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Archive for the ‘autism’ Category

fence posts and flowers

Posted in autism, behavior, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 8, 2011| 6 Comments »

“Welcome…
You’re under control
And buried like a mole
A thousand feet below

Waiting
With all that we’ve got
Our reputation’s shot
A ninety-story fall

No one here can make a sound
We’re all ghosts in this town
We are standing in the trenches
Of the new underground

Pipe down
Stay under control
It’s getting so absurd
Soon everything will turn

It’s that time
To see the Sun
There’ll be a crack
And a day will come
Maybe then we’ll be the ones;
Never can be sure
The shot heard ’round the world…”

lyrics by Guster
—–
—–
M and I took Jonah in the afternoon on Saturday and the morning on Sunday.  I have been taking all kinds of pictures so I can return to them, and to boo, whenever I want…
——-
even when he moves to hit the car window, or a person, with a smile on his face
——
& yet stay calm as we stop to say hello to a beautiful doe
——
he can sit still with safe hands and body
——
but tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
goes the Jonah time-bomb.
——
The is always an explosion.  With shrapnel and wounds.  And yet I still, God help me, don’t want to let him go.  I want a hero to come out of nowhere, an Autism Super Nanny who’ll whisk in at the last moment to “therapize” the anger right out of him and get to work on making him a normal kid with autism.
——
It’s almost funny. I’m not asking for a ‘normal’ kid.  I just want a normal-kid-with-autism.  I know there is no such thing.  I don’t know what I mean.  I’m slipping down the slope, Buddhist practice notwithstanding.  Cherish me, cherish you.  Breathe.
——
I understand every time someone tells me I am doing the only thing there is to do – that we’ve exhausted all possibilities – that he will get better at the residential educational home.  It’s not that I can’t or don’t comprehend these things.  But I feel this way anyway.  Frantic.  Frightened.  Fucked up.
——
My great friend K and I had brunch yesterday after M and I had taken him for the morning.  I kept beginning sentences and then stopping them abruptly, swallowing hard…
——
“and the steel eye, tight jaw, say it all…” ~Cake
——
…she understood and, after a pause, would tell a funny story or take the conversation in a different direction.  She let me talk but she knew exactly when to steer the topic away from what would make me cry.  That’s a skill, and she’s got it, and I’m grateful.
——
After brunch, she brought me to her car and said she had a present for me.  I was shocked.
Inside the gift bag was this this:
——
Good thing we were inside her car because I started to cry, and hard.  I loved it.  She could not have chosen a better present for me if she had looked all over the world.  I hugged her and held her tight.
——
HOPE – made of fence posts and flowers.
——
She literally gave me HOPE.

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a week and a day

Posted in Anderson School, autism, behavior, placement, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

I’ve gone through a time bending worm-hole.  It was six weeks away, and now it is a week and a day.  I will pour myself into work, twice as much as usual, for I’m taking next week off to do this thing and then process it best I can without having to think too much. 

I keep calling it this thing like it doesn’t deserve recognition in any other terms.  My God, I’m going nuts.  Off the charts.  Just mailed the direct care workers at Jonah’s residence letters and pictures and my blog address, cell phone number – as much information as I could muster about my precious, barely-verbal boo. 

Also I sent thank yous – expressions of gratitude for what they do and deal with every day, for choosing to help these children and face injury and shit smears and God knows what else – all for less money than they deserve, undoubtedly – for what they do is priceless.

I hope this week and next week fly by.  I hope I can go far inside my head, into a Novocain-place, into numbness and ennui, even when I must be awake to work & think.  As oxymoronic as it sounds, I want the foundation of my days to be a state of sleep from which I can wake later, later.  Some other time.  Some other place.

I don’t want to live through this.

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baby chick head

Posted in autism, behavior, haircut, swimming, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2011| 1 Comment »

Jonah had a relatively good day in school yesterday, which was very cool to read in his log book – he’d gone roller skating and loved it.  He loves yoga too, and his scooter they pull him around on with a weighted-vest.  My sensory-craver boy…

Then D came over and Andy and she and I brought Jonah and the clippers outside, to the outlet halfway down the driveway – and between the three of us, we buzz-cut his hair.  D did the actual buzzing while Andy held Jonah and I sat on the driveway holding Jonah’s legs between Andy’s legs so he couldn’t kick or thrash.  He was hopping mad, of course.  It looked like a circus act, with hair flying everywhere and Jonah twisting around.  Good thing the neighbors weren’t out.  Afterward we had a near-bald boy who immediately ran inside to look at himself in his bedroom door mirror and run his little hand through its baby-chick-head softness.  I went outside to the driveway where all boo’s hair was scattered and picked up a lock.  Maybe it is silly, but I want it to hold when he is gone and I can’t be with him.

Of course he gave D and I plenty of trouble on the way to H’s house and pool.  Safe hands? he’d ask D, wanting her to hold both his hands.  She’d turn and hold his hands, then he’d try to pick his nose or swipe stray hairs from his face, so she’d let go, only to have him beg for safe hands again.  Over and over.  He kicked the back of D’s seat and head-rest, hit the windows HARD, flat-palmed, and screamed his loudest, his someone-is-murdering-me screams, laughing and giggling afterward.

What?  D and I would ask each other, unable to talk above the noise.  No wonder I am going for a hearing test this afternoon.  Between Jonah, my concussion, and all those loud 70s/80s/90s concerts I saw (like KISS, Rush, Def Leppard, Jane’s Addiction, and every other band where I’ve sat too close to the speakers on purpose), my ears are suffering.  I always did like my music loud.

Then Jonah started to beg for hot dog.  Hotdogwithmustard?  he asked repeatedly.  Hotdogwithmustard?  My plan was to stop at Stewart’s on the way to H’s, but then I called H and she said she still had some from the last time I brought some over, so she prepared one in her microwave, God bless her, so it would be ready upon King Jonah’s’ arrival.

Finally Jonah got both his naked swim and his hot dog and all was right with the world for a few moments, though the entirety of our visit was maybe 15 minutes, tops.  ADHD?  D and I were half-jokingly recalling the blessed days (which we used to complain about, believe it or not) when he would perseverate on just one thing at a time.  Let’s ride the escalator 75 times!  Let’s stare into the street sewer for a half an hour!  Let’s go on the merry-go-round 8 times in a row!

Going on the assumption that most folk prefer pictures over poetry, I’ll make sure to come back later and post some.  I might even upgrade my account so I can post video.  I’m taking pictures and video of Jonah with ever-increasing frequency, as if I can capture and visit him whenever I want.

“The candlelight flickers
The falcon calls
A lime-green lizard scuttles down the cabin wall
And all of these spirit voices
Sing rainwater, seawater
River water, holy water
Wrap this child in mercy…”

~ Spirit Voices by Paul Simon

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sgt. jonah’s broken hopeful hearts club

Posted in autism, behavior, The Anderson School for Autism, Uncategorized, Wildwood, tagged , , , , , , , on August 4, 2011| 5 Comments »

In preparation for Jonah’s new chapter in life we are (hopefully successfully) going to give him a buzz cut tonight.  Sitter/cousin D is coming over to help Andy and me- and with the 3 of us we should be able to get ‘er done.  Then, if it clears up and is nice later, D and I will take him to friend H’s to swim. 

I am starting to think ahead, beyond the time when Jonah goes away.  Before this I was simply thinking of it as a doomsday clock – that everything would come to an end on August 16th – that there was no point in thinking beyond this day or its inevitable heartbreak (and relief?).

My fantastic therapist, Dr. Alex, mentioned that I maybe should make a (real or metaphorical) social story for ME.  I’ve made one for Jonah and something like one to send to his care workers, but one for ME might help me prepare emotionally – to help me not block out, ignore, or go numb about all of this, which are the defense mechanisms I have been using.

Jonah has been awful at school.  Where usually he would be at camp during summer school, this year he has been disallowed (and, unfortunately, rightfully so) because of his behaviors.  I’m so happy the Anderson School has such a big, nice pool so he can swim.  At Wildwood he has been what they euphemistically call “smearing” almost every day.  YUCK.  Then they have to shower him and clean all the shit off him, the walls, themselves – and probably endure scratches, bites, and kicks in the process.  The dedication of these direct-care workers amazes me. 

It would be one thing if they were making the money they deserve, but the money just isn’t there.  I wish they could have a capital campaign earmarked specifically to raise salaries of these incredible individuals.  I am so grateful for them I want to fall at their feet and sob out my thanks, in my usual over-the-top style.  Instead I will make them gift bags and pray they’ll know, somewhere in their hearts, how much they (and Wildwood) have meant to us and to all the children who need them.  What a wonderful school. 

Here’s Jonah learning emotions, a year or two ago, with his speech teacher, L.  In an earlier post I put up a picture of “excited face.”  Here is “mad face” :

If Anderson is anything like Wildwood I will be so relieved. 

I have received ever-increasing support from everywhere – people e-mailing me, leaving comments here – people who don’t even know me, or who knew me from my childhood.  People I’ve met both virtually and personally who’ve been through this or are going through it…we’re like Sgt. Jonah’s broken hopeful hearts club band.  I am not alone.  I am not alone.  It is my mantra and I cling to it like a proverbial rope you climb to get up and back over the cliff.

I yearn for Gina, for she was my sister-in-spirit.  I yearn for siblings, for I have none.  But I don’t want to yearn.   I don’t want to worry.  When I don’t want to worry I think of this Bible verse:

“Look at the birds of the air; your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26

Stay focused, Amy.  Have faith.  Stay busy, stay optimistic, stay positive. 

And don’t forget to breathe.  When I want to remember to breathe I think of HH the Dalai Lama:

Practice for the New Millennium by the Dalai Lama

1. Spend 5 minutes at the beginning of each day remembering we all want the same things (to be happy and be loved) and we are all connected to one another.

2. Spend 5 minutes breathing in, cherishing yourself; and, breathing out cherishing others. If you think about people you have difficulty cherishing, extend your cherishing to them anyway.

3. During the day, extend that attitude to everyone you meet. Practice cherishing the “simplest” person (clerks, attendants, etc) or people you dislike.

4. Continue this practice no matter what happens or what anyone does to you.

These thoughts are very simple, inspiring and helpful. The practice of cherishing can be taken very deeply if done wordlessly, allowing yourself to feel the love and appreciation that already exists in your heart.

I’m trying; I’m learning.  I’m grateful. 

I just hurt.

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womb magic

Posted in Anderson School, autism, tagged , , , , , , , on August 3, 2011| 6 Comments »

When Jonah was a baby, I wrote him some poetry.  My best friend Gina shot and killed herself when boo was just 7 months old, and in my grief I went on a writing frenzy.  They say the writing saves the writer and I know they’re right.

I need to write my Capital District Parent Pages article for September; it is due soon.  What to say?  I will submit it before he is gone, and it will be published and distributed after he is there.  I may go back in time, like I did for my July article, where I spoke mostly about his natural swimming ability.

I have been re-visiting his past – my pregnancy, his babyhood, everything that led to now.

There is a poem I called Womb Magic – and parts of it again ring true; eerily similar to now.  After wanting a waterbirth, I had to have a c-section; it was the opposite of what I’d wanted, just like this.

I need more magic, more faith.  More freeing of my mind from worry.  God help me but as the days draw to their inevitable beginnings and ends I feel rising panic in my throat, my gut, my heart.  Please, God, help me.  Help Andy, help Boo.  Please help me.  Please and thank you.

I am so grateful for everyone who reads, who reaches out, who understands, or tries to, who reassures and cyber-hugs me.  I am grateful I have this place where I can come and bitch or ponder, express the pain or the wonder or the anxiety.  Shaking, I continue because there is no choice but to continue.

In the mornings I listen to beautiful music that carries me away – Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff.  I let it enter me and soothe like balm.  On the way to and from work I play Guster, LOUD, singing songs I know so well they are a part of me now.

Anyway, I thought I’d share the poem, for ‘cooking a baby’ isn’t easy – and may well be compared to magic – just like letting go of one (who seems like my baby, even though he’s 9) isn’t at all easy.

Womb Magic

Two rehearsals went awry.

First I stumbled, dropped the wand
I heard the heckling audience’s hiss

and then onstage I felt
I froze
I felt
unsympathetic ruby spotlights
stealing all the magic words
I ever knew.

Of course there is a trick to it.

I was under the illusion
I was under
it
would be effortless, the show’d go on
without me after all it was
a commonplace performance for the man
behind the curtain, for all the men
behind every curtain

and I said
if I was not the world’s best
well I could always adopt another occupation
I could take on an apprentice I could
quietly retire

but then
in time
at last
suspending
disbelief

I conjured you from soul and cell and bone
with nothing up my sleeve
in one swift sleight of
hand

and pulled,
to rave reviews,
a living breathing rabbit
from an enchanted empty hat.

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the august article

Posted in Anderson School, placement, tagged , , on August 1, 2011| 8 Comments »

I’ve been writing monthly articles in the Capital District Parent Pages for almost a year now and the August column was the hardest one I’ve had to write yet.  How do I say what’s happening?  I edited it about ten thousand times.  The issue came out today.  For those of you who don’t get the Capital District Parent Pages, here’s what I said:

Normal is a Dryer Setting

August 2011

Well, here we go.  Sometime during the week of August 15th, Andy and I will drop Jonah off at an educational residence for children with autism; he’s been accepted in both an appropriate house and classroom there. 

It’s a beautiful campus.  Really. The classrooms are cheerful, the staff is engaged, the kids look happy, and the children’s residences are real houses – immaculate duplex-like homes where Jonah will even have his own room.  There’s a recreation center and a big pool, and Jonah will be able to go out into the community, to movies and restaurants, playgrounds and museums.  He can’t do those things anymore here.  I know in my heart that Andy and I can’t provide the therapies he needs; this is Jonah’s chance to truly thrive.

I must sound like I’m trying to justify our decision, to convince you we’re not throwing our child away.  The truth is I have no idea how to do this thing.  I have to believe Jonah will be protected and happy.  I need to imagine him learning and laughing.  There is no other option if we are to drop him off and drive away.   In the meantime, I cry.  I have nightmares, nagging thoughts of negative scenarios.  My head fully understands the necessity and wisdom of moving him there, but God, my heart.  Each day is another day closer to that inevitable day, and my heart mourns.  I’m grieving for him even though he isn’t yet gone.

I’m going about it all wrong, I know.  What you focus on expands, they say, so I’m going to stay focused on the good stuff – like giggling when Jonah, apropos of nothing, invents a goofy phrase.  Or hearing him shriek with delight when his lithe body hits the surface of the swimming pool.  And chasing him around his bedroom with a towel to wipe away bath bubbles still clinging to his body.  Watching him sleeping, tranquil, his breathing slowed and deep…pressing small kisses into his cheeks…inhaling the little-boy-scent of his tousled hair. 

I‘ll concentrate on shopping for things he needs for his room.  I’m splurging on the best of everything there is – Egyptian cotton sheets and thick, luxurious bath towels in bright, primary colors.  A late-afternoon-sky colored comforter with a floor rug to match.  The softest blanket I could find.  I want him to be comfortable. 

I’m making him photo albums he can’t rip and filling them with pictures of all his relatives, the people and animals he knows, and the places he’s been.  I want him to remember his loves.  I want to be able to explain to him what is happening: mom and dad will be back, and this is a new and exciting place to grow, play, and learn.  I’ll write a social story – something often utilized to explain a concept to kids with autism using short sentences accompanied by pictures. 

Everything changes.  This is a new chapter in a new book.  Maybe even a whole new library.  I’m grateful to everyone who has made places like this available – and so much better than they once were.  I’m grateful to those families who’ve endured tragedies and had the courage to turn them into advocacy for things like access-to-information laws and changing the system for the better, to protect my son and others like him.  I’m grateful I live in a country where services are provided for people with disabilities, and a state in which lawmakers now recognize the importance of ensuring safe educational residences for people who need them.  I’ll never complain about taxes in New York again.

Still, though, it’s all so surreal and unthinkable.  I want to be a parent advocate for other people going through this process.  If I can be a comfort to just one other family, it will help.  The knowledge that you are not alone in something is invaluable; I know I’m buoyed by the parents I’m in contact with who’ve had to do this too.  

As Jonah goes away, I will be visiting him as much as possible, ensuring he is happy and safe, and loving him with more strength than I ever have before.  So goodbye for now, little boo.  Once you are in the hands of a round-the-clock team of specialists, you will bloom into the best boy you can be.  Your mama knows you are bright and silly, fun and eager to learn.  You show ‘em, sweetheart.  They’re going to love you.  I just know it.

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the rowers keep on rowing

Posted in autism, behavior, swimming, The Anderson School for Autism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2011| 6 Comments »

There’s no earthly way of knowing… which direction we are going…” ~ Willie Wonka

Not only don’t I know which direction we are going, but I don’t even know now where I am.  I sleep as early and as much as possible – greedily falling into the cushion-y darkness where everything turns OFF for long, glorious hours.  I wake confused, then teary, and I gulp down the pills that help me through the day.  I’m just not hungry lately either.  It’s as if I got to an anxiety/fear point so high I smashed through its glass roof (Willie Wonka style, speaking of the great confectioner) and now I’m flying around grasping at different ideas, completely ungrounded, definitely dazed, and evidently, flaking out as well.

All these thoughts.  I decided I ‘m going to learn Spanish.  I want to visit Mansfield, MO, home of my beloved heroine, Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I’m going to read books even as an English major I’d never dared attempt:  Les Miserable and War and Peace.  I’ll learn to play guitar.  Write a novel, maybe even out of this blog.  Visit my relatives, send them all care packages.  Volunteer to read to kids at the library.  Walk dogs at the humane society.  Do yoga.  Learn to paint.  Anything, everything.  Something so I’m not nobody doing nothing.

Sometimes I have these grandiose plans to change the world, at least my world and the people in and around it, making positive deposits in the great big bank of karma.

But still I play out scenarios of the day we drop off our son, over and over, with different circumstances and outcomes each time…except he is always gone at the end.  In the scenarios we always have to go, we always drive away.  He is always, always gone, and he will be gone, and he will be gone soon.  No wonder I am meditating on impermanence.  I can’t really comprehend any of it.

Andy and I met with a mediator and we have workbooks to fill in, just like we did at the church when we were planning to marry.  Everything is cyclic.  We will wait until Jonah is at his new school and then we will re-convene, workbooks completed, bringing yet another thing to its conclusion.

My friend H (bless her) invited M and me and Jonah to her pool again tomorrow, thank you thank you thank you little H.  To her it may not be much but to us it is everything.  Yesterday M and I had to drive Jonah around the entire time we had him; there was simply nowhere we could go.  It poured rain and Jonah didn’t want music.  I got him singing at one point but then he started his repetitive requesting-phase:

Wannatakeabath?  Wannatakeabath?  Wannatakeabath? Bye Bye M.  Wannatakeabath?  Daddy?  Wannatakeabath? Bye Bye M.  Daddy?  Daddy?  Grandma?  Swim-pool? Swim-pool? Wannatakeabath? Wannatakeabath? Wannatakeabath? Wannatakeabath? (Insert BLOOD-CURDLING SCREAM instantly followed by giggling laughter).  WannaseeJack?  WannaseeJack?

And I curse myself for gritting my teeth and wanting to shout SHUT UP because soon enough I’ll wish I could hear his little voice, no matter what it was saying or shouting or screaming.

Oh, what a weird place in time & space this is.

“For the rowers keep on rowing,
And they’re certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing…”

~Willie Wonka

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now & now & now & now

Posted in autism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 27, 2011| 3 Comments »

“Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.”
 
Our signatures, then, over all the world,
with every moment we exist,
like fingerprints – your hand on my bare shoulder; its mark of love…
Our footsteps on the ground;
the way we meet the earth, walk & mark the earth.
 
~ Lie still & breathe ~
 
or rise, enraged, to rave & blame, mark & judge,
to find an other & lay upon it all the pain, the wrong. 
There is no other. 
 
Lie still & breathe.  Be still.  Breathe.
 
Stream-of-consciousness poem there.  Sorry to flake out on you all.
 
I am reduced to – or, quite possibly, fortified by – breathing. 
Smell the rose, blow out the candle.  Smell the rose, blow out the candle.
Again.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Now and now and now and now.
 

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buddha, mary, kurt vonnegut, gandhi, & w.w.

Posted in autism, grandma, placement, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 26, 2011| 3 Comments »

“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching)
 
I am losing a lot, like it or don’t, as P would say.  But I’m tired of myself, tired of carrying on in my grief, so I’m turning (as you may have noticed) to Thich Nhat Hanh, one of my favorite Buddhist monks, for guidance and peace.  I’m turning to the Buddhist view of impermanence – that which says nothing has permanence, that permanence is an illusion we cling to.
 
Well I’m a Buddhist by circumstance, then. Yet I am also many more things: raised Catholic, I still go to Mass on occasion and cling to my roots, finding solace in the ritual of the Mass.  I may be other things I haven’t even discovered yet.  So it goes, to throw in some Vonnegut.  This is my favorite little story about Kurt Vonnegut, taken from Wikipedia:
 
In the mid 1950s, Vonnegut worked very briefly for Sports Illustrated magazine, where he was assigned to write a piece on a racehorse that had jumped a fence and attempted to run away. After staring at the blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning, he typed, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence,” and left.[17] On the verge of abandoning writing, Vonnegut was offered a teaching job at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While he was there, Cat’s Cradle became a best-seller, and he began Slaughterhouse-Five, now considered one of the best American novels of the 20th century, appearing on the 100 best lists of Time magazine[18] and the Modern Library.[19]

The lesson I take away from all of this is I can’t abandon life by sitting in my soiled self in the sorrowful, shallow end of the pool.  I have to keep writing because it saves me.  I can come out the other side of this, make myself into someone good, be Jonah’s mother as best I can, be the change I want to see in this world (thanks, Gandhi) instead of complaining about the changes that aren’t happening.  I may moan and rave, cry and bitch, but I’m not going down without a fight.  I am recharged with people all around me, some who don’t even know me.  They care and they tell me so and it helps like they will never know.  I am not alone, I tell myself, mantra-like.  I am not alone.

Mary helps me too.  Yes, that Mary.  The mother of God Mary.  She sure had a difficult child, an only child (it seems) and she lost him too, in many ways, before she really lost him.  She understands. 

  • St. Josemaria Escriva: “Love our Lady. And she will obtain abundant grace to help you conquer in your daily struggle.”  “When you see the storm coming, if you seek safety in that firm refuge which is Mary, there will be no danger of your wavering or going down.”

How can I believe all these things simultaneously? 

“Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then; I contradict myself.  I am large – I contain multitudes.” ~Walt Whitman

(I’m actually quite scrawny, but I think Walt was being metaphorical). 

I am going over to see Jonah-boo tonight, to take him on the “Groundhog Day” tour of his favorite things:  the train, car ride, maybe grandma or a peanut butter roll.  If it is warm enough, swimming and splashing. 

I am looking forward to it, whatever it brings.  I love him so much.

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counting, breathing, bye bye mama

Posted in Anderson School, autism, doctor, placement, swimming, tagged , , , , on July 25, 2011| 7 Comments »

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (Being Peace)

Thank you for everyone who voted for me – I seem to be see-sawing back and forth between #20 and #19, and I don’t expect to stay this far up on the list, but I cracked the top 25.  I appreciate your votes, all of you. It’s funny – Elizabeth Moon has a blog on the list (I haven’t looked at it yet) – but she wrote a fantastic book about autism, The Speed of Dark, set slightly in the future, which gave me the idea for the name of my blog; one of her characters said it in the course of a conversation.

So I am relentlessly counting.  Twenty two days – three weeks from tomorrow – we pack up Jonah and all the things they’ve asked us to bring for him, and we drive him away to live at an educational residence for kids with autism.  It’s like a movie I am watching, or a book I forgot what chapter I’m on…a dream I am consciously trying to end.  Sometimes I literally can’t even breathe… I can feel the pressure in my lungs, my heart, my bones, my center.

Tomorrow Andy and I go for our free consultation for divorce mediation.  M is tired of me being miserable and often “snippy” as he calls it.  He helps me watch Jonah 4 times a week and it is wearing on him – he has his own children and he wants time to relax.  My sadness wears on him too; he says I am not the same person I was.  That it true – I am not and never will be again.  It is not his fault that I am a mess.  I wear this like a cloak and I shed the cloak sometimes but then I wrap it around me again.  How many metaphors can I use to describe this kind of helplessness, this form of pain?

Maybe I should be alone.  Maybe I should be done.  The counting won’t stop, this ticking ringing in my ears (I go next Friday for a hearing exam but it won’t stop the clock).  I hold my breath and hold my breath and pray I don’t burst out crying at the gas station or the grocery store.

I try to hold my son tight and he says bye-bye mama, bye-bye mama…

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