The Thing Is…
by Ellen Bass
…to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
The thing is how can a body withstand this, indeed? Can I learn to love this life? Mary, where did you go? Why did you impart strength one day only to sap me of it the next? Is there a God who hears me pleading help me, help me, help me, over and over in the middle of the night like something broken?
The thing is I now don’t care how many people hear me scream and moan and cry. I don’t care how ugly it all looks to everyone. I’m sorry, mom.
The thing is I am sapped of energy, of hope. I can’t do it anymore, I think, and then I do it some more. I live for the hours between and around and instead of Jonah attacking. I have bite marks, bruises, hair ripped out, my nose feeling like it’s been smashed into my brain, sore spots all over my body. Only three times yesterday, he attacked. Only. Smashed glass and overturned chairs, cranberry juice dripping from walls. My tears. Sobbing. Shaking. Trapped.
The thing is it is 6:02am and Jonah is making noise from his room and we are alone and I am afraid of my eight year old son. I am typing quietly, pressing the keys slowly so he does not hear and stays in bed.
The thing is I am angry. I am irrationally angry at so many people. I am angry at everyone who gets to live their lives in peace and calm. On Monday I will arrive at work and there will be conversation of weekends spent “not doing much” or maybe going to a party, or just watching whatever sports game people deem important and fun right now. Of dinners and friends, of haunted hay rides and leaf-peeping and apple pie. Of blessed normalcy. I am angry because there is no chance of that for me now, not a snowball’s chance in hell of any of it, and I am envious, and sometimes bitter, and I walk among all these people everywhere and even if I share with them some piece of my story nobody who hasn’t lived it has any fucking clue and most don’t care anyway.
The thing is I am resentful. I am resentful that my husband has left me to pick up the pieces. I am resentful that Child Protective Services has come to my home and that they took pictures of my son’s bruises and interrogated me about what Andy did, and for how long, and did I know about it, and then lectured me about how it could’ve been just like Jonathan Carey, that he could have killed our son. Lectured me. Go up to fucking Saratoga and lecture him, I want to say. Go away. I need Adult Protective Services. Where the fuck are they?
The thing is I know Andy is not violent. I know CPS is painting a picture of him that is inaccurate, and ugly, and anything I say to the contrary makes it sound like we were in some sort of secret pact to silently abuse our son, and that pisses me off too. Andy is a good father. When we had decided to separate a few weeks ago I had no compunction at all about leaving him to be the stay-at-home parent in the house with Jonah and me getting an apartment somewhere. Of course now that is impossible; I am left to work full time and care for Jonah, and it isn’t fair, and I want to scream and throw a tantrum. I have a whole new appreciation for single parents everywhere, disabled kids or no.
The thing is Andy calls me 2 or 3 times a day and I try not to let him in on how hard it is here because I know he feels guilty and awful and I know he is trapped too, in this depression and in a program where they have to let him out for him to go — and even when they do let him out, they probably won’t let him help me with Jonah, at least not for a while. But yesterday when he called at 8:30pm I was lying in bed exhausted and empty and I told him about the day. Just hang in there, he told me. I’m so sorry.
The thing is I want help and yesterday there was no one to help me. My parents tried but they saw the attacks — my dad for the first time — and I think it shocked the holy living shit out of him. It’s one thing to hear me tell of an “attack” and it is something else entirely to witness it. At least they cleaned up the aftermath for me while I held Jonah. Other friends and family want to help but I really can’t have people here – it agitates Jonah – I even had to ask my parents to leave yesterday – and I don’t know what help to ask for. Please leave some deliciously prepared food on my porch? Please whisk me away from all of this? Please trade your life for mine, even for just one day? Please just don’t leave me, even though I am so incredibly bitchy and raving and messy and weeping? Please care. Please pray. Please please please.
My cousin D came over after I texted her in desperation; she was my savior, speaking to my parents, teaching them how to do holds, telling me that if I need it I can and should call a crisis center who can come and help. She saved (salvaged?) my day. The thing is even she cannot fix this.
To top it all off my sink is clogged and there is water and food gunk in there and the Drano didn’t work and there is laundry to do and dried spills to clean and another day to get through before I can escape back to the office and the people with their normal lives for me to watch, like I am an child pressing her face against a glass wall looking in at a party I’m not invited to….that I’ll never be invited to…
The thing is I am tired.
I don’t mean in the I want a long nap way, but in a soul-tired torpor fog way that feels like there’s horror mixed in.
The thing is I don’t care anymore how self-pitying or awful this sounds. I just don’t care anymore.
The thing is I have to believe that I can hold life like a face
between my palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and I can say, yes, I will take you:
I will love you, again.
The Never Normal 
Amy, you do need help. You need to let your cousin and your parents in and whether or not you feel they understand or truly can help, let them try. You need to have a break. Can Jonah go stay somewhere safe for a week or so? Can your support services give you more respite care?
A body can only take so much and we all have our breaking point. However much you love Jonah (of course you do even if right now it is hard to feel it) you can serve him best by realising when you’ve reached that breaking point.
I haven’t had your experience so I can only feel your pain and desperation through your writing and believe me, that shows me enough to know that you cannot just pull yourself together and get on with it.
When my 3 girls were babies, all under 3.5 years, my husband had to work away from home, my father was diagnosed as being terminally ill and I began to struggle. Everyone around me called me ‘supermum’ because I coped so well. I began to think I had to be that supermum. It didn’t work. The day I looked at my three babies and thought,
“I used to love you, what happened? Now I know I have to care for you but there is nothing else to feel.” I realised I needed help and I asked for it. I couldn’t even hang the wasahing on the line, that simple task was beyond me.
Now, I have been blessed with what you’d call ‘normal’ children. My sister has a son with Aspergers and other problems. I have seen how hard she found it to cope. What i am saying is, there is no shame in not coping and there is no measure of when a person’s breaking point will come. Andy’s came sooner than yours perhaps.
You have a loving and caring family by the sound of it. Let them help.
Sorry I can’t do more than say I have heard you.
Take care X
LikeLike
And here i was thinking it was too early to text you. I hear you. I hear you screaming to god. Im screaming with you amy maybe our combined voices will be enough. It truly is time to let yourself show the weeping sores. Fuck those who would rather it stayed quiet. SCREAM IT quietly typing at the very least.xoxo.
LikeLike
Congratulations.
You identified a cause leading to a meltdown and acted by removing that cause. You took steps to prevent a future meltdown.
You effectively used a restraint to take control of your son’s behavior and take control of the situation. You accomplished your goal of getting the place cleaned up.
Your control removed the burden of control from your son and established yourself as his parent not his servant. Having an effective parent allows your son to be a child instead of the person who is in charge. You did not hurt your son but enabled him to learn he did not have to be in control to be safe.
You can assert control when he pulls your hair by placing your hand on his hand and pressing down to show you are in control. When he relaxes his hand you can remove your hand. You can cut your hair short so he can not get a grip. You can let your hair grow out when he stops pulling hair.
You found joy in being a parent when you heard your son laughing in your home.
You learned that telling others including your family can result in getting help you did not have.
God and Mary are clearly with you because you have the strength to be a parent and to take the necessary steps to improve your life. You are teaching your son how to have a life in a world that makes little sense and does not always listen. He knows now that you are listening. You are being blessed and not being treated as if you are a helpless worm.
LikeLike
All of us reading you hold you in our hearts. There is zero judgement only empathy and concern. Can your parents and family members become your advocates with agencies that offer respite care to get you some time off? It’s time to demand for yourself what you have always demanded for Jonah — attention, care and help.
LikeLike