And >BOOM!<, there I went again

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Bear with me for a bit, the meat of my post is in the 4th and 5th bigger paragraphs.

So, this morning I felt optimistic and good about myself, because I had promised myself to begin this day afresh with a clean slate and a new, positive attitude. (I chose this day because it's the first of the month, and I'm obsessed with nice initial numbers for new beginnings -it also coincided nicely with my message board join date on another forum, which is May 2nd).

But I digress.

My father -whom I live with until I can find myself a home of my own- is an alcoholic. He basically just neglects himself (thank goodness he is not agressive), and he is a wreck physically and psychologically. He gets help from a social worker, but he gets next to no sympathy from me because he was never there for me when I was little.
He is frustrated about his own life because it didn't work out. He tends to express this frustration by randomly shouting at my Mom (who LIVES elsewhere but often visits for a bit (again, he is not agressive).

But this is all just background. Please believe me when I say that my father's erratic behaviour is a source of irritation for me, and has been since I was very small. He is also very much obsessive compulsive. I don't see it as my concern to try to help him, I think it best for me to move out of his house as soon as possible. I have contacted a center that helps people with disorders to find work and housing, and I'm searching on my own as well, so this is not the problem I need help with solving.

This IS:

This morning, while I felt positive, and then heard my father randomly shouting while speaking to my mother, I flipped. It sort of built. I couldn't take the annoyance, and I wouldn't, so I threw my two porcelain ash trays (I don't smoke, but used them as feeding plates for a pigeon a while back) down the stairs, shattering in shards, of course. This did not sit well with my father, naturally. He made a couple of comments, which only served to stoke me up some more, so I ran down the stairs and emptied a bottle of vinegar in my father's bed. I also threw one of his full wine bottles against the wall. I even wanted to hurt him with a broomstick, but my mother managed to dissuade me. This is all to the real, and while I am typing this, I realise full well how terrible it all sounds, but sadly, this type of scenes are scattered throughout my young life.

What frustrates me now is that even though I have told myself time after time "I don't want to give in to the frustration and the rage, I want to be reasonable", I have failed each time. What does this say about me? That I have a weak will or a weak character? Or am I simply not trying hard enough whenever I have a 'setback' like this? Heaven knows I'm lazy. I would really, really like input from some of you guys to know how you deal or have dealt with your frustrations in relation to autism. Becaue right now, I have no clue how to predict myself or correct myself.

I post this in this sub-forum because I felt it wasn't as severe to put it in the Haven or as private to put it in the Members Only forum.

Thanks.

im not gonna tell you what to do but ive completley disowned my dad. i cant roll with a dude who likes himself more than the three he created. basically one day i will know he willregret it, and we will have the last laugh. hajajahaha, -_-

Same. Except I don't feel that my dad likes himself very much. But he is 69 years old and gets arrested for breaking into homes and businesses, and he is not anyone I want to associate myself with so I disowned him a couple years ago. He conned my little brother (he's 21) into giving him the phone the other day so he could try talking to me. I cannot make myself be completely mean to my parents no matter how hard I try, so I was just very short and vague with my responses to him and then when he said "I love you, son," I only said "Uh huh, OK" and then hung up.

To the OP: sorry, not trying to threadjack you, but richardbenson's post reminded me of myself and I had to reply. To you, I say, get your own place as soon as possible and run. When you live on your own and don't rely on your parents anymore, it makes severing ties much easier to do if that is the route you decide to take.

I don't think this is representative of weak character at all. You're taking the right steps towards moving out and it takes a good degree of bravery to do that. I was very lonely when I left home. And you're trying plenty hard. The fact that you're even posting this should show you that you care about the issue and want to find some way to fix it.

Your heart is in the right place, but you're dealing with something in the way you process things that nobody NT would understand. On paper maybe it looks bad to you. Dad was shouting at Mom. But to you, this kind of noise is almost intolerable. Further, what he was yelling may have gone against your strong sense of social justice. Lacking an immediate outlet for it and unable to stop yourself from fixating on it, it builds and builds and leads to the logical conclusion. You're not morally deficient because of that.

You can't undo this. But don't beat yourself up over it. To answer your question on how I deal with it: Think 'So what'? You fell down. Big deal. It won't be the last time this happens to you. I know this might sound trite and pat, but just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go forward. Forgive yourself. This is NOT a reflection on your personality. If I can't stop thinking about it, I try to channel the thoughts into something I can take action on and AWAY from re-triggering the emotion upheaval. Try to think of something that you learned from this, no matter how small. Maybe you learned "I should have THIS special interest ready as a distraction if this happens again" or even "I need a set of earplugs". Only you can find this. If you are one who can direct your obsession, obsess over finding something small to learn out of it. For me, I kept collecting these 'learned behaviors' as I went through life.

I am starting to see the theme of Aspies having a hard time controlling tempers. Me, I always broke doors. I was too scared to hurt someone (kept thinking about lawsuits), so I took my frustrations out on objects. But, doors are expensive to repair or replace. I always thought they'd hold up because they were solid oak, but I was wrong.

Either way, as i got older, I picked up the nasty smoking habit. But it has helped me control my behavior when angry. Instead of chaotic behavior, I escaped the situation for a cigarette, and then would obsessively rant in my head about the whole situation (which at times could take hours of chain smoking).

I'm 30 now, and I have built a nice tolerance to things, which is awesome because i now have kids. I can walk into the living room and find vaseline all over the room and my kids (who are one and two), and also a brand new bag of cereal dumped all over the floor in a room I just cleaned and find the cereal stuck on the vaseline on my kids. Most people would start cussing and freaking out whereas I just laugh. In fact, the vaseline did wonders on my 2 year old's face, so I figure I should start using that more as a skin care product. I just need to store it a little more strategically. Either way, I don't get mad easy anymore, and when I do, it doesn't seem like it builds too much anymore either.

Only exception, my sister. I bet your father is like my sister like it's just one of those personalities that triggers your crazy temper spells. Guess what, my sister's son is Aspie, and she triggers his temper tantrums easier than anyone else on this earth. So most likely, your father would have a similar effect on the majority of people on this forum if they were forced to live with someone like him. What I've found therapeutic lately is just accepting my sister is totally irrational more often than not. I've tagged her with irrational, and now she's stuck living with that label for the rest of her life and it would take a lot on her part to prove to me otherwise to change it. But that word seems to bring about other people who know her to agree to that word being a great label for her, so therefore, I realize for the first time in my life that I'm not the psycho...she is. Of course, psychotic behavior is contagious, so that's why I act pscyhotic around her. Only she can make me that way.

But now I have this label for her, and we have it going for about 2 weeks now. She's not speaking to me right now. A couple days ago, she called me on the phone to tell me some things, one of which was the status of her application to get a sales position at her workplace. She's a sales assistant and applied for a sales opening about a week ago. I guess they called her in the office to tell her they weren't going to consider her because she has no real sales experience, but then she rebutted them with certain arguments, one of which was that she believes in the product. This is cable advertising. So, anyway, she's telling me on and on about how awesome cable advertising is, and at some point, she said that all businesses would benefit from cable advertising for any need and radio advertising was completely useless. Keep in mind our father who was one of the best salesmen to ever live sold radio advertising all his life, and he passed away in 1999, and I put him on the pedestal because I am totally a daddy's girl. So, I, being the Aspie I am, had to correct her and say, "no, it depends on the purpose of advertising and the target market." Well then she argued with me, and her argument was I couldn't give her an example of how, but she refused to give me a chance to give an example. When I would start, she would interrupt before so she wouldn't lose her argument. About all I got out is cable is great for branding purposes, and then things like seniors read newspapers more than watch tv and the ads more in papers than tv, and also your college students are better with facebook and myspace than tv. Oh, yeah, I got out that cable doesn't do promotional events like radio which you would need radio to do things, in this area, like Relay for Life. I wasn't yelling or calling her names, and I did make a point to agree with certain things she said including that cable does serve a great purpose in advertising. Either way, it dawned on her in her own rant that she has yet to finish her story about herself and blamed me for not caring about what happens to her at her workplace because she wouldn't let us move on to the rest of her story, so then she called me a stupid f-ing b word and hung up the phone. Usually, I wouldn't be able to function after an argument like this until I got closure, but this time, it's different. I really don't care if she wants to talk to me or not. She's irrational, and you just can't argue rational concepts with irrational people.

Now when she does yell at my mom, I say my peace, which usually ticks her off enough to put her into a crazy temper tantrum, but I say my peace calmly and logically and rationally, and then walk away from it. Since she likes to act like a victim all the time, I shift it to make it sound like she's emotionally abusing my mom (who is getting too old for it) making my mom the victim and her the bad guy, which again, ticks her off, but she usually doesn't bother my mom much for a while after that in fear that I will manipulate the situation to make her sound bad. Well so far so good, but I'm sure it will come to an end like all good things.

It's funny like I am learning from her and using her tricks against her. Like she still tells people I tried to kill my nephew when she was pregnant with him, but what happened was she wanted to take a shower while I was in the shower taking one, and she tried to go into the shower while I was in it naked with shampoo in my hair to turn off the water, and I wasn't expecting it, and I tried to push the hands away (which was covered with the shower curtain) as a reflex jerk, and it ended up pushing her back, not even that hard as she was on the floor exactly where she stood, so I'm still not certain if I pushed her or if she just lost balance and fell, or if she threw herself on the floor to be overdramatic. So you see how awful she twists that truth. Either way, now, when she yells at mom, I say, "you are putting too much stress on mom, and you are taking years away from her life right now, and i know you might be ready to blow her life insurance policy on stupid things, but I want my mom alive as long as possible because I still need her." Then I tell all her friends and acquaintances how she verbally abuses my mother. Again, this is a new thing, but she really hasn't bothered my mom since I've taken things this far.

Either way, I obviously have some emotional attachment to it all, and it still angers me how she is when I think about it, but for the first time in my life, I don't think about it too much, and when I do, I can easily make myself stop. What's even better? I'm not jumping up and down angry. Just slightly peeved. But I do continuously try to be nice to her and things like that. Even though she's not talking to me, I remember her wanting my mom to sing at her wedding her favorite song my mom sings, Oh HOly Night, but since it's not Christmas time, she didn't do it. But, i just found on my computer where I saved a recording of my mom singing that song (as well as the whole CD my mom made for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary with her sister), so I'm planning to burn a copy and mail it to my sister. I tried emailing the song but it won't attach as it's too large, which I don't understand because it doesn't look like it would be. Either way, we aren't on speaking terms, but I'm still being nice. I figure at some point, she'll feel bad enough to apologize and we'll make up. More than likely, I'll apologize too even though I didn't do anything wrong, but I'm used to that. I've been apologizing to her all my life for things I never did.

I think I just finally got to a point where there are more important things than the principle of it all. I don't have to prove myself right all the time, and other people are allowed to be stupid. The concept of a peaceful family is much more important, but only to an extent. I refuse to pitter patter on eggshells around her emotions. But at the same time, there's a difference between rocking the boat and sinking it. I guess the best way to look at it is while you may not agree with a war, if you were forced to fight in it, as the enemy is shooting at you, you get to a point where you say it's more important to survive your deployment than to die for a principle, so no matter how against the war you may feel, you will end up shooting back at some point. No matter how hard you disagree with your father, think one, he's irrational, so there's not much you can do about that. Two, pick your battles wisely with him. Three, when you do choose to battle him, don't do it out of anger. Calm yourself down first and then approach the situation, at least until you get to a point where you can be angry and fake like you are not. Nobody will take you seriously when they think you are mad, so every point you make goes ignored, no matter how right you are. Best thing is to either not be mad, or fake like you aren't that mad. Of course, learn from the enemy and use their own weapons against them. Don't run out and be an alcoholic, but the behaviors your father does that drives you crazy, you can dish it right back in his direction, but with a little more poise and dignity as you don't want to stoop to his level.

I guess you have to decide when he dies, which is more important to you? Having any memory of being with him, or having none. If every minute of your day is so bad that you would rather have no memory of this man, then when you move, I would seriously limit contact with him. But if it's a mixture of good memories and bad ones, maybe you might decide the good memories are worth it to deal with the bad.

I do think you need to face all the issues you have with him in the past and somehow somewhat forgive him for it. I had to do that with my sister. I didn't start by talking to her about it. I talked to my mom about it first. I thought about it a lot too. I organized my thoughts and shifted blame around many times (sometimes even to myself). After about a year of doing that, I finally brought some things up to my sister, and we talked about it (and I did break them up in different conversations which was another year almost). Finally, I some how found some closure to it. I can't say I totally forgive her for all she's done to me, and I know I will never forget it, but I've managed to make peace with it somehow. And it was very therapeutic to flat out tell her some of the things she has done that really bothered me. But I wouldn't know what they were if I didn't think about it first, which took a year of doing. Some of the things she said helped me with it, but some of the things i knew she was lying, but I didn't care. Just telling her was enough for me. It wasn't when we were arguing, but when we were getting along. And, I approached it with caution, like "I dont' mean for this to sound bad, but you do tend to .... like when you ..... and that really bothered me when you did that."

I'm sorry this was so long. I'm still quite emotionally attached to the subject of my sister, so the more I attempt to edit, the more I tend to add instead. I didn't want to take my sister out of the post because she's the one that I've had the hardest time controlling my emotions over. Everybody else was a piece of cake. So, I'm sorry I couldn't find a much shorter way of saying all I said. If you did read this far, thank you for your patience. I do wish the best for you.

Same here. Rather than hit people, I hit doors and walls. For many years we had doors with big holes in them, and my father often had to replace sheetrock in the walls because either me or my brothers would bust a door or a wall when angry. For the record, I have AS and my older brother most likely does as well, and we get this temper and other things from our mother who also likely has AS. My little brother I'm not really sure of, he's just a little punk so I'm not too sure about him yet.

Tantybi, thank you for your response. Sorry I took over 24 hours to get back on this. It's good to read your views on the matter in relation to your own personal experiences.

Although I live in my father's house, we kind of live alongside each other, as opposed to 'with' each other. I have my room upstairs, and he has the ground floor. Months pass that we don't say a word to each other. My tantrums have become rare, but I still accumulate rage and have to release it every once in a while. It's not often that my father and I engage in a real row. I wouldn't have the opportunity to put a new, calm and rational strategy to the test, let alone hone it.

In the past, I have sometimes tried to repair my relationship with my father in my own clumsy, perhaps half-hearted way. When I was 18, I said to myself, 'I'm an adult now'. I'm above tantrums and irrational irritations. So, I also decided to open up to my father just a little. I said 'good morning' and 'goodbye' and all those little things. No real conversations, but this 'truce' if you will, barely lasted a week. Then, I got angry about a little thing, and it was all over.

So now, we have arrived at a point where I feel uncomfortable even talking to my father, and vice versa. It's a strange situation, I admit. As for forgiving him, I realise that he is irrational because of the mental damage the alcohol abuse has left him with. I know he isn't the man he was when my mother met him. He was an artist, and he knew a lot about physics, and as I enjoyed drawing and was into biology when I was a child, I eventually felt that I had to pick up what he had thrown away. Related to this, I was planning to add his first name to my names later this year, sort of in his honour, or in the honour of who he used to be. This doesn't change that I am still very angry at him for letting himself go like that when I was a child, or that I still find his behaviour very irritating.

When I move, I do plan on never having any contact with him again. Perhaps a bit selfishly, I feel that I don't need to, because of the irreversible state he's in, and the fact that he sort of lives on in me.

A reason that all this frustrates me all the more, is that I am already 22 years old, so I think people may expect of me that I act maturely. I certainly expect that from myself, but I don't always do it. Here on the forum, I try to come across as a very together and laid-back person, even if I'm sometimes a neurotic wreck off-line.

My anger also - but rarely- manifests outside. Quite recently, I chased a cyclist who called me a name when I wasn't paying attention while crossing the cyclist's strip. I failed to push him off his bike, but there would have been a fight if I had.

I know the feeling well, CyclopsSummers. You get all ready to start fresh and anew with a good attitude, and someone sabotages it, and boom. Your day is ruined. I sometimes feel like my parents go out of their way to sabotage me. I particularly cannot stand my mother, who repeatedly shows herself to be incompetent and uncaring. She doesn't care if she screws up my life or makes more work for me or my father. I see myself doing extra work because of something she did or something she can't be bothered to do right, and I just get pissed off. It just festers over time and eventually I have a blowup about it.

LOL on the cyclist. I still have my moments too. The most recent one was I was at a Burger King and tried to drive thru. I woke up wanting the BK wrapper (love those things), so I made my snoring husband watch the 1 year old (who was snoring too) and I grabbed the two year old and went. Mind you, I'm in pajamas, and the two year old was wearing a diaper and a t-shirt barefoot. I go to the drive thru, and they refuse to accept debit cards in the drive thru because their machine was down, but they would take them inside. I kept begging for them to use a different register so I wouldn't have to carry my two year old inside, but they wouldn't do it. Lazy huh? So, I park and go in carrying my two year old. I plopped her butt on the counter and made my order (which this one I would understand, but no, you'll see what I mean). So I order for myself, my daughter, and my husband. While waiting for the food, they handed me two empty cups for me to get my own beverage. So I walk with my daughter in my arms, my car keys, wallet, and cups to the drink area and tried laying out my cups underneath to fill one handed, but no, their metal wire frames were too wide to hold any cup upright. So, being the flexible double jointed person I am, and the creative problem solver (and nobody is offering to help me mind you), I propped my knee up on the metal tray that sits out a little farther than the counter that has the soda machine on it. My daughter is on my thigh with my arm wrapped around her as I pour my sodas. I finish, but then, I'm kinda stuck because I had to hold these sodas, and I forget why I opted not to lay them down on the tray which I think was for the same reason I didn't plop my daughter on it, it was disgusting with red goo all over it. So I do this creative thing with all my stuff in my hands (wallet, car keys, and two sodas) with my arm wrapped around my daughter, and I lean back letting her slide to my hip, and then I lifted my knee up to prop the bottom of my foot on the edge of the tray, and then I jerked my leg up without moving my foot to kinda give her a boost, and then I grab her mid air with my arm so it's under her butt (not her back where it was) so that I can carry her again with one arm. I was actually very impressed with myself. Anyway, the fattest ugliest guy you would ever see walk this earth asks me if I always smear the bottom of my shoe on everything in my house. I wasn't realizing at first what he was getting at. I am aspie. So, he asks me again but this time adding, "Is your house so messy that you use your feet on everything?" I of course responded that my house was cleaner than the Burger King still clueless that he's complaining. Then, after he repeats himself a couple times with me responding pleasantly (he wasn't going to stop if I continued being pleasant obviously), it finally dawned on me what was going on as the tone of his voice got rude sounding. Then I kind of took it as an anti mom moment. I first asked, "omg, are you complaining?" He answered, so then I unleashed...screaming and cussing. Mid rant, I look at the burger king employees just standing there allowing this guy to harass me and I said, "See, this is why I told you in the drive thru that it would be a million times easier for you to ring my order up from a different register than to make me come in and do it because now I have to deal with idiots like this guy." This guy wouldn't stop, and he would do that whole "I'm better than you" type arguing where he's laughing at me and such. I kept using logic. He said I was smearing germs where his food would touch, and I said your food would come wrapped on a tray, and the bottom of my shoe is cleaner than the surface anyway which is why I had to do it the way I did. At some point, I told him I wish he isn't blessed with children, ever, cause he'd suck at being a parent. So, I walk out with my two year old, two burger king bags, two sodas, car keys, and wallet, and then finally someone offers to help and of course, I'm so livid I refuse it. I get to the car and lay the sodas on the hood of my car where they instantly fall on me spilling all over me. The fat guy walks out with his food, to go (all the more frustrating) laughing at me. So then I'm searching for a trash can as I have these bent up cups in my hands with soda going everywhere when I move, and I know they don't have any outside at this burger king which has ticked me off in the past, and I realize that about the time this guy started laughing at me. So, I launched the cups at the burger king building. I put my toddler in the car, and as I try to reverse, this guy walks out in front of my car, on purpose, smiling and laughing. So I aimed at his direction and floored it. Never seen a man his size go from wabble to run as fast as he did. I bet he had the best workout of his life in those 3 seconds. So anyway, I didn't hit him. I'm not sure how much I was trying to, which kinda scares me that I can get that way. But I look at it like this. I wouldn't mess with a big black man in the middle of the ghetto. For the same reasons I wouldn't do that, people need to learn that they shouldn't mess with me. I really am curious if people like him actually think that if they are a jerk like that for no reason that the public is going to respond with kindness and compassion. Given I acted a little more pscyhotic in the case, but I think that guy is the one who needs medication if he thinks no person will respond with aggression when provoked.

I've done better now that I'm back home. Incidents like this happen less often now, and I think it's just because there aren't as many village idiots here as places I've lived before where I had an incident like this on a monthly basis, and probably two lesser incidents a day (something more like your cyclist story). I will say I do have those lesser incidents now maybe once a week, and I don't overreact to those as much as I do the bigger ones.

As far as your father, it sounds to me that you really resent him. Even if you do move out and never talk to your father again, you will always resent him until you learn to make peace with his mistakes.