That my parents will never tell me they love me, even though that is common for parents. I still can't put a finger on my dad, but I realised my mom must be somewhere on the autistic spectrum (as I learned I am). She really hides that well and can very well play the open, social lady everyone expects her to be, but emotions are hard. So she doesn't "automatically" know what to say when I am feeling terrible, even though I very much needed her to when I didn't have any friends and was depressed. And she might downplay how much my ex hurt me. And she might downplay just how depressed and suicidal I was. And she won't tell me she loves me. Instead we have a household driven on jokes and sarcasm. But I have learned to recognise that she does love me and her way of showing that is by buying me socks, loaning me her clothes, paying for a fancy hairdresser and making potatoes by a meal.

So while it is not as obvious as it is with my brother, it is autism that sets apart our family. We don't have visitors, we have extremely rigid 'rules' over what sits where (e.g. if we have breakfast, breakfast items must stand in the right order or my brother freaks out, everyone must sit in a specific place on a specific chair or everyone but dad freaks out, I must eat it in a specific order, brother must cut it in a specific way and sister and mom have extreme demands on the kind of cup they want to drink from) and we have a bunch of very mean jokes which fuels it all. It must seem really toxic to outsiders sometimes.