My name is Alex. I am a 33 year-old programmer, currently residing in Arkansas. I hate it here. No offense to anyone who is from, or currently resides in, this state: I do not hate this place, I hate being away from home. I hate that I feel tied here for life. Hate is not a word I use very often or very lightly, but my contempt for this area is well-founded. The people are friendly, the weather could be cooler, and I wish there was more water; but since arriving here, my life has gone to shit. This is my story, and it is one that will be honest, blunt, and free from sugar-coating or bullshit. It needs to be told, because time is running out. Even now, as I type this out on a laptop with a space bar that no longer functions correctly due to my beautiful 3-year old daughter getting too rough with it, I have a time-bomb ticking in my head. This blog has an ending; and when it ends, be that a year from now or 3 years from now, it will end because my life has ended. But fear not, there is a happy ending for me, regardless of when it arrives. And it is currently seated at the opposite end of my couch.
I'm going to start off with a little bit more about myself, but I promise I will do my best to be both brief and relatively interesting. Again, I am a 33 year-old programmer who is father to a 3 year-old girl. Both my daughter and I have Asperger's Syndrome, which depending on which particular doctor you ask, can be classified as a form of high-functioning Autism or is not Autism at all. Her mother, whom I loved and provided for over the last 5 years, has left me and taken my daughter with her, but not for anything I have done. She cheated, and catching her was all that was necessary to deserve no longer waking up to my daughters smiling face. She then turned her entire family against me, which to my utter dismay, was not very hard to do at all. I assure you, I am not a bad guy; I loved my family with all my heart, I worked long nights until 4 AM at a job I despised to be able to provide for them; I never even considered infidelity; I gave up drinking... the list goes on and on. I did things right.
My relationship with my daughter's mother is pretty cliche': Boy leaves California and heads to Arkanasas to meet a Girl; Boy falls in love with Girl; Boy sells his business to pay for a place for him and Girl to live and invest in what he was told was both of their dreams; Girl gets pregnant and hides it from Boy, who is so buried in work that he affords her the chance to do so; Boy becomes a father over-night, but is there to cut the cord and change the first diaper, committed from the moment he found out; Boy and Girl raise baby; Boy finds out he is a high-functioning Autistic, and has likely passed this on to his little girl; Girl cheats on Boy, and although Boy knows it's going on, sticks by her side and tries to make things work for the sake of their daughter; Girl takes daughter and leaves; Girl then keeps said child from Boy for months, emotionally torturing him with promises of visits that never happen, never letting them spend time together alone; Girl meets another Boy and now suddenly needs Boy to watch his daughter so she is free to stay the night with the new Boy, and the original Boy does so happily; Boy decides that the friend he is getting closer to is someone he wants in his life, and begins dating this new Girl; original Girl mind-fucks Boy some more because she is not happy that he is happy... and that's where we are now.
This all happened over the course of 5 years. My daughter is now 3. I learned about my Autism 2 years ago. I finally got my proof that my ex was cheating on me in October of 2015. I starting spending time with my now girlfriend several months ago, and have very recently decided that I want what she wants: commitment, cuddling, love and affection. As you can imagine, I have had a lot of trouble finding my bearings these last few years. As an Aspie, maintaining a quasi-normal life requires a certain amount of monotony or routine as the days pass, and that is something I have not had the luxury of for way too long. When you add to that the fact that I walk around with a timer over my head - okay, we all do, but I can assure you mine is at a much lower count than most men my age - I cannot say with any certainty that my life will ever provide that sort of repetition again.
Being a father and knowing that, chances are, I will not get to see my child graduate is my own personal Hell. It is unrelenting, and regardless of what movie I watch, what TV show I put on, what books I read or what conversations I have, there are reminders of it everywhere. Chances are, when the time comes, another man will give my daughter away at her wedding. Another man will be chasing boys out of her window when they sneak in late at night. And not because her mother and I are separated, but because I will no longer be around. Even with the time I have had to come to terms with this notion, as I write that last sentence, it is almost impossible to wrap my head around.
Before becoming a father, I had resigned myself to the idea that I, like everyone else, was mortal, and my diagnosis was nothing that I wanted pity for. I lived my life every day as though nothing was wrong, and while it has gotten to the point now where it is almost impossible to continue doing so, I push through every day and maintain a smile and avoid the quicksand pit that is self-pity. I have had to do this alone for longer than I care to admit because I was spending my time with the wrong person. That is no longer the case, and as I write this I look at the opposite end of the couch and smile. For there sits my rock; there sits the woman who I will probably spend the rest of my life with, however short or long it turns out to be. There sits a woman, not a girl. And I can finally say that, with her help, the Boy I mentioned earlier now feels like a man again, and there are few things in this world that a father wants more than to feel like a man. A provider. The guy who will chase off the bad guys, fix broken toys, bandage up boo-boos and do whatever it is required to shield their child from the world until they are ready to face it alone as an adult. I know my purpose, and I now know why I had to endure years of her mother's mind-games; because had I not, then my little girl would have never happened. That thought scares me more than death itself.
As I stretch my foot out past the middle of the couch and playfully poke my significant other with my toe, she looks up from her novel, widens her eyes, and gives me another dose of that smile that I have become so addicted to. That smile is now part of my everyday routine. It is akin to my morning coffee; I can survive without it, but barely. She is so patient, so kind, and most important to me, honest to a fault. She has no reason to lie. She just sits there, rocking a pair of soccer shorts and a tank top like nobody I've ever seen before, and reads her book. I love her expression when she reads: so focused, as though the author wrote the words just for her, and her novel was simply a very long letter she had received from a loved on. She owns everything she does, and does so with such grace that she makes everything look easy. She is my polar opposite, and as hard as it is sometimes to accept, she loves me for being hers. My passion, my inability to tolerate lying on a mathematical level, the way I formulate just about anything I do: she loves me for it, and I cannot help but love her more for that.
I went through Hell to get here, but I know now that this is where I belong. This feels like home. No video games, no TV; just her reading, and me writing, spending time together on a Friday night while the rest of the world drinks their troubles away. We don't need to do everything together. In fact, we don't need to do most things together. She is everything I've always known I've wanted, to the point that she provides me with much the same feeling one would get from eating comfort food, but on a completely different level. Her presence is a security blanket.... and she is peeking over at me as I type, which probably means I have been at this longer than I had first anticipated. Don't worry, there is still much more to tell. This was just a pre-cursor; a way to get you up to speed for the details that will follow.
This is my story. It will end abruptly and without much warning. I hope that does not deter you from coming along for the ride.
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