Still searching...

My father died in August 1980, when he was forty-six years old, he died as a result of his alcoholism, which began from as early as ten years before his death. This is the reason why I do not drink. The dramatic change that alcohol manifested in my father, a man who I idolized above all else, prompted my vow, time and time again, to never touch this poison.

As the years passed on after his untimely death I found out that I suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome, which, the more I delve into his past actions, I am convinced so did he.

Now I wonder if his demise was based not on his drinking but ultimately on the cause for his alcoholic dependency. What I do know, from personal experience, is the difficulty Aspers’ have in rationalizing and trying to live in a world that just does not seem logical, as least to us. And as the years of our life progresses this difficulty builds into almost a physical pain we end up living with from day to day.

Was it this confusion between what-is and what should-be that pushed Dad to find a way out of his pain? Did alcohol supply this refuge? Maybe with the right support system he could have been saved or, maybe he had the right idea, the only way out is to dull the pain of living in a land of strangers.

On nights, when sleep cannot conquer the pain of days past, I wish that a savior would appear and take me to the land of Aspergers Syndrome. Where I am not the odd man out, where I fit the norm, where I understand what’s going on and why, where I feel accepted. Too soon though morning comes and I am back in this alien world that its inhabitants call Earth.

My question for me now, is what support system can I use to dull this pain, a support that I know, regardless of my difference, I’d feel safe to completely let down my always-on interface (that allows me to survive “real” life) and just fully relax giving me time to recharge my soul. From my father’s experience alcohol does not seem the right answer.

For a while there I thought I’d found it…love for another. It helped me survive, and for the first time in my life, or so I thought, I could drop my interface and speak normally. Until my savior found out that I was suffering from Asperger’s, from then on nothing I said had value anymore. And once something has no more value you get rid of it, which was why I ended up being discarded. So love did not work out and now I wonder if my father had the right answer from the start.

So here I am, pass my middle years, still looking for a respite to my pain, which has grown to the extent that some days I have to force myself out of bed in the morning and I’m not winning as many of these morning battles as I used to. My daily hope is that I will find this nirvana but of late more and more my thoughts are coming to the conclusion that there is no such thing.