Since Asperger’s Syndrome seems to be transferred mostly from parents to their children, which in reality is just a transfer of a genetic configuration; sometime ago I started to analyze my father’s behavior, to see if he could be an Aspie too.
To my surprise, he always showed characteristics of Asperger’s in his ways! But since Asperger’s Syndrome was “discovered” in the 80’s, my father was always considered just weird, and he never had the chance to be “diagnosed” with Asperger’s, as a way to understand better his own personality.
Yet it seems to me Asperger’s got in the way between my father and me. Since I am an Aspie, I also have a “weird” personality and behaviors, so to my father I was simply born with a failed brain, rather than being a son like his father.
You see, my father considered himself normal, and complained that other people were acting weird and wrong. He never thought of him being the different one, so when his son showed signs of being different from what is expected from a child, he thought his son was born failed, with a not normal brain.
Because of this, my father and me never had a good communication and interaction, leading this to becoming distant from each other, to the point that now, and for several years, we don’t talk to each other anymore.
I must admit it is me the one who doesn’t want to talk with him anymore, mostly motivated by the memories of being considered “failed” by my own father while I was growing up and living my younger years; so I just live my life and let him live his, while trying to better understand the wiring of my brain, and telling others through this blog what Asperger’s really means.
It is a sad situation, but knowing what Asperger’s means in a persons brain and his/her interaction with others, and by knowing my father’s behaviors from the past years, I just concentrate in my relationship with my son, who also has Asperger’s, to avoid the problems my father and I had in the past.
Maybe one day we will talk again, or maybe we never will, and one of us will depart from life, denying forever the possibility of reconnecting with each other; but at least the chain from Aspie father to Aspie son will exist between my son and me.
Raul
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