Growing up with high functioning Autism (better known as Aspergers at the time) was never easy. While I was able to overcome the many challenges through many years of speech and physical therapy, I was mostly able to because of my mother. Despite these victories over problems with speech and motor skills, I always felt so lost. Before finding out about my aborted sibling, I thought my disability was the reason why I felt so lost and disconnected. To this day, I still have a hard time picking up certain cues and reading certain social situations. But as I got older I realized there was something deeper that wounded my family and impacted my story.
Like many people, I grew up with an absent father. Instead of being present, making amazing memories, and teaching me important life lessons, he was either working or having multiple affairs behind my mother’s back. The little time that he was around, he was angry and would be emotionally or even sometimes physically abusive. My mother wanted my sister and me to have our father in our lives, which is why she put up with him amidst the abuse.
My father had a past life that even his family didn’t know about. It wasn’t until I was 22 years old that I found out from my aunt about my father’s abortion. During my father’s first marriage, he had an affair and became pregnant with another woman. Upon discovering that my father was pregnant, she chose to have an abortion with my half-sibling. I was heartbroken and full of rage at the same time because when I found out, I felt like my father didn’t care about anybody except himself, and this was reflected in his actions.
Suddenly, I now knew why I always felt dead and lost inside. My father’s choices affected me in my childhood, but now I realized his actions resulted in the loss of a sibling I will never know. I tried to confront my father about the truth I learned that day, and this resulted in a huge argument. He didn’t apologize then, and he still has not apologized for what he did to me, my sibling, or the women he abandoned.
Because I want to heal and move on from these horrible feelings, I forgave him in my heart. I still struggle with the brokenness, loss, and feeling dead inside not only from my disability but also the loss of my sibling. Never knowing if it would be a brother or sister. If they would be there for me and love me as a big brother or sister would do. If they would have families of their own by now. Where would they be?
Still, I choose to hope.
Sean R.