AITAH - Late diagnosis, nobody cares
I'm(29) relatively low contact with my family. It's been that way for most of my adult life. Not because of any big incident or transgression, but because over time I came to realise that being around them was bad for me.
Growing up, my mom struggled with bi polar disorder - which was first triggered as a result of the post-partum depression she suffered after having my little sister. From my perspective, her personality changed drastically over those years. She went from an ally/confidant to a scary, unstable wildcard and, as I got older, eventually became an enemy. When I was little her behaviour, while manic, would range anywhere from repainting the downstairs of our house while we were asleep to getting it in her head that she needed to drive her car into a wall with all of us in it (my eldest sister stopped her).
These days I just try to avoid her. She's stable now. But during my 20s she was inexplicably cruel, mean, and manipulative and whenever I would try to confront her on that she would play the victim and I would look like the aggressor. Ultimately I decided she wasn't worth having an active relationship with, and gradually faded away from the family.
My older sister, lets call her Sonia(31), reached out to me a few years back wanting to reconnect. By this point I basically never visited home anymore - and since all of my sisters (one younger, two older) continued living with our parents throughout their twenties, that meant I never saw them either. She'd gotten married, had a couple of kids, and in the wake of Covid decided that family was important - so we started meeting up, going on walks, and talking things out.
From her perspective, my disconnection from the family was my fault and the result of my unresolved trauma. She would use that phrase repeatedly. As a teenager I saw a therapist over 'anger issues' and was prescribed Prozac. She describes me during that time as 'scary.' I was bigger than all of them, prone to outbursts, and seemed to bristle at all times. I was never violent, but she says she feared me regardless. To be honest, I was afraid of myself.
In my twenties I sought help for depression, anxiety, and these 'anger issues.' I learned about CBT, took an emotional inventory, and tried my best to work through it. It was helpful. But the depression lingered, as did the 'anger issues.' Eventually, after a failed suicide attempt, I just accepted both as part of my life.
At the tail end of Covid, Sonia made this attempt to reconnect with me. Over time my conversations with her started to feel like conversations with my mom - in that I would always come away from them feeling terrible about myself, like something inside me was broken and the sharp edges of it were hurting people. Throughout this, I was trying to get her to understand that my reasons for going low contact had nothing to do with unresolved trauma, 'anger issues,' or anything that happened then, and were simply a result of not wanting to be around mom as she is now. She was not receptive.
All of us spent our childhoods protecting mom. Insulating her from the effect she was having on us, lest that realisation cause a relapse that would see her taken away from us again. We all got very adept at hiding emotions, and re-framing emotional situations so as to 'manage the vibe' in the house. As I got older I started to see this behaviour as toxic and no longer wanted to participate. I would call mom out on the weird, hurtful shit she said, and inevitably one of my sisters would jump to her defence, regardless of context.
In our final conversation, Sonia said my low contact status was a way to punish mom for our childhoods. I disagreed. Sonia said some hurtful things. I went no contact with her. That was three years ago.
In those three years, I've gone back to college (dropped out in my teens). I'm a year away from a degree. After struggling a lot in first year, I approached the counseling service. Through them I was able to see an OT, and eventually get assessed for ADHD and ASD. Turns out I have both. After going through an exhaustive personal history with a psych, it's likely my 'anger issues' were emotional dysregulation caused by autistic burnout. Essentially I've been masking my whole life and I didn't know that - so whenever I ran out of energy to mask I would have a meltdown.
This has shaken me a little. I never felt like I had 'anger issues.' That always felt like something I was told, but didn't fit my perception of myself. I didn't feel 'angry.' I felt profoundly sad and alone. So to hear a medical professional lay out this alternative explanation that resonated much more closely with my subjective identity was transformative.
When I saw the therapist as a teenager, she was keen to drill down on my issues and find a diagnosis, but when she relayed her theories to my mom, mom pulled me from therapy. Her greatest fear was me turning out to have a mental disorder and her being blamed. So it turns out I likely could've received this diagnosis twenty years ago and gotten treatment. And let me tell you, taking ADHD meds for the first time this year was earth shattering for me. I never knew I could feel this calm. I never knew I wasn't calm before. I thought that constant edge and anxiety I experienced was just how people felt. It's re-contextualised so much of my life and honestly I grieve for those decades where I was adrift and just trying to not be anyone's problem.
I told my family and nobody cares. They're not interested in rehashing the past, have no intention of re-framing their perception of me, and don't really care that I've been suffering all this time. Which, to be honest, I expected, but it still hurt to have it confirmed. They still think my low contact/no contact status is me punishing them for a difficult childhood. They still think my attitude towards mom is retribution for traumas rendered. And they still think I'm just an angry guy who refuses to 'get along.' Basically, they think I'm an asshole.
So what do you think?