Trapped in a truck with a drunk driver and a lifetime of betrayal

“Are you okay?”

There had been instances where I rode in my aunt’s truck while her husband drove, and he drank from a bottle inside a brown paper bag.

I didn’t know that was alcohol. I’m autistic.

Things that are obvious to other people are not to me. I only thought it was weird.

Each time, my aunt would catch me looking and ask, “Are you okay?” and I didn’t understand why she was asking.

Looking back, I have no clue what I’d have done if I’d known. I would’ve been stranded in the middle of nowhere.

I doubt they’d have let me drive, because I’d asked once before while they were fighting over backseat driving; they were baffled that I asked.

His arrest

My aunt told me her husband had been arrested for driving while intoxicated, specifically while drinking — not after he’d drank at a bar.

She ranted about how her son’s wife didn’t let her have their child at her house because his wife didn’t want her son around my aunt’s husband.

I was there one day, when my aunt cried to her daughter-in-law (DIL), “I’m his grandmother. I have a right to be in my grandson’s life.”

Back then, I told my aunt what she wanted to hear because I was tired of them criticizing me.

I think it only enabled her to hate on her DIL even more.

I shouldn’t have said anything about the situation and continued minding my own business, even if it meant upsetting my aunt by not validating her.

My aunt’s husband had a car that had been altered to where he had to breathe into a tube before it started — a test to ensure he was sober.

During the few months I lived with her, she would let him drive her truck — and even encouraged him to — when he was drunk, especially to pick things up for her because she didn’t want to go.

He’d pick up his two kids from their mom’s in that truck, which had me thinking about whether he was drunk driving.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t want to know.

I still knew enough, though.

Knowing ate away at my conscience. This man was on the road, drunk, and my aunt knew about it — and she didn’t even care.

Me having an issue with it was me “complaining” or “arguing” or “thinking [I] was better” than them. It was so weird.

It was so irritating.

Out of everything, drunk driving is much worse than me loving the “wrong” gender of people.

Drunk driving is much worse than being friends with atheists and Muslims, than choosing humanity over hatred.

It was much worse than all the shit they hated about me.

Double standards

If I confronted her today, she would tell me he didn’t drive her truck while drunk.

Similar things have happened before. Reality is twisted so she looks good, or the people she idolizes — her mom and her son — look good.

My cousin, her son, did not spend the night with his wife until they got married…even though they totally did?

My dad did not buy me a navy blue American Eagle sweater…even though he did.

Her husband did not smoke weed, even though I literally saw his bong and congratulated her on being 420-friendly?

Whatever happened was claimed to have not happened at all and used to bring my character and memory into question.

It confused me so much.

Lying about reality had to mean they knew what they were doing wrong, no? Otherwise, why would they have needed to lie in the first place?

Tattletale

I’m autistic. I appreciate rules, unless those rules are prejudice.

Finding my aunt’s husband’s probation officer was easy. Reporting him was easy.

And it was a load off my conscience for me.

I wished people had actually reported child abuse to the proper authorities, for me, rather than worrying about what would happen to my mother.

Reporting his drunk driving felt like I was reporting something I was obligated to report. Relief washed over me afterward, like I was being weighed down by knowing something I had to bear alone.

I’m sure they know it was me. I don’t care.

I would not have been able to live peacefully knowing what I knew while not doing anything about it.

That’s what sets me apart from other people.

I cannot, in good conscience, witness someone screaming at or slapping a kid in the grocery store and “mind my own business”. I will call them out on that.

I stand up for cashiers and waiters when grumpy, old white men are gross and slimy or act big while angry.

I shut down transphobic remarks when a waitress shared her name and others at my table mocked her voice and lack of breasts as she walked away.

It doesn’t always work in my favor, but there are worst things I’ve nearly been murdered for.

Today, I live my life and aim to make intentional choices based on what I could live with having done. As a human, I’m imperfect and flawed and make mistakes, so some choices are things I may struggle with.

At the end of the day, I’m a person. I don’t think I’m better than anyone other than who I used to be — that’s all that has ever mattered to me. I have seen who I could have been, and I have worked to not become her.

Unfortunately, I rode in a vehicle with a drunk driver on multiple occasions. I felt as though that choice that I never would have made had been stolen from me. Having experienced sexual abuse in my youth, I…know what I’m saying when I say this experience felt like the same.

An innocence I didn’t know I had was stolen from me, and no one cared about it but myself — and then I was chastised for having issues with it.

I’m not one to hate people. I hate hate and hate hating people.

For me, hate arrives before it fades into nothingness.

So, for now, I hate my aunt for forcing me into that situation and taking the choice away from me.

For now, I hate my aunt for putting me in danger and not giving a fuck about what could happen.

For now, I hate my aunt for criticizing me the way she did while doing all of this.

For now, I hate my aunt, and I look forward to the feeling fading until there is nothing left — for then, I will finally be free the same way her life is free of me.

Although…that’s not quite true anymore. I wrote this post last summer. It was so cathartic, like the weight of this secret was lifted.

I’m no longer carrying it alone.