue eyes and spoke from my heart, telling him how hurtful he was being to me, that i am a human being...HE LISTENED.
If only he would have listened to me when i was a little child...back when it still mattered to me.
by Melissa Fields on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 7:59pm
Today i had a bad nightmare about my strict, stern father. Well, let's put it this way, it wasn't a pleasant dream, but i think i had it for a reason, because my Higher Power, whom i refer to as God, wants me to make peace with my past, once and for all.
When i sleep deeply, i have lots and lots of really vivid dreams..most of them are really pleasant dreams where i am able to escape into them and be somewhere else where i am happy; i even get to travel in alot of these dreams, to places where i have never been, that, in real life, i absolutely dream about visiting.
But sometimes my dreams are not pleasant..like the dream i had today. Sometimes i dream about the very unpleasant things in my life that have happened to me, either in my past, or things that haunt me now.
As most of my friends know, i grew up in an era, the '60's, where not alot was known about high-functioning autism, or that autism is a spectrum of different levels of a very complex disorder.
Because i was highly intelligent from the get-go, my quirks and meltdowns always came as a total shock to all of my family, and i often got misinterpreted and misunderstood as being spoiled and selfish and lazy--and as just a brat.
I was always close to my mother..and my grandmother was very nice too, to a point, but she, also, could never seem to wrap herself around the fact that i was "differently-abled". Neither could my father..and this is why i am writing this note.
My father was a hard-working and very strait-laced Catholic, who came from a family who also had very high standards and ultra-strict morals. He was honest and loyal to his family and wife....in that he treated my mom like gold, provided all of us 7 children with all that we needed..and some of our wants too, and would take us for Sunday drives and picnics every Sunday afternoon/evening.
~~~~ <3<3<3 I always wanted to love my father. <3<3<3 ~~~~
But he was very harsh and had a quick temper and very little tolerance and patience for anything out of the norm. His children were always expected to behave and mind him, but there was little in the way of affection and warm and fuzzyness from this man..or tolerance for anything that he deemed nonesense.
He did have that nice side, but it was only sometimes seen.
We children could never talk or converse at the dinner table, because that seemed to really irritate him.
Too much horseplay, giggling, and running around also irritated him.
When he watched his baseball, football, basketball, auto races, and nightly boxing and wrestling matches...we children had to keep quiet for those too. He had Master Control over the family TV, and we could only watch things that my mom would talk him into letting us watch. He also never believed that we should ever have a color TV, so we never had one. I got to watch color Tv when i'd go to other people's houses, but at home, we were a black and white TV family, whose children also had to be black and white and subdued.
We were never allowed a voice with him..or to debate him, or disagree with him either.
We were all expected to attend 8:00 AM Sunday Mass, or sometimes we'd go on Saturday nights at 6 PM. No ifs ands or buts.
All oif the above behaviors would bring out that ferociously hot, loud, hair-trigger temper..and he would yell SO loudly and SO sharply that it felt like a sharp burning whip to my back..we were always being sent to our rooms as a punishment, and then, if he got pissed off enough, he would give us the awful lickings...."lickin's", is what he would call them...and i can remember LOTS of times where i would actually have huge red welts on my buttocks and thighs from these lickin's; i would always be made to go to my room after these, and i remember sitting there on my bed, sobbing, and trembling in pain and raw fear, with snot pouring out of my little nose, feeling like total worthless garbage. From early on, i knew my daddy hated my guts. And it used to hurt my littele-girl heart so badly, as i would sit on my bed, wondering why my daddy was like this, why he hated me? Mixed in with the smell and taste of my tears, woukld be the afterglow of his scent, which was a mix of tobacco smoke and aftershave, and Brillcream or Vitalis for his hair.
One day as a little tiny girl, i was watching a baseball game with him. We were playing, and laughing...but then all of a sudden he grew angry and pinched me on the arm and yelled at me to "Go away!!" At first i thought he was still palaying..but when he yelled harder and pinched me again, i KNEW he was NOT playing..and off i went down the hall to cry, my little heart and spirit broken again. It was a Sunday, so my mom was at church, so she didn't witness this incident.
One night, he had punished me for making noises he didn't like, so i thought i'd stick my tongue out at him..i did, and told him "I hate you, Daddy!!" He lost it and before i could ge away from him, he lunged at me, yanking me around by my ear, then threw me over his shoulder, and then threw me in my bedroom, where he pulled my pants down, and gave me one of his horrible lickin's.
On another afternoon, i was outside our ranch house in the carport, kneeled at the back of our family station wagon, fascinated with the license plate, so i was playing with it, pretending it was my imaginary friend. This "friend" got mad at me, so i yanked the plate off. My dad came out and saw what i did, and not even bothering to find out why i did that..he again lost it and yanked me by my ears and braids, then picked me up by my arm and threw me onto his green easy chair in the family room, and gave me another awful lickin', which left horrible red raised welts on my buttocks and thighs. my mom tried to stop him, but he wasn't about to stop. he kept hitting me...and it hurt!!!!
There were times that he would be kinda nice, too, like that brief period of time when we were watching that baseball game. When he got a little red Honda motorcycle, he would take me and my siblings for little rides to the end of our street and back. And around the mountain roads on the mountain property we had. And sometimes he would give me a little affectionate hug and kiss. Sometimes he would play the upright piano that was in the dining room of our ranch-style house, and i would be allowed to climb up on the top of the piano to listen to him play and sing his old songs. Sometimes he would take me to get a bunch of popsicle trearts for us kids at the grocery store. Sometimes he'd treat us kids to McDonalds hamburgers and soda pop.
As i grew older, those nice times grew less and less, and the walls between he and i grew taller and deeper.
In June of 1970, after school let out, we moved to our mountain property 22 miles East of town, where he had built a cabin and a Big two-story house two years after that. I had to now attend a country school where there were no more special ed classes for me, and i floundered on all levels there.
It was at this school that i discovered that hair shines in different colors, like almost a rainbow and prism, and boy, after that, i became totally enraptured with shiny hair!!! I just loved to play with the other girls' hair at school recess, and they all let me do so, too, but my sisters would always shoo me away and one of my sisters would actualy yell at me and hit me if i tried to touch her hair. I was teased mercilessly for this, by alot of the kids at school...but my father's reaction to this new quirk of mine, was to always yell at me for looking at my shines in my hair.... i wuld actually sit there on our country living room couch, and pull my hair in front of my eyes to look at the beautiful shines in it, and i'd do this, it seemed, like for hours on end. But because this was not normal to my daddy, he started threatening to take the cow clippers to my hair and give me a buzz-cut if i didn;t stop playing with my hair. And he was NOT joking!!
Neither was he joking when he kept after me for the arm-swinging (stimming) i was doing. He kept threatening that he would make me stay in my room ALL DAY LONG, if i kept this up..and because this was stimming that i was doing....i couldn't stop it..and he made good on his threat one Sunday after church when he caught me behind an old house trailer we had in our bacxkyard, swinging my arms in private, so as to not have HIM see me and punish me!! Well, that didn't matter to my dad, and i had to spend the whole rest of that day in my befroom..so, no playing Tonka trucks with my little brother that day..however, i was allowed to go with him and my mom to a nearby ranch several times that day as an outing, so that i wasn't having to be in my room all the time..and i was also allowed to go to the bathroom too.
My mom was able to talk my dad into relenting and letting me go on the little mini-trips to the ranch, where my dad was taking care of some livestock for the owners, who were away that weekend. Because she felt his punishment was too unreasonable and harsh.
From 6th through 9th grade, i withdrew into a quiet shell, so as to not upset anyone. Oh, i still talked and interracted with everyone but i moved heaven and earth to be as non-obtrusive as possible so as not to piss off my dad and make people call me different anymore. I also stopped liking country and western music in the 6th grade, which also irritated my strait-laced father, because he now hated rock music..even the lighter pop Top 40 tunes!! He and my brothers and one of my sisters all called it hippie music now....and i was now a litle mini-hippie-teenager in the 6th grade!!
I did discover, too, that i had allies in my mom and two of my older sisters, and they would allow me to sneak my music when the others weren't around. But my brothers were also alot like my father, very harsh and rigid, too.....and i never got along with them either. Nor the one sister who had the long silky shiny hair.
I felt so stifled and oppressed growing up. Never allowed to have a voice and never allowed to be me....
And as my older siblings became teenagers..guess what? My intolerant father began letting them have more privileges. They could now talk and joke with my father, even at the dinner table..and even my little brother began doing the same!!!!! He could get away with anything!!!
But i was still being squelched by my daddy!!!!
Needless to say, i grew to have an intense HATE for my father. Even as i still had to live at home with my parents through my twenties, i still had a very stilted, stiff relationship with my father.
When i was a sophomore in high school, my father was eatting a box of Sees candy in front of all of us, and wouldn't offer us any. Most of the time he would offer us a few pieces. But this night he wouldn't, and my mom pled with him to pass the box around. My older brother jokingly called him mean, and he laughed and shrugged and continued to eat his candy. I chimed in, agreeing with my brother..."Yeah, Daddy, you're mean!!" THAT did NOT fly with daddy..he immediately yelled "Hey, young lady, you nincompoop, GO TO YOUR ROOM!!!!"
My mom goes: "Dad, she was just joking!!"
His loud retort: "Well, I"M not joking!!! She needs to shut her smart mouth!!"
In My Sophomore year of high school i ran away three timnes toi try to get away from my hateful father and narrow-minded family.
Even after high school, when i got a small job cleaning house for a doctor and his wife and their boy..i wanted to wash my hair one Sunday afternoon, but he was eatting dinner, and would not allow it, said it would upset him to have me do that, to wait till the next day. I told him that i would have to get up earlier than normal to do it then, and he lost it, and started to lunge at me...i tried to run out the door, and he caught me by my hair and, literally screaming in my ear, yanked me inside the cabin, and to my room, where he roared at me that he wanted no more flack from me ever again..that he was fed up with me and would not tolrerate anything from me anymore..i felt that he was actually going to KILLL me that night. I manged to escape out my window and go to the Big House, where i called the doctor and his wife, and they let me come over and spend the night. After that, i moved my bedroom out to the Big House and got away from him that way. I didn;t speak to him for a long time after that incident with my hair.
Then, in the summer of 1983, when i was going to go on a trip to Indiana to visit friends, he came home one evening from work, my mom and i had been shopping in town that day, and we were unloading the family station wagon..and being i was so excited about my trip, i was in a friendly mood, so i asked him how his day at work went.
" I DON'T THINK THAT'S ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS!!", was his snotty reply, as he slammed shut the refrigerator door, my mouth popped open in utter shock, and i turned on my heel and ran out to my grandma's room which was downstairs in the Big House, running into her open arms, sobbing, my heart broken yet again by my daddy. My grandmother was shocked and upset too...she and my mother both felt he was out of line.
Many other simliar incidents followed, until one day in 1986, he and my mom saw a man with an oversized white cross walking down Broadway Street as they were stopped at a traffic light...and my father suddenly told my mother that he realized that he wasn't being kind to me. He told her that day that he was goi ng to make a concerted effort at being nicer to me. He did get alot nicer after that..but i still was afraid of his temper, because he would still get grumpy with me, so i still stayed my distance from him.
After all of our black and white TVs finally died and couldn't be fixed anymore, he finally went for a new 19-inch color set for him and my mom. Since i was now on SSI, i also had my own 17-inch color TV and a stereo now too..and i now had my bedroom out in the big house across the yard from my mom and dad's cabin, so i could stay seperated from him and have my music. But then, he started asking me to let him watch Monday Night Football on my TV, so my mom could watch The Bob Newhart Show..so i let him do that..with the provision that he not touch my rock posters that i had all over the walls of my sanctuary. Or my stereo. I had to have my mom tell him, because i was still not comfortable talking directly to him. He still would threaten to take his shotgun to my posters though, and kept accusing me of being a bad person just because i loved hard rock and heavy metal.
In 1987, i was finally able to move back into town next to two old ladies, a mother and her daughter, and they and their family and i became very close..and i began going to their Southern Baptist church and making more friends and blossoming out more. My dad and i would see each other on occasion, and he was always so nice to me now....but, still, i would never let my guard down, because..the damage had already been done...
My father had a stroke in 1989..and alot of his behavior reverted back to the old meaner version of Daddy again. But he also became less of a threat to me physically, so his and my blowouts were different now in that i could now tell him off and he'd shut his mouth. it still affected me, though, that he was always wanting to be harder on me than the others. I no longer hated my father..but i still wasn't close to him.
He died in February 2000.
Since then, he has periodically come to me in my dreams, sometimes they are peaceful dreams, where he is uber nice and accepts me and my music and ways of thinking..and other times he is the old mean daddy who would break my heart into little tiny pieces, time and tine again.
My father was a very good-looking teenager and still was good-looking in his twenties and thirties.
~~~~ <3<3<3 I wanted my father to love me...and he just couldn't do it.... <3<3<3 ~~~~
In the dream i had of him today, he was in his thirties and it was 1967 again...i had gone to the store to get the family groceries. Only i had gotten the wrong kind of milk, and my father didn't like that, and began lecturing me in his loud voicxe, and in this dream, i was fed up. I turned around and stood up for myself....and..THIS time, as i looked deep into his handsome blue eyes and spoke from my heart, telling him how hurtful he was being to me, that i am a human being...HE LISTENED.
If only he would have listened to me when i was a little child...back when it still mattered to me.
Not Welcome In My Own Hometown
You know, it really pains me that in this day, that people can still get away with trying to squelch and silence those of us who are differently-abled. It is so nice that i have been able tgo find all kinds of really awesome autism community friends through facebook....but....when i knock on the door of my local home turf...the doors stay shut tight to me.
Through Facebook i have heard of wonderful kind doctors, wonderful families and communities..which have all embraced their autistic patients, citizens, siblings, sons and daughters and so on. Yet, here i sit by my computer....as i try to reach out locally....i get shut down, dissed and pushed aside....
I am so very tired today....if i could, i would pack my car up and get in it and just leave...i would leave this whole state for a state where my friends live, where i can get help....where i can get far far away from all those mean men who taunt me everyday with their loud motors.
The media here all turn a deaf ear to me. So does my city's mayor and city council and city officials. Nobody seems to want to give me the hand-up i am asking for....which is mainly good medical care, and for those mean bully konsters to be made to leave me alone.......
I don't know how much longer i can last like this...God please hear from above..and get me to that open door so that i can leave this hell-hole and go far far away.......
Through Facebook i have heard of wonderful kind doctors, wonderful families and communities..which have all embraced their autistic patients, citizens, siblings, sons and daughters and so on. Yet, here i sit by my computer....as i try to reach out locally....i get shut down, dissed and pushed aside....
I am so very tired today....if i could, i would pack my car up and get in it and just leave...i would leave this whole state for a state where my friends live, where i can get help....where i can get far far away from all those mean men who taunt me everyday with their loud motors.
The media here all turn a deaf ear to me. So does my city's mayor and city council and city officials. Nobody seems to want to give me the hand-up i am asking for....which is mainly good medical care, and for those mean bully konsters to be made to leave me alone.......
I don't know how much longer i can last like this...God please hear from above..and get me to that open door so that i can leave this hell-hole and go far far away.......
Saturday, August 14, 2010
The Scathing Hell Continues
It is Saturday..it is mid-August..and i am still here. The mean bully monsters are across the street again, working on a classic car and are bothering me because they won't respect my desire for at least a weekend of relief and peace from the loud hot rod noises and smells and their nastiness...i wish i just had somdeone to come here to help me with my computer issues when they occur...all of my close friends are on Facebook and live all over the US and in the UK and Australia and a few other places..but i can't seem to find friends here who get my autism like my autism community friends do on Facebook who all live so far away. I still do not feel that i can get on the phone to call on the brother that lives here in Santa Maria..i feel so alone today, and like this is never ever going to end.
I was just talking to my neighbor, the nice one who is my friend, last night..and i was telling him that i am actually housebound in the daytimes due to the mean bully monsters and their terrorism against me!!! And...this is true..i AM!!!! I am literally afraid to go anywhere or even be outside in my front yard becasue i will get taunted and yelled at....and they will honk their horns and rev their loud engines at me just to hear me scream and have a meltdown..and then they sit and laugh at me when i have those meltdowns....God, this is HELL!!!!! Hell in its purest form, right here on earth!!!!
Yes, this is what it is like to be a middle-aged adult who is autistic and who cannot get the help and supports she needs so she can finally work on having her physical health back, and a decent life off of all these scary government programs.
And...on and on this goes.
I was just talking to my neighbor, the nice one who is my friend, last night..and i was telling him that i am actually housebound in the daytimes due to the mean bully monsters and their terrorism against me!!! And...this is true..i AM!!!! I am literally afraid to go anywhere or even be outside in my front yard becasue i will get taunted and yelled at....and they will honk their horns and rev their loud engines at me just to hear me scream and have a meltdown..and then they sit and laugh at me when i have those meltdowns....God, this is HELL!!!!! Hell in its purest form, right here on earth!!!!
Yes, this is what it is like to be a middle-aged adult who is autistic and who cannot get the help and supports she needs so she can finally work on having her physical health back, and a decent life off of all these scary government programs.
And...on and on this goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)