Häxan - I understand you wrote your OP on July 30th.
How are you doing now? Have things improved? Are they at least a little better?
I grew up in an extremely abusive environment.
I can relate to this. I didn't learn I was autistic until last year and didn't receive a clinical diagnosis until last April. My parents knew I was different but didn't want to take me to a medical professional to find out why. Heaven forbid that my inadequacies might reflect poorly on them.
When I tried spinning or flapping or violently shaking my head, my mother would slap me across the face. If I continued, my father would pull off his belt, bend me over his knee, and beat me.
Since I was very clumsy as a young child, they had me fitted for leg braces. I'm not sure how making me totter about like a little Frankenstein monster was supposed to have improved my clumsiness ... but I wore these leg braces for two years.
My mother hated my father but stuck with him because he was in the U.S. military service and she liked living abroad in third world countries where we could afford servants. I was largely ignored except for the occasional slaps and beltings and was usually left in the care of the servants.
In time, my father was reassigned back to the states and my mother lost her servants and suddenly became a suburban housewife. She HATED IT and began taking it out on me and the abuse got much worse.
At one point during an ice storm, she sent me out on the balcony to get firewood and locked the sliding glass door behind me. When I tried to get back inside, she taunted me, demanding that I beg for the privilege of being allowed back inside. She wanted me on my knees in the ice (dressed though I was in bedroom slippers, pajamas, and a bathroom) and to beg her to let me in. When I refused, she cursed me and drew the curtains shut ... so I took a piece of firewood and smashed the sliding glass door to pieces.
My mother fled to her bedroom shrieking that she would tell my father on me.
When my father came home, he heard two different stories. I told him the truth but my mother LIED and said that she didn't know how I had gotten myself locked outside ... and if only I had had the manners to knock on the sliding glass door, she would have GLADLY let me in.
My father beat me so badly that I couldn't walk for several days and had to miss school. My father accused me of having a bad temper, lying about my mother, and vandalizing the house.
So yes ... I know a thing or two about abuse.
I am diagnosed with (complex) PTSD and DESNOS together with being autistic (diagnosed with High Functioning Autism).
I worked as a teacher at an American school in Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War. The Iraqis had invaded Kuwait and an allied coalition of American, European, and Arabic military forces was building a massive army along the Saudi and Iraqi/Kuwaiti border. In retaliation for allied bombing attacks, the Iraqis fired scud missiles at my community, Dhaharan.
Dhaharan was the corporate headquarters of the Saudi Aramco Oil Company. Just outside our perimeter fence was an allied airfield and next to that stretching for miles was a huge quartermaster supply depot that stocked everything from rations and tents to armored fighting vehicles and ammunition. Dhahran was a choice target and when the civil defense sirens went off, we grabbed our poison gas masks and ran for shelter.
After Operational Desert Storm began, when allied forces entered Iraq and Kuwait, I began working at Khobar Towers, a U.S. Air Force base just outside Dhahran. I was a volunteer baker for the USO and every weekend (which for us was Thursday and Friday), I'd buy $100 worth of baking supplies and would go to the base to bake cookies for the troops.
Khobar Towers was later bombed by the terrorist, Osama Ben Ladin and the base was closed. The U.S. forces were relocated and the civilian volunteers never had a chance to say goodbye or to know which of our brave young servicemen and women had died in the horrific explosion that destroyed the front gates and ripped off the side of a towering apartment building that had been used as a barracks.
I spent 7 years in Saudi Arabia and a year in Beirut.
On a warm summer's evening on the last day of school, the Israeli Air Force bombed the city. As civil defense sirens began to wail, they flew in low over the Mediterranean Sea and blasted past my faculty apartment complex. The force of their passage caused the entire building to shake.
I rolled out of bed and crawled under a heavy desk to protect myself against the possibility of shattering glass from the windows. I could see tracer fire rising into the night's sky from a Syrian anti-aircraft gun that had been positioned just one block away. In the distance I could hear explosions followed by silence which was then broken by the wailing sirens of ambulances and firetrucks.
Just when I began to wonder if it was safe to come out from beneath my desk, another wave of Israeli jets flew in and the attack began all over again.
In the morning, the only people who reported to work were the foreign teachers ... the Americans, Canadians, Brits, New Zealanders, one Australian, and one woman from Brazil. The Lebanese staff had gone ... fled into the surrounding hills.
We had no electricity as the local power grid had been bombed back into the stone age.
There was a lot of anger on the streets. Someone threw a hand grenade over the wall of our school. A mob later tried to storm our Consulate and the Lebanese police were forced to shoot into the mob.
I evacuated on the first flight out of the country after the international airport reopened. I never returned.
After I was safely stateside, I was shopping for groceries in North Carolina when it started to rain. There was a loud clap of thunder and I had a flashback. We were being bombed! I threw myself to the ground and covered my head with clasped hands while shouting, "AIR RAID! IN-COMING!"
People laughed at me. They pointed their fingers and laughed at the "nut job".
I went to see a doctor, wondering if I was insane. He referred me to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with PTSD, chronic depression, and fatigue. It took me months of therapy and medication to recover. Surprisingly enough, I was not diagnosed with Asperger's at that time ... but I suppose the Asperger's was the least of my worries at that point.
I can't relate to anyone at all and I can't put on this "normal" act any longer. How am I suppose to bear many more years of this?
I know it may seem like an impossible fantasy now ... but things WILL GET BETTER.
Things certainly got better for me ... and all it took was one day at a time.
My recovery and my ability to act normally did not happen overnight. It happened day by day and step by step. Without even knowing that I had Asperger's I began compensating for my social awkwardness when I was young. Without any adults to help me, I avidly watched TV ... family friendly shows where I could watch facial expressions and observe how people interacted with each other. Over time, I slowly began to develop scripts ... how to greet people ... how to start a conversation ... how to resolve conflict etc.
It wasn't easy and I don't like being among other people because dealing with NTs is inherently stressful ... but I've managed and you can too.
Are you seeing a therapist? Do you have any support to help you? Friends perhaps? Neighbors? A church?
