I grew up in an environment of religious and intellectual annihilation. If you were incorrect, you’d immediately hear every angle on why you were incorrect.

Depending on what you were incorrect about, your walk with God was called into question.

If one received a B, within seconds, your lack of understanding or usual childhood laziness was mentioned. This quickly turned into a spiritual failure because there was clearly something deeper occurring.

During a period of sexual abuse, I was secretly acting out sexually. This is tremendously common. A family member found a condom in my closet and gave it to my parents.

My father asked me why I had it. I lied and said something about water balloons. My biggest fear was disappointing my dad. He wanted to believe me, but must not quite have.

He took me in our silver minivan and played the Phantom of the Opera. My father is like me, in that he speaks in many analogies. The Phantom represented the temptation of the world. I was Christine.

It was a beautiful analogy and I took it to heart. I stopped having sex by 14. I needed him to pursue the condoms harder. I needed his need to believe to be weighed with facts and seeing what he saw with his two eyes.

One instance of extreme naivety is a fumble, hundreds of instances is a horrific pattern.

I know now that I am autistic and my ability to meter risk and moderation is broken.

I have horrific self-doubt. I’m never confident even when I’m arguing my point. My ability to see myself is broken. I’m working on healing it, but it is taking time with repeated fumbles of never knowing what anything means anymore.

I’m changing.