"Diary" of an Autistic

Bad news

⚠️Trigger warning⚠️: Vietnam War mentions and me being a depressed little rabbit, these mentions will be in the perspective of a Dove, and this is just what my dad believes, and what influenced mine, so I apologize if anyone reading this gets offended.

Dad's getting worse, and I didn't notice until mom told me. I feel so bad for that. I had to leave the room so I wouldn't get upset or cry in front of her and my stepdad. No need to cause a scene in the morning, but at least she didn't lie to me like she used to. Ugh. Goddammit, I totally want to cry now, but the tears won't come. I'm tired of this, I'm tired of being the strong one. I'm tired of putting on a happy face and acting like everything's fine...because it's not. Someone please kill me. I'm totally not crying right now. Actually, I lied. I am crying and I'm sorry for lying.

I have a confession to make: I'm like Angelica with Eliza. I love my dad more than anything in this life and I'll choose his happiness over mine every time. Ever since my dad got cancer, I've been putting on a happy face and saying that I'm fine. I've been bottling up my feelings and pushing my needs aside in favor of making sure my dad is happy.

The reason why I do this is because I can't tell people how I feel without making them angry and they don't understand to begin with. I fear no one else will understand either, and I fear people will tell me "you don't have a say" or "suck it up, pussy" and get really angry, and for some reason, people tend to get really angry at me when I advocate for my needs.

I don't know why, but this is a big issue for me at school. The teachers, namely Mr. Burns and Mrs. Johnson, are extremely unsympathetic and don't understand my situation and they get angry at me because of this and they get angry when I advocate for my needs. I'll tell you more about the people at my school in a separate chapter, because my blood boils whenever I talk about it, and I'll need some stress food to chomp on while I write it, but I tend to bottle up my feelings at school a lot more than I would at home.

Dad has told me he's happy and he's not sad that he's gonna die because of how good a life he's had and I can tell he's happy, he's calm and he smiles and he loves to spend time with me. However, if I cry in front of him, he will cry too as he's easily triggered by my tears, and I need to be strong enough for the both of us because he'll instantly become sad if he sees I'm sad. He's aware of the teachers at my school giving me a hard time, some days I come home practically in tears, wanting to kill myself, he knows what's going on, but his comforting words and willingness to listen are what make it all ok. Though I usually feel bad for telling him afterward because he's going through a worse time than I am, and here I am ranting about my day and how mean old Mrs. Johnson yelled at me for wanting a break because the students were being douchebags and stressing me out. So I only tell him about my problems if he asks. He doesn't need to know about my day unless he wants to.

I want my dad to think I'm happy before he passes. I don't want his final memories of me to be unhappy ones of me crying all the time. Seeing me happy makes him happy, so if he thinks I'm happy, then he'll die happy, thinking that I'm ok even though I'm internally screaming in anguish all the time.

On a brighter note, we've never been closer as a father-daughter duo together, and it's because of his cancer, that we're so close to each other: cancer brought us together. The cruel reality of it is the cancer is also going to tear us apart. To be honest, I'm really happy that I was able to meet my dad. To live with him and be beside him. This is actually the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. As awkward as this may sound, I would have never gotten to meet him if he hadn't gotten my mom pregnant, and I'm really happy about that too.

I'm like this hybrid, this mix between a woman who is happy and a woman who is pretending to be happy and I can't contain either side. I always feel torn between pushing my needs aside so I won't be pushed around at school and throwing the towel in and angering everyone by telling them how I feel.

I am truly happy around him because he is my friend and my father rolled into one, and everything I am is because of him, but when I see him struggling or in pain, I panic, but I voice my concern and afterwards, put on a mask so the world thinks I'm fine when on the inside, I am internally screaming and sobbing in pure misery and agony. I've been crying as I've written this entry, the tears have been acting like a light switch. I'm in tears for a while, then the tears stop, then they come back. My family just came in to comfort me and made me feel better, so the tears should be off for awhile.

All I want is for my dad to think I'm happy when he dies, so he dies happily, thinking that everything is going to be alright.

My dream of making the world a better place came from my dad. He was the one who inspired that dream because he has the same dream, and his father had that dream too. My dad fought for Civil Rights together with his dad, his mom, his brother, and his sisters. Dad fought to end the Vietnam War because he believed that it wasn't our fight, he thought the domino effect was silly: he didn't think Communism would spread across Asia and Europe like a domino, and he felt that the American soldiers being there weren't protecting democracy, but hurting innocent civilians.

He's like me, he cares for the world, and the whole universe too, and all he wants is for everyone and everything to have a better, happier life, and...when I first learned of his dream, I understood him.

And I loved him.

And I still love him.

And now, I dream the same dream, all thanks to my dad.

I love him.