The Right Mother For Me.

It can be a blasphemous thing to speak ill of one's mother, and I do it sparingly and with deference. To garner some understanding, I'll say that my siblings consider me to be my mother's favourite. Whether there is truth to it or not, there are unintended stresses that fall upon the favourite, namely the obligation to achieve, lest you fall into disfavour with both your mother and your siblings. The former for not remunerating the investment of raising you, and the latter for squandering perceived opportunities not afforded to them instead. From my perspective, I wore the 'favourite' badge by default, because I was simply the last child to sour and spurn the comforts of my childhood home. As an adult watching my own children grow, I've become aware that the childhoods of my siblings are a foreign and unrelatable thing, and if in their opinion I was afforded more opportunity then it is their right to consider it so. I saw glimpses of what my siblings counted as childhood as I grew, but being considerably younger I was unaware of the tumult of adolescence at the time, and warmly enjoyed all the attention and affection that was offered. By the time I reached adolescence myself my mother was a more skilled parent and provider and better judge of character, which led to more of what my sister would call 'getting it right,' but as time passed for us all, I came to accept that whether or not there was any favouritism occurring, the perception of it was enough to manifest such an arrangement.

Being in this position was easy when it came to gifts, transport, entertainment, and all things reinforcing, but what was not as apparent to my siblings and to my mother herself, was the weight of expectation on a child who essentially 'had it all.' The consistent high-standard of school work was missing, the lack of impetus for self care and grooming, the unawareness of ways I could be helping my mother - now sole parent - to maintain our home and lifestyle. I had become a boy without many barriers, but I was soberly miserable for all the things expected of me that I was simply not doing. I never agreed to do these things, and never signed up for endless rigorous work. My smarts were enough to let me coast through my school life and I was satisfied with that. You could have described me as a 'woke' person and I honestly saw no need to follow the standard school and careers path recommended me. None of the objectives set out by other people reflected anything I wanted from my life, and I withdrew into a cranky and self-focused funk which held fast for another decade.

My mother, a woman of principle and industry, struggled the way parents do with a child who is unwilling, unmotivated, uninterested, uninspired; an un-kid. She and I endured copious rows about responsibly and what my future would be like, especially if I continued to do nothing but play video games and fly off the handle when things didn't go my way. (That's the 'favourite's' sense of entitlement kicking in.) Everything she said to me made sense, but it was diametric to what I wanted, and being an adolescent did not help me appreciate the reasoning behind her comments. She was right of-course, but that means very little to kid who just wants to reach the next save-point. It's difficult to negotiate from the position I was in, where everyone around thought I needed a reality-check, not knowing that I thought the same about them. The world was a pointless thing full of pointless people doing pointless jobs, all for the pointless purpose of maintaining that very pointless cycle.

Right now I'm hoping that you've sided squarely with my mother on this, and think I behaved like a brat. You have the same degree of understanding that she did when I was growing up, the understanding that there is nothing wrong with this child and there is no reason he should be so difficult, stubborn, unappeasable and unreasonable. If only I wasn't diagnosed with Autism-Spectrum-Disorder at thirty years of age, you might have good reason to hold such a perspective. Prior to my diagnosis, my life and desire to remain in command of it had been slipping away for several years. I had struggled against ongoing major depressive episodes, self harm, alcoholism, and what I call 'socio-demographic dysphoria.' My mother, bastion of organisation and support that she is, must have grabbed a hold of herself like she'd never done before in her life, and turned to really look at me. Whatever it was that allowed her to see the losing struggle taking place, I'm grateful for it. I can't say exactly when, but she changed. My mother changed who she was and what she thought, to help save my life. Where she once touted hard work as the the right path to take, she now endorsed flexible learning approaches. Where she once would tell me about forming good and productive habits, she now tells me about new studies she's read into mentally enriching lifestyle changes. She has gone from condemning video games as degenerative wastes of intellect, to seeing virtue in their objective-based progression, and facilitating growth through exposure to abstract problem solving situations. I know who my mother is, but fifteen-year-old me would hardly recognise her as the same woman. She has become my fiercest advocate, and my most trusted confidante. Most uplifting of all, is knowing how many years of 'old-school' advice and instruction she abandoned for the sake of being a better mother for the child that she had, rather than being an excellent mother for a child she didn't.

I'm thirty-five now, and my own children are entering their teens. My mother is still ploughing ahead, researching and learning about the way my mind works, and doing a damned good job of preparing me for what's ahead in life for my own Autistic child. She has made herself available at any hour to advise and support me on any thing. She has become resilient and patient to a degree I would have never expected she could be. She has stepped back when it was best for me, and stepped in when needed, she has availed herself to all the information that she can find about how the world affects me differently to most people. My mother has grown wiser for me, she has grown kinder for me, and she has surrounded me, herself, and my family, in a bubble of patience and understanding that makes the world outside it ever so much more tolerable. She wrapped me in a blanket as a baby to keep me warm, and wrapped me in a blanket as a bleeding mess of a man to keep me alive. She has nerve and resolve that is seldom seen outside of heroic fiction, and she asks for nothing in return. Since I've had the privilege of seeing the new kind of mother she's sought to become, I've noticed how she's been sculpting herself to meet the needs of my siblings too. I noticed it the most when she made accommodations for me - being the favourite, - but increasingly I see her diverge from the mother I remember in my youth to become more receptive and supportive of all her children. Our interests have outstripped what we could foresee in our infancy, our minds have all spread to occupy vastly different spaces, and our families have all budded from different soils, but whenever I look, I see her toiling at herself, learning new skills and approaches to be the very best kind of person she can be, to give us all the strongest support she can in the most tailored way she can. I'm not much like my siblings. I'm not much like anyone. But mum still found me. And still, with me as an adult, she works tirelessly to help me find myself.

Although circumstances in my life have caused me to move further away, and I see less of my mother now, I always feel the kindness and warmth she provides. She changed herself to make sure she never let me down. That's a sterling example I hope I can follow. An example that proves she is absolutely deserving of the most sacred title any person can bestow; "mother."