There are a lot of things that people don’t know about me. Not that I am trying to hide anything – there are just some things that take awhile to explain – and some things that people just won’t understand. I guess I look at what I am about to write as one of those things that take a long time to explain. There are always a lot of questions about this if I ever bring it up and so I usually don’t. I will bring it up if I can identify with someone in a similar situation. There is a certain connection that comes with being in certain situations. So, if you didn’t know this about me, please don’t think I’ve been hiding it. It’s a huge open door in a person who stays kind of closed.
I come from a suburban New Jersey family. From the age of five until the age of 10 it was just me and my brother (my best friend in the world next to my husband). Then, to add to the already dysfunctional world in which I lived, my parents decided to adopt another child.
**disclaimer: I have nothing against adoption and do not think that what my parents attempted to do was wrong – in my case, it just added to the already volatile situation called my family**
So, along came another brother. He was autistic. At ten, I learned a lot about autism. As a matter of fact, by the time I was thirteen, I was speaking on panels at Rutgers about being a sibling of an autistic child. I remember one audience member saying (in front of everyone) that the answers from the panel seemed scripted. They weren’t. We (the siblings of autistic children) lived in a world where terms like “behavior modification”, “self-stimulation”, “positive reinforcement”, and “IEP” were as common as kool-aid, happy days, and kickball to other kids.
My new brother was six. He didn’t know how to feed himself. He didn’t talk. He wouldn’t let you near him and would scratch and bite you if you got too close. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? I still have a purple-ish mark on my forearm where my brother bit me. He especially liked to go after my mother - probably because she did the most work with him. She would have to wear leather gloves while she tried to feed him just so he couldn’t bite and scratch up her hands. Eventually, through a lot of hard work, my brother learned to feed himself quite well. He also could talk in simple phrases and dress himself with some prodding. He made a lot of progress, but it wasn’t easy.
So hey! Why not do it again?! And three years later, we did. My parents adopted a very sweet seven year old who was neurologically impaired. He was a cake walk compared to my other brother. He could do all of the normal stuff, he was just kind of “slow.” However, during this time, a lot of family attention went to my two new brothers leaving me and my natural brother on our own. It was hard. We missed out on a lot of the normal things that families do. I didn’t realize how much this affected me until I started therapy (about two years ago) and started to understand the way I look at things.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t resent my brothers. The situations that they were taken from would make you sick. Imagine a two year-old locked in a room where Froot Loops were thrown in for your meals while your mom was in the other room shooting up, or sniffing glue or whatever the hell she was doing. Imagine this child taken to the emergency room severely malnourished, with dead hair, lice, and God knows what else.
Or, how about a newborn who just cried and cried, so his dad clocked him over the head enough times to actually change the shape of his skull – forever. That’s what my brothers went through. I don’t resent them or what my parents did for them. What I’m saying is that it is amazing how things shape your life, your personality, your attitude.
It makes more sense when you know the whole story. That's what I'm working on.
