Not sure how to say this but I suppose I wanted to share my experiences in life in light of international men’s day but even though I’ve been thinking about it for so long I kind of feel a bit silly and self loathing saying it. But anyway here it goes.

I’ve always had trouble in school from primary to secondary to college, they have all been some pretty bad experiences, when I was a 12 or 13 I was diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD My mom was not very nice about it, if I was talking to an adult at the time she would interrupt me an apologize to them and explain that I had Asperger's in quite a mean way and looking back on it I don't think I was saying anything strange or unusual that merited the interjection. There is a long line of events with my mom that have really shaped my life badly, but in todays society there isn't really anyone to express these experiences with ( in my opinion ) anyway me and my brother grew up in Ireland as mom wanted to move back to live near family after she and my dad split, dad really tried to fight her moving to another country when the split happened and there was a heated legal battle but in the end mom won full custody and dad had to pay alimony or whatever its called here. Mom brought it to court twice because the exchange rate changed when she moved to Ireland and the pound equivalent was less so there was another legal battle in Ireland that she won. Anyway growing up in Ireland was good and dad called up every week to talk to us and tried to get us good gifts on our birthdays and be apart of our lives as much as possible. It seems mom was the one who went a bit mad with power and tried to demean him and break him down and he stood up for himself and thats what caused the break up, dad was a proud man and mom had come from a respectable but emotionally distant family, they didn't get proper presents on Christmas, both of her parents had demanding jobs and she was pushed on education very thoroughly so its not her fault for a lot of her behaviour and I do love her now and have a good relationship with her but I resent some of the things that happened in the past and I think there is kind of an unspoken rule in the family not to let her get involved in sensitive matters or confide in her much.

But dad on the other hand was strong and proud and it seems he got completely screwed over and his own family kind of turned on him also and would say nasty things about the whole experience as if it was his fault which I don't think it was. He is now a black sheep among his 4 siblings and sometimes I get weird glares at family events on his side, one of my aunties, his sister said on their fathers deathbed (which happened slightly after my mom and dad split) “ with his last words he leaned forward to your father and said “”you’ve got 2 kids son just go and apologize”” “ which was to mean except the treatment from my mom Which I think is unfair. Anyway dad always seemed like the good guy to me and always had integrity when it came to helping me or my brother.

When in Ireland my mom tried to date a man with 5 of his own kids, he was generally nice but his wife had died in a car crash and the family was devastated and very hurt and never fully recovered the guy didn't work because he was focused on the family, soccer practice etc felt like mom and him were dating for a long time but looking back it probably wasn't more that 2-3 years. My lil bro didn't get on with them that much and there was constant fighting between his kids and me and my brother which always got quite rough since they were older and outnumbered us, mom didn't really care she had this mad idea that they would buy and old abandoned school together and there would be enough rooms for all of us. One time the guy she was dating punched my little brother, like actually thumped him dad went mental when he heard about it. I do feel bad for those kids though as they just missed there mom and needed some structure in their family. the youngest kid out of them had a hearing problem and needed hearing aides from birth and was often bullied in school. I remember one time we all went on a holiday together (8 people)and we were going through the airport as a huge group and the kid with hearing aides had been at the front and someone saw something in duty free so we all stopped and had a look around browsing etc then we all regrouped and realized he was missing and we searched everywhere we had been and finally I was walking up ahead and there the kid was, (he was only 6 - 7) He was hunched up underneath one of those indoor plants, face all red and puffy., tears rolling down his eyes, looked Like he was about to wet himself. A random woman had stopped and was asking him if he was okay trying to comfort him it looked like, anyway no sooner had I spotted him then I hear my mom yell his name in the most aggressive furious way and marched/stamped her way over to him and reefed his arm and the kid starting yelling and panicking “NO LET GO OF ME” through the tears and he swung around and hit my mom, he was only a child so it was literally harmless but my mom starts screaming “The little shit hit me” anyway we tried to explain to her later that it wasn't really appropriate to treat the kid like that when he was so scared but all I remember is her yelling again saying “What about me? I’m a woman and he hi hit me”. I’d just like to take a second here to state that I don't think all women are bad or anything of that nature, I have a beautiful wife who I love dearly. As well as a strong network of friends for mixed nationalities and genders, but I do think there could be a better environment for men to come forward if there is an issue with a woman. I think my mom is a special circumstance as I have been studying her my whole life and despite her 2 masters I think she is definitely on the spectrum and much more than me I feel I have managed to identify what I am lacking in social skills and attention span and have managed to compensate for it reasonably well.

Mom on the other hand I dont think she has. When I was 10 years old I was signed up for a child psychology serivec that was once monthly for 3ish years this is where I got the diagnoses for the ADHD and aspergers. I would doubt that diagnoses if it werent for my mom who I believe is clearly exibitting symptoms. My little brother also has adhd and dyslexia. Anyway in this sessions becasue I had aspergers, my mom sat in on every session like EVERY session for the 3ish years so even though it was supposed to be a service for me it was more a service for her and I feel like she would list out all these complaints, “he’s not doing this, he’s not doing that etc” and I would get ganged up on by her and the psycologist, Who in my opnion was the most usless bolox I have ever met and it seems these are always teh types of people that get important jobs. But saying that there was one time he took my side in something there were a few people in my class that walked in the same direction as me home and mom was walking by them and tried to say hello and they ignored her and tried to explain that, that was embarrassing because mom was going off on one at home calling him a little shit etc. but I told the doc and he took my side for once just saying you cant be doing that. Mom gave him a scathing glare as if to say “ how dare you criticise me we are here to criticise him” anyway I never spoke much in those meetings and I never really got anything out of them but mom would tell people etchings like “oh yes he’s autistic that’s whats wrong with him” or “ohh yeah he’s getting on so well he’s making great progress in his sessions” very much putting out this image that I was a broken person and she was a diligent mother. While growing up in the house with her every day there was pandemonium mostly because she would be screaming the house down about any small thing , she would constantly be looking for things to give out about like the dishwasher not unstacked or someone had opened the biscuits or something. The way the house worked is my and my brother always stayed in our rooms only coming out for food. the front room was off limits especially if mom was home. even on Christmas we would only come out to do the present exchange and go back into our rooms with the doors closed. we werent aloud outside until I was 14 and we weren't aloud have people over or go ver to other peoples house’s the theory being that we would be bothering other people’s parents. I would chalk this isolation to the lack of social skills. Anyway mom would search our rooms regularly about every second day. if my brother went out, mom would root through his room and vice versa if I went out she would search my room, search my computer, read my journals, open all my mail so on. If I ever had a friend over from school mom would stay in the room with us and not leave under any circumstance, If I asked for some space she would say “People have to know that their children are safe when there over here” my friends mentioned that they were glad when my mom wasnt there and so was I. I had a rough secondary school experience and there were a few times I tried to kill myself to get away from it. I’m not really ashamed of it anymore Life was unaturally fair and oppressive during those years, Im in my 30’s now But for awhile I was having very bad sleeping problems and stress headaches and i mentioned this during one of my sessions and they actually managed to get me a brain scan, So I got a cat scan and the results said they found a 0.8mm ball in my head, but it was in the soft tissue so it was inconclusive and I would need a proper MRI scan. I was 13 at the time and getting these results my mom thought she had hit the lotto, no joke I remember the raised eyebrows on her face when we got the news, it was the psychologist who gave us the results which I kinda thought was strange. Anyway we get home and mom spends all day in the kitchen on the phone. I remember going in to get snacks or something to eat several times that same day and mom was on the pone saying things like “Oh yeah I just dont know what were going to do” in this really sad somber voice and every time I came in she would glare at me trying to tell me to get out. and the last time I went into the kitchen which was about 2 hours into the phone calls she gave me one of her glares but then left lifts her hand and points at me and flicks her fingers in a waving motion to shoo me out of the room. That women was pure evil and to this day it very much poor evil, to hear her side of teh story she got stuck with 2 ungrateful brats while dad gets to live a free unrestricted life. There was a period of a few months when every time I was in the kitchen if I bent over to do something like opening the washing machine she would smack me on the ass and this kept happening and It felt very uncomfortable as she was my mom and one day she did it and I turned to her and said can you not do that please it makes me feel very uncomfortable and then a few seconds later as I was getting a plate out of the press she did it again and when I turned around she tried to stare me down by glaring at me as if to say I’m gonna do whatever I like. The thing that really pissed me off was when I was 17 I finally started to go outside and spend time with people and have a friend group which is a bit of a late age to start socializing , I was very nervous around people beforehand and I was quite scared of girls, I didnt mean too but I would blank them unless they directly spoke to me. I know now that not everyone is bad and women are generally very agreeable and compassionate but I had in my head that all women were like my mom and nearly exclusively spoke to guys my own age. Anyway as the years went on there were a few events that stick in my mind One was when I was doing the junior cert mom was very angry all year trying to push study all the time leading to explosive arguemtns she would smash up electonic devices I had or confiscate my stuff or just look for a reason to go ballistic and when I told dad about this he would give very sage advice like “ never get angry if you get angry at all even a little bit then she wins dosent matter what she does” He wasnt trying to turn us against her in fact he reprimanded us many times for complaining about her, he would say things like “ I know things aren’t easy but just try your best, she’s your mom yeno, you’ve only got one mom so just try your best to look out for each other as much as possible” but anyway during this year mom would go on one of her meltdowns and try to start fights and I would be patient and stay calm which annoyed her but she started trying to bump into me or would walk really close to me and try get in my personal space and if I took a step back she would take a step forward until my back was in the corner of the room and she would try get close to me again If I tried to squeeze past and brushed past her she would deliberately either throw herself into furniture and claim she was pushed ( one time she even ran across the kitchen picking up speed and crashed into the kitchen table which was 6 steps away) or she would just start screaming on the spot “DONT YOU HIT ME YOU LITTLE BASTARD” and she would tell everyone in the family that she had been assaulted by me or my brother and say things like “ I think were gonna have to get my brothers down here to have a word with you two” she used there actual names but I’m not posting them. Making false accusations against us was a particularly low point in our relationship with her, dad used to say she just had no maternal instincts which is definitely true. I think she always wanted a daughter. Anyway a few other incidents included when I got my first job at 13 moving lawns I would work 3 days a week and get 60 euro, first pay check I got mom came bursting into my room and said there was a chip in the desk and I had ruined it and I would have to refund the 50e she paid for it. So I had to hand over 50e she walked off, I got out a swiss army knife and carved my name into my newly bought desk since I know actually owned it. She came back later saying “Awh I don’t want to be taking money that you earned away from you like this” gave me the 50e back and then went nuts that the desk had been really ruined. When I was 16 I did TY in school ( an optional extra year in school after you finish the leaving cert and easily one of the happiest and most fun years of my life, was genuinely happy and not depressed ) there was a graduation at the end with all the teachers, awards, everyone’s family and friends came and mom shows up all good everything was going okay this year and when the ceremony had finished everyone was mingling eating sandwiches and mom starts screaming at me in front of everyone at the top of her voice. all the teachers around kind of look a bit shocked but have kind a of sympathetic smile on their faces. I told mom that, that was very embarrassing but she hardly seemed to notice, anytime there were other people around mom would make a point of humiliating me or bossing me about in front of other people in a kind of trying to assert herself kind of way.

So the big one is I failed my leaving cert so did a level 5 course and passed everything bar health and safety which the lecturer gloating failed me on, it was a mandatory subject. Mom went nuts and packed a bag for me drove me to the airport and told me to get on a flight to England that I lived with my dad from now on, I wasn’t doing to well it was quite a big change and I didn’t have the best mental health before that, I feel bad for dad though he was really excited to finally have one of his sons living with him but I was not well and sullen and not very emotionally available. a few moths in I was really not doing well having multiple panick attacks a day i found a guy who sold weed and smoked pretty much non stop smoking 3.5g a day for weeks straight. anyway it gets about 4 months in and I get a call from my mom she’s found my personal journals and finds out I used to sell weed to my friends back in the day in Ireland, I remember her voice so clearly even though it was over a decade ago, slow a gloating “I’ve been reading your diaries” “ you’ve been selling drugs” I could hear the smile in her voice. So I vowed to study hard and get my leaving cert which I did go to college which I though would be a new beginning ran into a new host of problems, the people in my class think I’m weird and I become and outcast, stick the year through the best I can, college mails home notes of complaints about me and schedule a meeting with head of department, at the time I had developed a bit of a drug problem with ketamine which i felt really helped my depression. Mom opens the letter the college sent even though there addressed to me, go to the meetings without telling me and now has a direct line to the college who are giving her regular updates about me and how I am fairing in classes etc. Mom uses this info to paint a bad picture of me to the family and gains support in turning people against me. I still am very nervous around people and am very quiet, one of the lecturers says we have to do presentations and I have very bad stage fright. Lecturer singles me out and say “I think me should go first”. Next week rolls around and presentation goes very very very very badly, its all on camera as well. I have a full breakdown over the next few months, really bad drug problem fall out with all my friends every little thing I had managed to put together in my life falls to shit. My mom knew about the presentation going badly but didn’t care. This was probably the single worst moment of my life and the college didn’t even apologize I found emails from between mom and the department head talking about it. But this is just the tip of the iceberg I could rant on for hours about this seemingly invincible person who no one would stand up to or criticize , or even listen to me if I tried to voice what was happening, Anyway try fit the next few years in a few sentences, more issues with staff at the same college, I married the woman I’ve been with for 12 years and she is now my wife. my little brother got a woman pregnant who is 10 years older than him he’s not allowed to see the kid and mom is undermining him at every turn and he should work full time and hand over all his money to the woman with nothing in return not even being able to see the kid, he’s really not doing well. Mom has tried several jobs but has left them all due to not getting on with management / other staff members. She is a highly qualified IT professional. Everything has evened out now but I am very concerned about the lack of protection for men against women like my mother. In my home town everyone I went to school with and teachers etc all think I abuse my mom because thats the story she spread around town, I have never seen her be abused and dad told me a few stories of her making accusations against him that are very similar to my own. Anyway thats enough for today there is a lot more but I think this is enough for now.