Let’s talk more about unbridled rage and what I plan on doing about it. Nothing. The end.
Not really, of course. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how angry I am almost all the time right now. I like to use the Hulk’s infamous line, “That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry” with a wry smile like the Hulk because it’s true. I’m always lowkey angry about something or the other, but previously, on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 1 or a 2. Now, it’s a 4 or 5 at all times, and that’s only because I’m suppressing it.
When I was younger, I kept a really tight rein on my anger. I was taught that my anger was simultaneously too much and unacceptable. Only my father was allowed to be angry and only my mother was allowed to be depressed. And, boy, was she deeply depressed. She used to cry and sob at me for hours about how much my father wsa hurting her by cheating on her. I don’t remember when she explicitly started saying the last part, but I knew it from a pretty young age.
Recently, I talked to my brother about it. We both had a defining moment when we realized that my father was brazenly having affairs with women from the Taiwanese church. Both of us were in our teens when it happened (he’s three years older).
For me, it was when he and my mother were with another Taiwanese couple playing tennis. A woman from the Taiwanese church called and asked to speak to him. I said he was playing tennis, and I would give him the message.
When my parents camehome, I gave my father the message. Unfortunately, I told him that I told the woman he was playing tennis. My father got made and scolded me for telling her that he and my mother had been playing with the other woman. I was so confused because why would that be a big deal, and my father gave me the inane reason that the other woman would feel bad about not being invited.
I mean, she’s a grown-ass adult. If she wanted to act like a thirteen-year old, then that’s on her. It was just an excuse, though. I realize a few decades later what the issue actually was–that the other woman was either an ex-mistress or a mistress-to-come of my father’s, and he did not want to upset her. I didn’t think of it because she’s not his usual type, but maybe he’d run out of candidates.
My brother’s example was when a woman called and asked to talk to my father. My brother didn’t say Taiwanese woman, but since that’s all my father liked, I just assumed. My brother told her our father wasn’t home. The woman asked who he was, and my brother said, “His son.” The woman gasped, “His son?!” and then hung up the phone.
Huh. That would seem to suggest she wasn’t from the church, which meant that maybe she wasn’t Taiwanese. Anyone in the Taiwanese community would know that he was married with children. Maybe he had ran through all the women in the church and in the Taiwanese association, so he had to branch out.
This early lesson taught me to be incredibly tight-lipped about family. I am exceedingly good about keeping a secret–which is not always a positive. Some things should not be kept a secret, and I don’t always know how to differentiate between the two. This is partly my family dysfunction and partly my neurodivergence.
It’s funny (in a not-so-funny) way. I have masked myself so well, I don’t know how to unmask. Putting aside the anger issue, I do not know how to tell people I need support. I am so used to being the support, I call myself my mother’s emotional support person.
This was the biggest barrier to me realizing that I was neurodivergent, by the way. The question of empathy. That had been drilled in my head as the top symptom, er, trait? Let’s go with trait. Trait of an autistic person–lack of empathy. It’s always mentioned, and because I had empathy in spades, it didn’t even occur to me that maybe I was autistic. Characteristic! That’s what I’ll call it from now on.
It’s only been in the last year or two that I’ve realized how untrue that is–and it’s only because I have an autistic friend who has gently guided me to see that the common stereoypes of autism are incomplete at best. It’s not that autistic people don’t feel anything–it’s that they feel too much. They may not be able to know what to do with those feelings, but the feelings are there.
Once I learned about that being a characteristic of autism, everything clicked into place. Things that I thought were flaws for my whole life could actually be because of something that wasn’t my fault! Now, I want to take pains to add that this does not abdicate me from the responsibility of dealing with these things, but it does mean maybe I can be a bit easier on myself about them.
For far too long, I was hard on myself for being such a freak and an alien. I tried my best to be normal for a long time, but I never managed to make it. I can imitate normies to a certain extent, but I have to always be on my guard in case I slip. That’s why I feel like such an alien. I am painfully aware that I have to be careful of what I say and to whom.
I can never completely relax. Ever. I feel like I’m on a leash–and not in a good way. I’m hyper-aware of everything around me, and when I get caught off-guard (which does happen, despite my best efforts), I’m shaken to my core. And resentful. I’m trying so hard whenever i’m in the gen pop or talking to normies. I feel like I can catch a break, though.
Side note: People now scoff and make fun of the idea of being your whole self at work or being your authentic self at work. They say there’s a good reason for filters and then laugh heartily at the silly people who think being authentic at work is a good thing.
Here’s the thing. Initially, it wasn’t meant to be ‘let your unfiltered id run wild’. It was to allow minorities to not have to mask all the time. It was a way to say, “Hey, maybe it’s ok if you’re not completely normie-passing.” Unfortunately, it has come to mean that as so many ‘woke’ words (even woke itself) something completely negative and worthy of derision, apparently.
I’ll write more tomorrow.