Sunday, October 14, 2012

It Ain't All Roses...

This weekend was hard.  Sleep was hard to get nailed down and communication between Ben and I really faltered.  While I distracted myself with a lot of cleaning, by bedtime tonight, I was cracked.  I just had to have a cry.  In the past, Ben would laugh at me when I cried.  He didn't seem to understand emotions.  Tonight it was different.  As soon as I started crying, he got a look of panic on his face and started crying his little eyes out.  He jumped down out of my bed and went over to a corner and just cried and cried and it looked like he was very much afraid of what it meant that I was crying.  That sucked.  I don't want him to cry (anymore than he already does in his life).  But I also needed to have a good cry.  I am swallowing up myself and everything I feel because I don't want him to be afraid of me or my emotions.  I tried to explain to him why I was crying and that it didn't have anything to do with him, but it didn't seem to help too much.  It was just the worst feeling in the world.  Rock.  Hard place.  He remembers so much, so much that I feel like he will even into adulthood, that I'm so careful about keeping it together around him the best I can.  He has had such a hard life already and has a lot of obstacles in front of him.  I don't need to add to that pile.  And yet I also recognize that I have mountains of unmet needs myself.  And I'm not sure how to address those without taking away the reduced time I have with him after working all week.  Most days I feel like the concept of "I" doesn't even exist any more.  My hobbies are gone, my interests are adverted towards becoming an expert on Autism and everything it entails and my time is engulfed by efforts to help Ben's life with Autism (insurance, school, legalities, etc).  Ben is in the Project DATA study as the child in the reduced hours side of the research (state funded rather than the full 25+ hours at the UW).  We have to go in every 3 months to be assessed for the study.  Ben has to take a series of tests as do I.  I have to sit down at a computer and take an hour long evaluation about his progress.  At the end, they ask questions like "Do you feel like it's harder to be a parent than you expected?"  "Have you found yourself no longer having time for your interests/hobbies?" and "Do you feel like your focus is solely on your child rather than yourself/marriage/partner?"  I find myself answering "Strongly Agree" over and over.  And I notice that so many children on the spectrum only have one parent.  Why is that?  

He's asleep now and I should be too....

1 comment: