After my diagnosis of autism, my dad’s cruelty reached new heights.

EXCLUSIVE | 3 min read

‘You ugly fuck,’ my father said, laughing. He was either oblivious to the pain his words caused me or enjoying it. My face burned as I took back the sketchbook he’d been looking at. I’d attempted a pencil self-portrait as part of art homework for school and as usual, he’d responded with cruelty.

Such a commonplace exchange came to mark the beginning of the end of any relationship we once had, with no chance of redemption. The catalyst to end our relationship came with my being diagnosed as an autistic individual as a teenager.

It led to a lot of shame for me, in part because of my father’s denial. My parents had been separated for a decade by then. Whilst my mother took gentle and loving care of me, encouraging self-acceptance and a healthy body image amidst a media pandemic of heroin chic and thinspiration, my father reacted to my diagnosis – and me – in the opposite extreme. 

It was as if my disability was somehow a personal attack on him. His painful remarks often made under the guise of a joke not only clouded our interactions, but followed me everywhere, chipping away at my self-worth.

Cruelty

To his view, I was ostensibly ugly, lacking in intelligence, too curious, whilst being too much and too little simultaneously. A child accepts their parents at face value, absorbing their opinions as fact. It is only now I realise how awful his words really were. 

My autistic hallmarks quickly and somewhat predictably became a part of his repertoire of cruelty. 

Eye contact - something a lot of autistic people cannot do as it can be physically painful - was often agonisingly forced by my father, as if to prove I could somehow just ‘not be’ autistic. He commented on everything about me in cruel detail.

The way I walked was forcibly and humiliatingly corrected, often by his shouting or mocking. My face - seemingly emotionally ‘blank’ - was insulted. The clothing chosen to deal with my unacknowledged sensory needs were ridiculed.

In his eyes, I was too slow, uncomprehending, coltish and gawky to be seen as even vaguely acceptable. By way of survival, I created a shell of resilience, hiding my pain behind forced laughs at my own expense. Even now as an adult, it is a default defence mechanism.  

Conspiracies

Then the anti-vaxxer myths came to rear their ugly head. My father made it clear he thought I became ostensibly ‘different’ after routine inoculations. Politicians were apparently to blame for me being Autistic, as it was ostensibly 'their' doing. My father’s conspiracy theory was that they’d want to make some of the population autistic for reasons of mind control.

Hearing that my existence apparently embodied the worst of humanity broke me.

Contrary to my father’s toxic belief system, being his offspring didn’t make me his biological extension but a person in my own right. People are allowed opinions, beliefs, choices. For a parent not to accept their child, is to deny them so much. No parent is perfect, but all children should be loved unconditionally, given respect and common courtesy.

These were not things I’d experience with my father. I’d return home from visiting his house to cry in the solitary sanctuary of my bedroom. Having to deal with the fallout of my own diagnosis was hard enough but dealing with a parent’s extreme reaction created spirals of shame. 

My self-worth was impacted for a long time, and I still struggle with this.

Caitlin Moran’s book, How To Be A Woman gave me the vocabulary to see how depersonalising and damaging the situation with my father was. From the age of 12, I’d recognised my father’s baseline disappointment in me for being female. Caitlin’s book later confirmed for me how wrong such behaviour was.

The added layer of my father’s anti-vaxxer volatility eventually became too much to bear. Regular visits to the self-serving parent who took little interest in his child was emotionally arduous and his behaviour made me feel completely alienated. 

Cutting ties

Several people tried to deter me from cutting contact with him, often on the premise ‘family is family’ but my mind was made up. How To Be A Woman emboldened me to cut ties in full and blocking all forms of contact. 

I never looked back. Never let him back in. It was an act of social resistance to choose myself, a protection of my inner peace. 

Not without pain, though. To be Autistic does not mean you cannot feel or have no feelings. Whilst I didn’t grieve for my father, I did grieve for the parent I’d never had.

Unlearning the damage he did took time. Even now, I feel triggered by certain words, and when people shout, I’m sometimes transported back to my childhood and teenage years. I still do not trust myself or my instincts enough at the best of times and friends describe me as lacking in confidence. They tell me I need to loosen up or label me ‘shy’ in the company of people we do not know well.

But I cannot change my neurology and will not be made to feel ashamed or ‘lesser than’. Not now, or ever again.

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