The self-aware child, realizing the immense power I had, to manipulate my personality to match the needs of anyone else, I felt unstoppable.  Friend, teacher, neighbor, family, romantic partner- everyone wanted something, and I would be the best version they could ever hope to meet.  This was my personal challenge and mission statement for decades.  The external validation was enough to sustain my efforts much longer than was healthy.  In retrospect, this speaks to how singularly focused many humans can be; they never noticed that I wasn’t anything more than a character, meeting an expectation and reciting my lines.  Genuine?  Yes.  Because I genuinely wasn’t acting, I was molding myself to the expectations of others.  Looking back, I can see how this was also reinforced and promoted to make things easier for the adults.

The birthday presents that were lackluster, but I was expected to be excited?  Responsibilities that were reshaped as “privileges”?  The unspoken expectation that I be as small, innocuous, self-sufficient and low maintenance as possible, while still maintaining a perfect record of performance and output.  I learned very young that perfection will be overlooked because it is expected, but any mistake will be thrust into the spotlight and reviewed ad nauseum via high powered laser microscope.  Additionally, any mistake will be broadcast to every ear that may know me, and there is no statute of limitations on the length of retention; mistakes can be dredged from the depths decades later, whether by outside voices and consequences, or by my own internal score keepers. 

My parents divorced when I was just two years old.  I didn’t realize for many years that my father simply didn’t have the patience for children.  The reality when I was young, was that I often only saw him once every month or every other month.  He would bring my kid sister and me to visit other family so that took some pressure off of him to entertain us.  It’s difficult for most kids to sit still and do “nothing”, and I didn’t have much interaction with others when I was with my mother, so I enjoyed these visits.  The expectation was that I be grateful for everything, even if it was disappointing, “you get what you get and you don’t get upset”.  Because my father was the one to often “do” things with us, we always wanted more of those experiences.  We loved visiting the vacant, not-yet-torn-down shopping mall, walking cemeteries, playing in a giant tub of Legos, playing on the Sega Genesis with my cousins, playing Barbies… Anything a child my age would enjoy, and I only got to enjoy them at my father’s house.  So of course we would hound him to have more of these experiences.  As an adult I can understand why that would have been frustrating, and because he struggled financially, I’m sure he was fighting some additional guilt at not being able to meet our requests.  Although as a child, all I could feel was that I was annoying him and if I wanted to spend more time with my father then I should stop asking for anything.

I loved sleep-overs at my father’s house.  He lived with my grandmother and sometimes my aunt, in a small house in the center of a small village.  Across the street was a general store, where we could get penny candy and the occasional chocolate milk.  On the side lawn was a metal pole used for drying clothes, and a little room for children to run and play.  In the evenings, I would stand just inside the screen door when a train went through; the tracks were right across the street and I was fascinated by the speed and proximity of the train cars zipping past, just thirty feet away.

One day my father had a surprise for me and my sister- he was taking us on a weekend trip to Montreal.  That didn’t mean very much to me at the time- what would I want to go to Montreal for?  I knew only that it was in another country, but I couldn’t imagine what would interest me as a child in that place.  My father kept everything very hush-hush and wouldn’t tell us what kind of activities he had planned.  It was important for me to ensure my father saw my gratitude though, and I let him know how excited I was about the opportunity to spend a weekend with him.  My face was smiles, and my eyes lit up with anticipation while my brain reeled with confusion and grasped to find the “why”.

My mother had remarried, and we lived in a small Cape on 30 acres of woodland some 30 minutes from the nearest grocery store.  I can see that this was a good place for a young neurodivergent, as it gave me a lot of peace and quiet.  Even young, I experienced an uncomfortable degree of anxiety if I were to leave this home for any length of time.  I couldn’t sleep over at friend’s houses, go camping with the Girl Scouts, and at one point, couldn’t even stay overnight with my dad or aunt.  When I returned from my father’s that day, I began to imagine being so far away that I was in another country… and the sharp talons of fear and anxiety took hold.  There was simply no way I could possibly be that far from home.

My father did not take it well.  He let me know how disappointed he was in me, and how upset he was that we weren’t going to be taking the trip together.  After I had made my decision, other details began to trickle; we were to have taken that same train that runs in front of my grandmother’s house.  My grandmother told me we were to have gone to a water park in Montreal.  These were followed by, “well, we can’t do things like that I guess”, always in disappointing tones.  My family was well acquainted with emotional manipulation tactics.  Naturally I didn’t know any better at the time.  But my father never offered to take me on a trip with him ever again.  Even as an adult, while also chastising the “adults” in that memory, I still feel guilty about letting my father down.  He passed just a few months ago, and I hope he knew how sorry I was for not taking that trip with him.  We would have made some wonderful memories.