I am still unsure what to make of this, and it often plagues me a lot. Since I began getting sick, I began to become very mistrustful of my parents. I had a certain degree of mistrust prior to this, but when I became depressed it got far worse. I find myself flipping between thinking that my mistrust is accurate and then I find myself thinking it isn't accurate.

For some background, I am a young man with a long standing history of general anxiety, ADHD, autism, and some paranoid tendencies. During this time, my parents saw that I had difficulties with my autism. This along with other things caused my parents to decide to homeschool me. My mother spent a lot of time working with me one on one, which I think is part of why I am quite high functioning on the spectrum today. She seemed to try very hard to work out my social and attention difficulties from my autism. My father also was quite heavily involved in this process. My parents would both take me to museums and different places I was interested in going, as I was very interested in the sciences. My parents and especially my Mom would seek out things in the community for me to get involved in to try to help me. Due to my autism, I was extremely difficult at times. She still put up with having me at home (with the exception of a brief period at school) despite my outbursts.

When I went to college, my parents would always make themselves available to help me to study for tests. When I began to develop difficulties away at school, my parents would always answer the phone and talk to me. When things got really bad, they even offered to come stay with me in my apartment at college. When I came down after college, since I was engaged in self harm, my parents would always check to see if I was okay to be left alone (they still do that sometimes). My father would sometimes even come up in the night to check on me if things seemed bad.

However, there are some things that I hearken back to and it has sometimes made me think that these may not be people to be trusted. For one, when I was around 8 years old I was having an argument with my parents and they said, "You need us, but we don't need you".

Then, on one occasion, they said and did things that just utterly floored me. On one night when I was about 15, I was at a birthday party with other teenagers.There was also younger kids there. I joined in with the teenagers in making inappropriate jokes while the younger kids were around. When I came home, my mother began saying that what I did was utterly horrible, that I was a menace to society and a monster. I referred to her as Mom and she told me not to call her that. They then took down a poster that said, "A New Baby A New Hope" and mockingly said something to the effect of, "Pfff. That's not what we got here." She also said that she thought I would have a bad life outcome and that she wasn't going to help me to get anywhere in my life anymore. I pretty much just assumed that they were going to get rid of me in the morning or just give me the cold shoulder for the rest of my life. I thought that I 100% lost my family. Then, the next morning, they seemed upset but were getting over it. By the evening and the next day after that, everything was completely fine in their eyes. It was like it didn't even happen. They acted the same and treated me exactly the same.

That was probably the craziest thing that ever happened with them, but there have been some other things. When I first began to experience depression (at age 17) I hid most of my symptoms from my parents and everyone around me, but I would make comments such as "I should kill myself" and things of the sort. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time in my late teenage years actually contemplating that. However, my parents would just tell me to "cut it out" and did not seem to take it seriously at all. They even thought I was saying it to be "manipulative" and would become angry with me. I would go along with saying I was manipulating them, just because I did not want to let on that I was actually depressed. They also said they would take me to the hospital if I was actually thinking of suicide, and I like having the right to roam freely without locked doors So, I just chose to lie and say I was saying it to manipulate them, which was a mistake. I should have just admitted I really was depressed. Then, one day she became irate at this "manipulation" and said that if I kept doing this, she did not want me around and said she didn't care if I slept on the street.

Then, I began to gain weight and my parents would pat my stomach and say that I was getting a gut, that I looked like a tire, etc. They would hound me that I needed to work out and eat better. Both of them insist that they said these things to motivate me to take better care of my health, but I was highly offended.

For a while, I began to get closer to my parents and forget about these incidents. I started thinking that overall they did a lot of good in my life, which has been true. However, on another occasion they did something to upset me a lot. I went to a talk that featured a guy who self harmed and was very depressed. I was beginning to develop similar issues (which I later told them about). She told me to "keep my distance from the guy" and I said that if someone in the family did it, you wouldn't feel the same way. She insisted I was talking about myself and kept saying how she would want to stay away from them, said that there would be things I would have a visceral reaction to as well, and even went as far as saying she might just shun them. The next day, I decided that I would be bold and come clean to her that I had issues with similar sorts of things in the past. She did change her tune a lot after that and said that she would be there as a parent and as a friend but that only a professional could try and "fix it".

Finally, for a time I became extremely belligerent to my parents while I was rather unwell. I called them names and acted in an extremely hostile way on a daily basis. I probably really made their life hell, and I apologize greatly. I also was often saying very negative things, like that my life is pointless, that I'm garbage, not doing good, etc. They said they didn't want to keep hearing those things and I kept saying them too. One day after my being extremely mean and hurtful towards them, my mother told me that if I kept this up that I would have to leave their house. She started talking about getting a lawyer to absolve all ties with me. I asked her to make a list of things I'd have to do to stay with them and stay in their lives. She wrote to stop being so abusive and also to stop being "negative". She later told met hat if I stopped being mean but was still going on about "not doing good", being garbage, etc. on a frequent basis that she would leave and I'd stay with Dad. She then said she would stay in touch and come back whenever I wasn't so difficult to be around.

So, sorry about the long wall of text. If you have taken the time to read all this, your an amazing person I don't like to go on with long walls of text like this, but this is pretty much one of my biggest core issues. I have questioned if my parents are loyal people as a result of the things I mentioned before. I have gone back and forth in my mind numerous times, and I have tortured myself mercilessly thinking about this issue. It has, at times, literally driven me mad I just needed to get this out. Also, the mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm were purely in the past and not something I have luckily gotten past.