This is not a blog about a parents reaction to an autistic child, it is not a mindless rant on how bad my life is, it's not, it is something that i want to say, and i want response, positive, not just grow up and deal with it, it's not that easy. I'm not going to give my name. Frankly i don't want to. I want to be honest though. I am the younger brother of someone with high-functioning autism. I am 18, he is 20. For most of my life i have kept this hidden, none of my friends new, i was ashamed, not in the way of "oh my brother is disabled, that is wrong!" i was ashamed in the way that i had a brother that was prone to outburst that i classified as wars, not daily battles. I am not saying that my brother is a monster, he is far from that. I have realized that now and it only took 10 years. I figured that this place this anonymity that i have found will help. I have a lot of grief that i have stored in my mind, there are things that throughout my life have been enforced into my memory as bad and traumatic. for example, when he was younger, my brother slammed doors when he was angry, not the gently loud slam, the house shaking slam, the slam where you could feel the vibrations ressinating from the source. He doesn't do that as frequently anymore, but...to me, when i hear that, when i feel the vibrations traveling up my spine i become paralyzed, i freeze.

My brother is making progress, he has stopped bursting on a daily basis, now it is only on bad things, i am able to comunicate with him about important things. we fight like normal siblings, but i no longer have the fear of infurating him and sending him into a rage. but i used to.