I went no contact with my parents for six months for a reason that my mother doesn't want to understand. Being diagnosed as autistic at 35 explained a lifetime of difference, but not knowing as a child and adolescent was a breeding ground for being bullied. As a result of the bullying, I developed depression and PTSD, but my mother BLAMED me for the abuse and said that I was weak because of my PTSD. There is a woman who lives nearby who appeared to have had an eating disorder and my mother used to refer to her as "Ana". She also said that her condition was a mental illness (so is PTSD) and stigmatized it.

To provide information from the beginning. Like many kids who had an immigrant parent (even though I didn't), I had my near grandparents and my far grandparents. I visited my near grandparents about three times a week, and I visited my far grandparents when I was taken to visit them, even though they only lived an hour and a half away. My near grandparents were my maternal grandparents, and my grandmother was soft, while my grandfather was a hard man. If I had been diagnosed as autistic at four, my grandmother would have said, "It doesn't matter. You're still my grandson." My grandfather would have said, "Put him in the Army, that'll knock it out of him!" My grandparents had two gay men living beside them, and the older gay man was kinder to my grandmother than my grandfather was.

I remember many a time, my father wanting to see his parents, and as he was the eldest, and also the first to leave home, when he got married, he was pushed out of favor. Okay, my paternal grandparents didn't treat my brother and I equally; I was given $50 and some toys when I was born, and they came and saw me in the hospital, my brother was a few weeks old before they saw him, and they only gave him $20 and a blue elephant. My mother wanted to make it up to him. I didn't ask for much, as a kid, but my mother used to complain that if she took him shopping, he wanted this, that and the other thing. My brother played a lot of sports, and I would get dragged along because my mother was, "We do things as a family."

One day, my mother told me that I went to school, and I came home, but I had no interests. I told her I liked reading and coins, and she snorted at that. I remember a traumatic weekend, in July, 1986, when we had to go to a colleague of my father's house on the Saturday night and their son and I did not get along, and then go and watch my brother play soccer the next day. What would have been nicer would have been if my father had, on the Monday night, when he received the invitation, have waited until his colleague had left for the night and rung my paternal grandparents and said, "We have something to do on Saturday night, and on Sunday, we have to watch his brother play soccer. Peter will be bored out of his mind, unless he's got something to read, so can he come and stay with you this weekend? I'll bring him out after lunch on Saturday, he can stay Saturday night, and collect him Sunday afternoon?" And if they'd said, "Okay," it would have been good. To Dad's colleague's credit, however, when my maternal grandfather accused my mother of favoritism she confided in this colleague, who replied, "But Peter would be bored out of his mind going looking at caravans and going to the football!" I wish, otherwise, my father had been able to say no to this colleague.

Had my mother been more understanding of my mental illness, and not tried simplistic solutions to complicated problems, it would have been different.