The Never Normal

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…

Read Full Post »