I just spent the last 3 hours with Barney Fife Junior talking about only two things, love and what it was like to grow up with a father who has Asperger’s syndrome. BF Jr. is one passionate individual. He’s also a dreamer. He told me he wants the fairy tale. He wants to be the bread winner with a wife and kids he can spoil. He kept saying, I want to be a man. The more he talked the more he sounded like a little boy. I could hear so clearly that what he wants is to fill the hole he has from being an abused then adopted child into a “strange” family. He wants the original family he never had. His issues with being abused and adopted into a family where the father has AS and the mother has serious personality disorder issues makes him obsessively seek what he never had. He wants what he feels he should have gotten.
There are few individuals who would forgo purchasing their very first Harley Davidson to buy their 15 year old step son a 4 wheeler and his wife a new car, especially when there’s nothing wrong with the 4 wheeler he’s got and the car she’s got. There are also few people that would beiso willing to chase this fairy tale that they’d allow their wife’s best friend and 3 children to move in only to take over their financial needs. BF Jr. did these things. He wanted all these children to have him as a stable father figure. I listened and gave as much feedback as I could without stating that he’s chasing his past. How on earth could I say that when I do the very same thing? He needs to fill the hole of not having the father he needed and I need to fill the hole of not having the mother I needed. Why are things always so clear to people looking in from the outside?
We talked about how for the first time in my life I feel safe and comfortable in a place I call home. I like living here. I look forward to spending time with his father. He looked at me with a rather sad expression. I added that I wasn’t raised by this Senior so I don’t have the memories or experiences he has when he had no idea his father lives with AS. I told Junior the man I see now isn’t the man he knows and that my experiences are different. I told him my experiences have all been from a stand point of understanding, which he did not have as a child. Also, I came into the picture as a grown woman, not as a child who needed more than Barney Fife could give. I tried to make it clear that I understood growing up was hard and he surely felt cheated. He was taken by the state and adopted into a family he thought was going to be ideal. He didn’t get that. I never mentioned how much worse he could have fared. That’s not really something he needed to hear. But really, it could have been worse, a lot worse. Having a father with AS is not the worst possible thing to happen to a child but being taken from an abusive family and given to a “strange” one must surely feel like it is. I tried to be supportive and give affirmations as well as validate his experiences and mine. I hope it came across as intended.
I like talking to BF Jr. He’s a good guy but I think I like his father more. Perhaps I have too much of a soft spot for Barney Fife Senior to hear him bad mouthed. I don’t know. I do understand where BF Jr. is coming from but I also know where I’ve been. I know his life could have been horrific for years upon years. He could have bounced from home to home, lived on the street, been beaten, starved and worse. I try not to compare my past to the past of others but sometimes it’s hard not to. BF Jr. lost a lot. He lost his original family. He lost his original name then the family that adopted him split up. There are undeniable issues of abandonment and loss that he tries to deal with. He gets in these rescue me relationships and tries to be the stable father he never had. When it all goes to pot he goes and finds another rescue me relationship. I seem to date my mother over and over again. He and I are in different boats with different currents but the destination is the same - take back what we lost, what we were cheated out of, one relationship at a time. With each failed relationship we feel more and more driven to take back what was rightfully ours. What really was rightfully ours? In this world of turmoil and grief, what really was rightfully ours? Love. We both want it, but we want it to do something it can’t do. We want it to heal our past.
Austin
What Is Rightfully Mine?-Monday, September 08, 2008-1:31AM EST
I think you did a loving thing here, and you should be proud of the soul that you are.
Sounds like a great conversation and like you are adjusting well to your new housemate.
Yes, it’s so difficult having any objectivity about our own past, and always (it seems) easier to be empathetic to someone else’s childhood woes.
This conversation seems to have been very insightful, compassionate and intelligent. I like how you held back on saying all that you could have said to a man who is wounded and, as you say, trying to get back what what rightfully his.
He’s fortunate to have you to talk to.
I spent a while with what you said here:
“We both want it, but we want it to do something it can’t do. We want it to heal our past.”
It seems to me that maybe love does heal our past, partially. Not in maybe the way we think. But it does heal. I believe that. I’ve experienced that. I’m lucky.
I had to work hard to get with someone who was not anything like anyone from my family, not even remotely. It was hard because for a long time I wasn’t sure if I was in love or how I felt or any of that. I was so used to things being chaotic and miserable. I didn’t know what to do with a relationship that was calm and good with someone who wasn’t like one of my familiar triggers. Fortunately I got the encouragement I needed to wait and see if things would change. They did. It took time.
That relationship is now one of the biggest forces for healing in my life. But it was weird to do something totally different. It was almost more scary than the same old thing. I would not say it has healed my past as much as helped me understand that my past does not rule me and that I have a future I can call MINE not theirs. To me that’s the same as healing.
wily