My self-orphaning in 2024
Autism diagnosis in March 2022 which led to a self-orphaning, a year from hell, and becoming completely estranged from my family, including children to my ex-partner
In late 2023 I got myself into a situation with family where it was crucial to uphold boundaries that I had been learning since my Autism diagnosis in March 2022. This ultimately led to a self-orphaning, a year from hell, and becoming completely estranged from my family, including children to my ex-partner.
The Family Business
Since 2003 I was responsible for producing a small business tool used by my father in the field of warranty management. It's been administered by my father and has been the functional responsibility of his business ever since, he's definitely kept the lights on all these years and that deserves serious credit. I converted the original desktop program to a 'cloud based system' in 2007 which has been used by my father and his customers ever since. About five years later I broadened this system to include some dealership workflow management functionality. In around 2017, I provided dealership management components directly to the same customers and I also produced integration for the cloud based management tools. During that time I had a small business making websites and held jobs in other insurance, real-estate and marketing related businesses sometimes in lead roles but always as a computer programmer. Since 2016 I've offered programming services under the Anycode business name but my focus has shifted away from business software more recently.
Long-running projects, including ones that span 18-year periods, often accumulate technical debt and require continual maintenance in order to keep things stable, particularly as the underlying hardware and operating environments are modernised, the software running on them require maintenance upgrades to keep things functional and to ensure security and performance standards are upheld.
As far as I'm aware my father's business is thriving and operating successfully today, so I won't go into specific details about software for security reasons, but in 2023 the platform met a hard deadline for mandatory hosting infrastructure upgrades that would require application architecture changes and important security enhancements. Along with this, the customer required updates to their dealership management systems but due to the infrastructure changes required and the technology stack used in the legacy systems, there was an inherent dependency deadlock meaning the solution required significant development work in order to meet the customers needs, security and performance expectations and to future-proof the whole system.
It wasn't my job, or direct role, but as the person responsible for the technical design, development and bare-metal maintenance I genuinely wanted to provide help. I don't think I was pressured at all, but I did feel accountable to ensuring the future of the system, and I was enthusiastic about supporting my dad. I still saw the project as my baby, and I wanted my legacy working on it to have a positive end. It would be good for my father's business and I liked the customers, they did a lot for me over the years and I have much respect and appreciation for them, so ensuring the continuity of service and future success of these products meant a lot to me.
The Hyper-fixated Programmer
The boundaries I had learned post diagnosis were useful in managing embedded shame, but not autism-burnout. This was something I'd only just started coming to terms with, and I hadn't really even removed the training wheels on my methods of setting and upholding boundaries which meant the implementation was pretty rough. I wasn't even properly conscious of how seriously burnout affected me or what it meant to operate in a hyper-fixated state, I thought I was just in the flow. I knew enough to know that before embarking on a programming project I needed to set the ground rules and "ask for accommodations" which I did, but in hindsight I was unprepared to take on a new project at this stage because I had still not learned how to break away from the patterns of burnout that had become my modus operandi. These patterns were part of my learned coping strategy for dealing with work and generally getting things done as an undiagnosed Autistic and ADHD'er.
As a self-taught computer programmer, since the age of 12, and with no formal training, I had a level of professional imposter-syndrome. I was not academic and technically I failed high-school with an OP of 19. Programming was really the only thing I was good at. Even my information technology teacher Mr. Fifoot (he's probably quite elderly or being mentioned posthumously at this point), failed my programming assignment because he believed I had copied someone else's work, it was "too good" to be my work. That pretty much broke me as a human being, creating a combination of imposter syndrome with my people-pleasing tendencies, also learned during childhood, and the neurodiversity of autism and ADHD that complicates my cognitive function.
Since these good old days of home, I had definitely developed a highly unsustainable work-life balance where I would work non-stop until a job was complete, then go into a phase of burnout-hibernation and sometimes periods of depression. In burnout, I would spend time anxious and in skill regression, recovering while people around me grew impatient and complained about my "lack of consistency" or "lack of effort". I thought this was just how people got things done and there was something wrong with me because I couldn't keep it up 24/7. I didn't know it was unhealthy and that society effectively abuses people, simultaneously exhausting them, and showing them contempt when they fail to achieve something at maximum capacity. This point is particularly painful because I treated my kids the same way before developing this awareness, because that's how I got work out of myself. I know if I had been given understanding and support as a kid, my own school results would have been so much better. I really wish I had been diagnosed sooner if for no other reason than to ensure my own children received appropriate support and attention and to be more responsive to their needs as human beings no matter what their strengths and weaknesses happen to be. The truth is if you learn how to treat autistic people right, you can apply the same affordance and learning to everybody else and this makes the world a kinder and more genuine place for everybody.
The reason I worked myself into burnout was because I loved programming and wanted to be seen as more than a school dropout and a failure. This was how I was proving myself to the world. I thought I had to burn myself out to get anywhere, and most of all I wanted to be of value to others. I wanted them to see I was good enough, to earn their love because I was ashamed of myself for what I thought was this dark cloud of inadequacies. This was the driver for every project I have ever completed and every job I've ever done. It's worth noting that doing so has earned me very little love and I have a family full of contempt for me, so I can tell you heuristically that the strategy didn't pay off.
The Miscommunication
My family's programming project was urgent. As the deadline approached for the infrastructure upgrades, this was compounded by our customer's need for new features, culminating in my pushing for a 'rebuild' because it was my opinion that with this specific set of circumstances it would be faster to incorporate the customers needs and overcome the dependency deadlock by establishing a tech-stack that was impervious to such deadlocks in the future and easier to maintain and deploy. I had all the knowledge required to do the rebuild and I felt far more confident in working with a clean boilerplate in a framework I was highly capable of using rather than getting tangled up in the time-shifting ramshackle nature of an 18-year legacy system.
I had roughly 30 days to do it and while I made no promises about sticking to 30 days, I think I could have been clearer about the low level of accuracy I was actually placing on the 30-day estimate. I did believe I could complete the project in close to 30 days, setting the expectation with my family that they were to handle the customer interactions and manage the delivery time-wrangling with the customer while I just got stuck in and built the thing, but I know the customer very well, and I know they would be understanding of any honest reason for delay.
I was 100% aware it would take a dedicated development team much longer than 30 days because there is so much more in terms of software development lifecycle, the robustness of systems a team needs in order to achieve anything, the information ecology and knowledge transfer alone would take forever, let alone testing, dev-ops, and no matter how amazing the development methodology is, a team would still probably need 12 months at minimum to complete the scope of the project, but I wanted to prove my value to my family and win their love. To genuinely make a great gesture out of this project for them. If you could see the codebase, the base class in the class hierarchy was named "Gratitude" because I wanted gratitude to be the foundation of the project, to bring good luck to my father and offer gratitude to his and my customers. I guess it was somewhat of a good luck charm, and offering of gratitude to the world.
Retrospectively I can tell you that every Project Manager I've worked with will seriously question my 30-day estimate because they know what I mean when I say it can be done in 30 days. A project manager understands how a programmer thinks. That a programmer offering a timeframe commitment, without a process or methodology, is really just saying we will burn ourselves out living on nothing but Red Bull and micro-naps to stick to this deadline, and as long as you stay out of our way we will get this job done ASAP knowing fully that the timeframe is arbitrary. All project management methodologies will be out the window, this will be a cowboy project, and while we will definitely succeed, it's not going to be done the way you imagine as a non-programmer. There will be no 9-5, there will be nothing normal about this. The programmer is going to be sacrificing everything, every waking moment, their sanity, to get this job done, and it's that simple. I knew that too, I'm not sure if I conveyed it well enough to my father's wife. I have a sense in hindsight she might have considered I was saying the project would take a team 30 days and maybe if she investigated that, because she was doing outsourcing in the Philippians at the time, she might have been given the directive that I was "full of shit"? I don't know that, it's a hunch. But the PM would be right that for their team anything like this would be impossible to be done in 30 days. I had to make sacrifices during this project, I sacrificed irreplaceable things, that I can't get back, ever. And, due to the circumstances it indeed took longer than 30 days.
The Unmasking
2023 was mostly meant to be about completing a year of university while being a stay at home dad to my little one and gently working on understanding autism and whatever this unmasking thing was meant to be. My partner was operating her business, and we were feeling our way through life, trying to make things good but our foundations had been a little rocky. Everything felt turbulent and unstable, but we were holding it together with love and life was progressing along, it was okay. There were things going on in the relationship, caused by both of us, definitely me, my diagnosis, and just us being a complicated neurodivergent family finding ourselves.
The process of forming boundaries and expectations about autism for your partner is not easy. Mine has done amazing things sticking out the ride with me as I've overcome my people pleasing and other toxic habits. Those issues have now been pretty well defragmented, but you just don't know how to do it until you try a bunch of ways and you learn to know. It's sublime to genuinely feel calm, at peace and at home in a relationship of love, in authenticity without fight or flight being the baseline. Coming to terms with Autism and ADHD isn't just a new mask you can wear, it's not just a label or excuse you can affix to your shitty behaviour. It requires honesty and learning that your behaviour wasn't actually shitty, you just needed to upskill. Once you learn "of Autism" you learn "about your Autism", and then a whole-bunch of stuff starts to make sense that you can't un-know afterward, like riding a bike.
A lot of circumstances you've been shamed for in the past you realise you've been wearing that shame so that others didn't have to see themselves in the mirror, I've been carrying my older sister's shame my entire life. Even though things weren't always my fault I had to wear it because the shame was embedded in the mask I was wearing and I didn't realise it didn't belong to me. That taking off really shakes shit up, and you realise you have the power to be free. That is the essence of unmasking, it's not a comfortable thing for anyone around you and that's why it's important to diagnose Autism early so that a bunch of fuckers don't need to go through this.
Unmasking involves the acceptance and recognition of your Autism and learning how to incorporate this knowledge into a life that accommodates the differences you are now aware of. Family members who are unwilling to fully accept your autism can be offended at unmasking and can view unmasking as a personal attack but if they stop and think about it, it's just finding authenticity under the hood. Unmasking is revealing the authentic self, and it hurts if you're not ready to go there.
Self Worth Side Quest
For anyone who feels like they are striving to prove themselves or please others, just know that proving yourself to others all the way into a state of burnout, is not a healthy mode of operation. Please give yourself grace. Please know you are already worthy and inherently constitute everything you see 'out there' ahead of you. You are already all of that as soon as you are surround by the right people. All of that attainment of self-worth you are striving for is already inside you in the presence of the right company. Take a step back and be kind to yourself. See your own true value, and you will find people who see your true worth. It was there all along. I love you!
The Sacrifice
In 2022 I received a Vice Chancellors award for being in the top 2% of all students at my university, so it's not like I'm incapable of academic achievement but when burnout grasps me, my executive function takes flight and just buggers off. When I learned that my father's software needed some urgent work I wanted to put university on the back-burner and felt comfortable making this sacrifice, to pull out of my enrolled units in order to help him. The thing I didn't know was these units would never be offered again and ultimately the degree itself was to be removed from offering. The institution where I was studying dropped the degree and gave me a deadline of 2025 or start a new degree. This had already happened to me during COVID-19 with a prior degree, so I now have two half completed degrees that can't even be frankenstein-ed together to make some sort of funky arts degree because they are both lacking third year subjects.
Because my degree was administered by Open Universities Australia (not recommended), you have to kind of fit a square peg in a round hole when choosing the completion order of units and their prerequisites. If you miss a unit one year, you may need to wait 24 months or longer to start it when it overlaps with something else you need to complete in the same study period, you'll have to do it in a different year. While I did try to complete the degree before 2025 using alternative units and much to and fro with an inbox unit coordinator who had better things to do, I was a bit too emotionally rocked by what happened with family and I ended up dropping out due to burnout (again) which threw my degree into limbo.
On top of this frustrating academic experience, over the time I was working on the project I also needed to sacrifice my role as primary-carer to my baby which hurt a lot, and in my capacity as a father to all of my kids. Hyper-fixation has a way of causing you to neglect everything except a single activity that gets all of your attention. I was aware that the deadline I set for myself meant that this hyper-fixation was a given, and effectively I would be incapacitated until the project was complete and I don't think this is acknowledged or understood by my family as a real thing, I think in their minds I was doing 9-5 and watching netflix at 5.05pm. My eldest son was unfortunately going through a phase of depression and I did usually invest a lot of attention each week to his wellbeing, communicating with him, offering advice and support. My partner mirrored my sacrifices, putting on more staff at work and taking on the primary care role for our baby so that I was able to invest myself fully in the project. She had organised other staff to cover her shifts so that she could be at home full time, I'm just trying to convey how impactful this was for us, it was a big deal, and we were doing something as a couple, lovingly to support my family.
The Calamity
I think God has a way of orchestrating chaos at times, in order to present opportunities for people to choose more meaningful outcomes for their future. Even though my development plan was harebrained by any standard (I'm a cowboy, say what you like), the truth is it was how I got things done. It wasn't impossible. The obvious reasons why it wasn't going to work didn't really apply to me because it was literally how my ADHD and Autism brain worked in the first place, it's how I achieved anything and everything. What we didn't see coming was a situation unfolding at work that coincided with the first week of my 30-day schedule. My partner's staff member had been found leaving the shop with work equipment and supplies and questions needed to be asked. What unfolded, was a situation where the shop's staff either quit or were fired and my partner was required back at work full time. This was insane, we were very upfront about the impact this would have on the project and did everything humanly possible to deliver. I was required in a capacity to help recover from this shop situation too, but I very much felt as though my father's understanding of the impact this had on our lives was minimal and I couldn't really find a way to address that. We were being more and more set back week after week, flying by the seat of our collective pants, grinding ourselves through the dirt.
I was caring for our baby during the shops working hours + travel time, until my partner got home, and she took over everything. Do you know how ridiculous her life was during this time? Our shop was going backwards, our lives were going backwards. I was working on the project every waking hour outside business hours and trying to look after bub exhausted during the day, literally helping with nothing at all, no meal prep or any bedtime/bath-time transitions or duties in the morning and evening. When the kids came on the weekend, I wouldn't see them. The whole situation was a nightmare. This went on for 3 or 4 months while we tried to manage our mental health and cope with this. The situation with family had become strained as they waited for me to deliver on my deliverables, I was being more and more vague about it as I became more and more overwhelmed.
My partner and I were stretched to the end and our relationship reached it's most diabolical point as I struggled to make the project happen, and she struggled to keep the shop running. We couldn't find staff and finding a child-care center for bub was out of the question with 6 month wait times and we were very particular about where he went because of his own behavioural needs. We tried to enroll everywhere, it was just impossible to find something that met our standard and had availability. I am so grateful to my oldest for providing baby sitting while I worked once a week but the whole rhythm of our lives was not compatible with the level of focus and fixation I needed to be in to really make leaps and bounds on the project in a way I usually would. I was in an almost constant state of overwhelm and this was impacting my ability to achieve the much needed hyper-fixated state.
The Embarrassment
No surprises that the project delivery estimates were missed. While I don't know exactly what was conveyed to the customer in way of reasoning, I question if the real-world sacrifices being made and the unavoidable nature of the circumstances my partner and I experienced were communicated factually. My impression of the customer is that they were reasonable and understanding enough to be given the complete truth in absolute confidence, and I am confident the customer would have been happy to wait any amount of time knowing the real circumstances of the project. They were good people to work for, but truthfully, I don't know the kind of pressure they were applying to my father because I was genuinely shielded from that aspect as per my request.
I had specifically asked that we let the customer know the situation and asked for a period of grace. I don't know if the customer was informed or not. They would have been reasonable and grace giving in the face of my predicament. Eventually, I received a call from my father where he told me he was going to give the customer their money back and provide the updates for free because the project was an embarrassment to him. He insisted he would continue to pay for my time but told me the project was just embarrassing, so he would have to pay for it himself. I was deeply offended by this, knowing everything my partner and I had been through and sacrificed for him and I felt as though this was intentional and intended emotional manipulation.
I can't really gauge exactly how upset I became but my eldest son who overheard the conversation told me "my language was pretty colourful". It's certainly not behaviour I'm trying to model, but I admit dysregulation is something that I model as an Autistic dad. I want my kids to be respectful of people and unconditional kindness should be a baseline, although peaks and troughs of ephemeral, emotional states are unavoidable and this is okay to be normalised in an Autistic household. When I'm dysregulated, it has a neurological condition associated with it, and should be treated like any other disability. You don't expect a deaf person to hear perfectly without a hearing-aid, neurological conditions are the same, it just takes a little individual understanding that most people are, quite frankly, too intolerant to grant or accept this for Autistics and ADHDer's.
I needed to sleep on the conversation. At 4am the next morning I woke up to a nightmare, which happened to be a childhood memory of being belted by my father. I realised the significance of the dream and texted him immediately. The text insinuated that I didn't want to feel like a naughty child being belted or whipped and I would complete the project for no further fee, but it would be done in a timeframe respectful of my situation. Based on my father's parental style and what he say's is "how it was done" the belting was not out of the ordinary, and it was a genuine childhood experience that I had every right to bring up. If raising a genuine childhood experience is offensive to him, it's not my job to regulate his emotions about it. I received a message back that I still don't quite understand saying "Why don't you twist the knife" and I've never understood it, it's never been explained, and I've never heard from him since. I was just shocked and astonished, that's all. I went through a period of extreme dysregulation where I would have sent a number of texts, emails, calls at some kind of rapid machine rate followed by a long 3-month period of deep burnout where lying on the floor was literally the only thing I could muster. The rest of 2024 has been a process of moving from paranoid state of fight or flight into getting over it, into realizing that this was actually a gift from God.
Self-Orphaning
My belief is that this was almost certainly a situation of miscommunication, and the result of sweeping the truthful reasons for delayed delivery under the rug was to avoid a perceived reputation hit. This is obviously hypothetical, and I don't know for certain that things were not honestly shared with the customer, but I do know I was not shown compassion for my circumstances and that's super indicative of something being left out in this scenario. Obviously I'm the one missing the punch line, but eventually I'll get it, even If I have to guess. I think my father might have felt the truth was too embarrassing if he saw my Autism as a weakness, a defect, or something to be embarrassed about. Somehow beyond explanation. If this is the case it's beyond sad. I'm not embarrassed, btw, I have a beautiful life now, and I love myself enough already.
Another aspect of this situation relates to the underlying erosion of our relationship over the past 13 years, it was never without conflict but over time I started to notice a lot of cues that suggested he considered I was an unfit father. I brushed it off and didn't consider it was that he actually had this opinion, but in retrospect it correlates to the patterns I'm observing, patterns of emotional manipulation that have been enabled by my family's embarrassment of me. This could have enabled them to fall victim to a specific type of emotional influence. The truth is, I have been put in a state of silent competition for my family's love by my ex-wife over this time, and it's something she made abundantly clear to me that would occur when we separated. History agrees with this account, and I certainly have no family at this point, so it checks out from where I sit. Of course, they could claim I'm insane, and I've done the estrangement to myself, I'm certain they would do if they read this article, but my intuition is pretty sound when it comes to system analysis and design if that counts. I now understand the impact my wife's manipulation has had on the psychological wellbeing of my entire family. I understand coercive control, narcissistic dynamics and toxic enmeshment, how these dynamics have played out in my family, also, how it's affected my kids and how it's affected my family's perception of me. Sure you can say I'm the problem, but I have barely seen anyone for the last 13 years, apart from my father, his wife and my two boys. How am I a problem to people who have nothing to do with me? Anyway that's not my question to answer.
I have experienced this augmentation within my family since my divorce, and really, the outcome of the miscommunication that led to the amazingly helpful decision to self-orphan only really makes sense to me if my fathers perception has been manipulated or his perception of me was always incredibly low, I mean it could be that too. I think it has been a bit low at times, but not like this. I think you need to despise someone a lot to assume they are trying to intentionally twist a knife when you are working together and when in reality the other person is breaking their back to achieve your absolute success. I think their beliefs and feelings and perceptions of me have shifted over this time, perhaps impacted by narcissistic control and emotional enmeshment.
I don't really care that much what they think of me. I just care about the wellbeing of my kids and the fact that elements within my family may have been exposing them to coercive manipulation. I know my playing into that dynamic is more harmful than good and I think it's been crucial to take a step back until the boys can process what has happened and begin their healing journey on their own terms. If this is the case it's actually reprehensible and should be absolutely off-limits to psychologically manipulate a child with respect to their parent or caregiver, it's just beyond evil. I personally don't think people who use kids for anything should be walking free in society let alone be allowed to retain custody.
Don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting this is entirely on my ex-wife. Everyone plays a part in these dynamics and I have obviously had my own role to play as a part of the group that I'm pointing out. If this situation is as I perceive it though, it's something that's played out throughout my life, began with my embarrassing behaviours as a young child, and has been amplified by the addition of my ex-wife into the family dynamic. That dynamic has influenced her, and she has had an influence on it as well. The thing is, I can be a very embarrassing person, and an Autism diagnosis and unmasking just amplifies that x 100, so I can see how people unwilling to embrace change, unwilling to acknowledge my truth, and who are particularly prone to the feelings of embarrassment and humiliation might just feel I'm too much to cope with. That's not my problem though, but I do empathise.
Just because I have intuitions about these dynamics it doesn't mean I'm right. I would love to have the information I'm obviously missing, but I don't, so this is my perspective for now. Also, people grow at their own pace and are entitled to do so and I have nothing but respect for every persons individual growth journey. I loved my family, I forgive them, maybe we will meet again in the future as part of their healing, but I don't care for that so much and it's not something I'm aiming for, I'd rather wish them well and let them enjoy their lives. I'm not burdened by them, and they don't need to be burdened by me, they are welcome to ignore my healing and just go on with their lives. I do need to speak my truth though, that's part of how it works for me. If they don't like it they should just pretend it doesn't exist, and scroll on.
Prayer of Gratitude
Dear Spirit, thank you for this life. Please guide me to be the highest version of myself and to treat people fairly, with respect and dignity. Please guide me to create a legacy of peace and kindness in this world. Amen