Yesterday was Father’s Day, which I cannot celebrate. Today is Autistic Pride Day and June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, which I embrace. It was also the Baltimore Pride Festival yesterday. I put on a Noncompliance is a Social Skill shirt and made an “Autistic Disabled LGBTQ+ Pride” sign, and trekked off. For some, those celebrations aren’t mutually exclusive, but for me, Father’s Day is not one I can celebrate with the others.
“it was said they loved the stars”
It was said they loved the stars:
Enough to carry stardust ever so gently in
pockets lined with meteorite shards, wrapped
in wax paper for fire-starting, a return to origins.
I also wore a B’tzelem Elohim genderqueer Star of David patch. I am a genderqueer and nonbinary Jew-in-progress. B’tzelem Elohim. [Created] in the image of G-d. Not a mistake. Never was, never will be. Some in my life have said otherwise, including my father. I am tired of keeping it a secret online, of indicating the existence of a trauma history but being afraid of saying why.
Enough to try and forgive the father who left burn
marks in the wake of their scarring scorching (re)actions
Who sharply laid blame at their feet and swore
on the flames consuming all the mistakes made
Some in my life have said I’m a mistake and worthless, including the reason I cannot celebrate Father’s Day. I did try to work it out and possibly forgive him, but he never was sorry. I was never the child he wanted. I was never “normal.”
I had a hard time making friends. I said things that didn’t match my tone. I took things literally. I went on long, excited infodumps about extremely passionate interests of mine. I had meltdowns. I had shutdowns. I was fidgety and hyperactive. I had attention issues and problems at school. I had a hard time with conventional communication and reading body language/tone. And over time, I became insolent, aggressive, and volatile, following years of his verbal and emotional abuse.
My disability traits don’t actually matter here, because I never deserved it. Sometimes, that’s hard to remember, because all of that told me I don’t have inherent value as a person. And other things exacerbated his treatment of me, like the occasions he had too much to drink. Through the years, I blocked it out. It floated back in late teenage years, when it was safer to do so. So I tried talking about it: “When you do X, I feel Y.” Then: “If you don’t stop yelling at me, I will end my visit and go home.” I concluded that nothing I did would make that happen. After college, I finally gathered up my nerve.
And also enough to face their father and walk away from the
words and epithets of (dis)grace and turn their face to
G-d instead, found among the shul’s engraved Stars of David
And in the Etz Chayim prayer’s high note of A-do-nai,
And in notes before and after, calling upwards
Enough to embrace what is cold and distant to our eyes,
points in space where no one could ever reach, the fiery fusion
of atoms we can’t get get close to.
During college and since then, I’ve relied on a multitude of things to get me through. I found pride in being disabled and autistic. I found words for my gender identity. I made and still have friends. I stopped talking to my father. I adopted a cat. I found a psychiatrist who treats me like a person, and believes me about things. I began converting to Judaism, where I am finding coping methods in the ritual and prayer.
And I will never be able to celebrate Father’s Day. I hope everyone knows that it’s okay if they can’t, either. Or if they have to pretend so nothing bad happens. Or if they just have complicated feelings. I hope you can celebrate whatever you need to, commit whatever acts of rebellion you need to.
Autistic pride is my rebellion; the personal and the political. Not just against cure culture and ableism, but everything he disparaged. Autistic pride says my life is mine, that there are so many things he never took from me. That if I have pride in being autistic, disabled, and LGBTQ+, maybe I can have pride in the rest of myself. I try to celebrate myself, in the hopes that I will eventually feel like enough. I try to celebrate myself, because there are so many things I am and so many things I love.
It was said they loved the stars
It was said they loved the stars, and it was enough.
Paginated Thoughts 