I am on the verge of collapse, cut off from a fundamental person due to incompatible neurotypes. Advice and support needed for this broken heart.

Is someone out there? I need advice, badly. Or kind words. Anything to ease this deep-seated pain.

Since birth, life has added one rock after another onto my back. After 29 years of ceaseless culmination, I am reaching the limit. Two things always sustained me: the drive to finally manifest my own life, and the treasured people that I hope to include in it. Abruptly, I have been stripped of my social circle, and with it, my strength to exist.

The sudden inaccessibility of My Mom is hitting me particularly hard right now. After plummeting into the nadir of burnout this Summer, we were both diagnosed as Neurodivergent and embarked on the journey to regain ourselves. The problem: Mom is severely ADHD, I am Autistic, and we can no longer effectively communicate.

I speak best through writing. Talking is very difficult unless I am turned away from the other person and either keep my eyes closed or stare at a calming, steady thing. Even then, my brain struggles to extract data from the onslaught of voice noise and translate my thoughts into reply sounds. I crave to reduce talking to a minimum, and finally be my natural self. Meanwhile, Mom finds textual communication excruciating. Her brain struggles to retain what she reads and assemble thoughts into written responses. Needless to say, fluent and meaningful conversation is out of reach.

Even a year ago, I was forcing myself to speak out loud (at great detriment to myself and Mom, given how long it takes me to express a thought). Meanwhile, Mom was able to endure texting. Now, our neurotypes have rebelled. Either we function precisely the way we are designed, or we fail to function at all. This comes at a time when we most need to make up for nearly three lost decades together.

Long story short, my abusive grandmother isolated me from Mom in infancy and cultivated a heartbreaking rift. Mom was always told that I inexplicably hate her, while I was told Mom loathes motherhood and wants me dead to regain her freedom (among other painful things). To prevent the collapse of this double lie, Grandmother claimed these admissions were said in confidence, and promised each of us that she will work one-on-one to heal the rift. She also discouraged all unnecessary interaction, interrupted positive moments as soon as she got wind of them, and explained the fakery of any Love expressed by Mom to kill any hope of a paradigm shift. Mom and I waited 25 YEARS to be wanted, never knowing that both were pining for each other all along, not seething with hate.

In 2015 I began reuniting with this Mom I lived with yet never knew (vice versa for Mom and the son she never knew). Lo and behold, our powerful bond had withstood decades of separation, and we are pretty compatible. Last Autumn, I went no contact with my grandmother and became dedicated to joining Mom’s world. This year was supposed to initiate the life we ought to have shared for the last 29 years.

Instead, we discovered incompatible needs, and are left questioning how to share a life. I need excessive preparation to build momentum, Mom needs sponteity to ignite and upkeep momentum. I need solitude and silence, Mom needs to live among Latinos. I need familiarity (especially in my environment), Mom needs the novelty of travel. We are two magnets attracting from afar and repelling in close quarters.

I feel devastated that we are condemned to separation, even though the truth of our mutual Love is now known. My grandmother inflicted so much overwhelming trauma, she ensured that our broken brains would go to opposite extremes and thus continue her legacy. I don’t want to give her a victory, but what are we supposed to do?

Mom’s health is deteriorating, and the chance to fulfill our dreams, shrinking. I barely glimpsed the wonders of this woman before they started fading into old age. The clock is ticking. I should be cherishing every moment with Mom. Instead, we remain on two sides of the chasm, aching to finally touch and stay.

Lately I feel like a cracked heart silently dripping the will to live into that chasm. Getting ripped away from Mom right after regaining her, is the cruelest joke.

Moreover, Mom is disappointed in who I am. Once I unmasked, she gained a rigid, shy son who needs every detail planned in advance. This is not who she hoped to meet once I retired my ‘unofficial acting career’ as a social chameleon. In fact, it is everything she most dislikes. This is not the reception I prayed to get from MOM upon revealing True Me. I am clearly a major let down and that salts old wounds.

Please help. My wife and I are separated, my best friend has isolated to process her own trauma, and my other close friend struggles with texting. Now Mom is out of reach again.

I have no one.