For 10 years, I lived with a Lebanese family in Silver Spring, which is a suburb of DC and about 40 minutes south of Baltimore (or three hours during afternoon drive….). This is completely different than living next door. That is because a Lebanese family is a system, and you move differently in the world once you are inside it. The biggest cultural difference that means something to me as an autistic person is that adulthood does not mean that you have launched. It means that you have started contributing.

When you are 22 and you haven’t left home, you are seen in the United States as “a bit weird” or “childish.” This is not so in Lebanon. No one expects you to manage on your own when you have a perfectly good family system right here. Depending on which family you’re in, it might even be seen as offensive to move out, because you would rather do your own thing than support your crew…. the one that has given you everything so far.

The reason I say it means something to me is that I am slowly realizing that I belong in a system, that I do not function well alone. I have learned this through trial and error, but being in a multi-adult system fits me better than juggling everything. I will drop all the balls…… and there goes my social life.

If I cannot join a multi-adult system, I will build one. I am so glad that Tiina doesn’t mind me tagging along, and forgives my mistakes along the way….. just like I would, if she ever made any. 😉 But I do not want my entire orbit to be Tiina. I just think that all good things will happen through her, if that makes sense? That being in one system will lead to another?

For instance, hanging out with Brian and Tiina has led me to meeting the Jewish community in Stafford and Fredericksburg. That is an extensive network of people that I didn’t have access to before, and they’re all a fun bunch. I don’t have to be anything I’m not. I belong as-is. Volunteering at Fredericksburg Pride at the booth for Beth Sholom Temple feels natural, and no. I am absolutely not doing this because I am getting a free t-shirt (yes, I am).

I collect BST swag because the artwork is incredible. There are several past t-shirts that I love so much I’m thinking about casing all the FXBG Goodwills to see if they’re there. That’s because they aren’t just good-looking shirts, they’re a piece of my present identity, which is not Jewish but living in Jewish community. The Jewish community is not different from my Lebanese family (Druze). Druze emphases accountability and functioning as a cog in a much larger clock, and nothing I’ve read in Judaism or experienced contradicts it.

They aren’t the same tradition, of course, but the ethics rhyme.

It is a different architecture than the one in which I was raised, because a white Protestant preacher’s family has very little in common with it. You don’t join the community. You shape it. I had to learn a completely different set of skills, which were mostly centered on how to be vulnerable with people. If you are a preacher’s kid, telling anything what is really going on with you is dangerous because it might come up at Pastor Parish Relations.

My relationship with Aada in isolation prepared me for my relationship with Tiina in community. That’s because I hammered out the list of “what was wrong with me and why” while I was writing Aada long letters…. examining myself in a way for which I was unprepared. It was the first relationship I’d ever had, platonic or romantic, where I wasn’t afraid to let her see everything. We’ve never hugged, but I’ve sent her pictures, videos, and letters over the years so that I felt real. Her responses shaped me into the person I came here to be. I told her 12 years ago that I’d do great things in her name, and she’s told me she doesn’t care to see the results of all that.

Not my problem. Imma do it anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if she’s still thinking about me in the middle of the night, or curled up with me on an airplane as per our normal. But those thoughts are fleeting because Aada isn’t real and Tiina is. And what I mean by this is that Aada is utterly welcome to become real, but letters create a wall that don’t need to be there. That wall led us to be monstrous to each other because we didn’t care if we hurt the other’s feelings. I have never wanted to fit into Aada’s family system the way I fit into Tiina’s, but in Aada’s family structure I saw something I wanted. People who’d show up for each other.

And not only that, people who showed up for each other in a way I’d recognize because the cultural context was the same. It may be a bit unorthodox, but I am no longer thinking with vibes. I am thinking with data. I took everything I’ve learned about Finnish culture so far and I haven’t thrown it away. Finnish culture doesn’t fit me because I loved a Finnish woman once upon a time. It fits me because I’m neurodivergent and the Finnish National Motto might as well be “could you turn it down?” “What,” you might ask? It does not matter. If it is not Finnish, it is probably too loud.

So the combination of family systems that I’ve been in matters here and I have combined them. I have a Middle Eastern way of thinking that translates from Lebanese to Jewish, and I understand Finnish culture, so I am not alarmed by it (Finnish parenting is… interesting and barely US legal in some cases……). Aada gave me an emotional toolbox and I have not departed from it. That feels comforting in a world where our relationship was never stable.

But I haven’t locked the door, I have merely closed it. Aada is welcome in my life, but I am not going out of my way roll out the red carpet in advance. I no longer want to orbit her, and not because it wasn’t an amazing experience. It’s because she doesn’t need me and Tiina does. Aada never thought of me as a person who’d bail her out of a jam, so I didn’t. I also got tired of performing her emotional labor for her, and Tiina is perfectly capable of managing how she feels. I didn’t get tired of Aada or think she was a bad person or want to punish her or anything her camp might say out loud. It was just a bad fit because it was such an emotional roller coaster, and I am right to want to get off.

But that is different than thinking we are incapable of stability in the future. It means that right now, neither of us are willing to put in the work. It is sad, but it is a letting go of something I thought I wanted that turned out to be unsafe. What I know is that I love Aada, but I love her from waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here.

It’s just weird that Aada and Tiina live so close together, because one culture is not far and away from the other. I feel like I’m intruding on Aada’s life when I’m only trying to support Tiina’s. But if I am misread, there is nothing I can do about that. It isn’t lost on me that I’m doing all the things for Tiina that I wanted to do for Aada, but to me the thought is “isn’t it lovely that there’s more than one person out there that fits me” not “let’s replace Aada.”

Aada is the mother wolverine who said she’d hurt people if they’d hurt me. I have watched Tiina do it.

Different ballgame.

I learned to play when I learned why I was in so much pain all the time. I have never been able to advocate successfully for myself until now, because I wasn’t advocated for in 1978. It has been a process of reparenting myself, because my mother taught me that I was a bad person, not special needs. She struggled with my queerness, but not the way she struggled with my disability. My disability caused her to neglect me when I needed her the most, because a special needs child was inconvenient. I was tagged with hypotonia and my mother thought leg exercises at home were good enough. I have one report from Bluebird Clinic that says I have hypotonia, and I wasn’t taken back.

All of my neurodivergence was masked out, and I became the functional child. The one no one had to worry about. As it turns out, I have all kinds of special needs and sensory issues. I fluctuate between Level I and Level II diagnostic criteria on the daily, mostly because pathological demand avoidance is not recognized in the United States. Sometimes, my support needs are low. Sometimes, my support needs are high.

I need the Lebanese way of living, because now I am armed with all of the knowledge I was never supposed to know.

I am just not equipped to be alone all the time, but in US culture, that’s known as “failure to launch.”