Feels like I’m under 6 feet of snow
I feel like I’ve been buried alive and I am barely breathing, stuck under six feet of snow with no clue which way is up. I continue to claw at the ice until my fingers are numb and bleeding and all I have managed to do is get lost further in the snow.
| That’s what this week feels like. I can’t breath, I can’t think… I feel like I am drowning. I feel like nothing I do is right and I can’t win. It’s time’s like these that I wish I had a sign on my forehead that said “I am NOT as bad a parent as you think I am” Even though I don’t really care what anyone else thinks, I still care what everyone else thinks. It’s the same mechanism that keeps me from going outside in my underwear or picking up my son at school in a moo-moo. I can tell you I don’t care until I am blue in the face, but I do care. I desperately just want someone near me that gets it. I am tired of feeling isolated and alone and frustrated when Sam lashes out at me in the middle of a store. I just want someone to get me , to understand how much this sucks. I want acceptance.
I feel lost in the ether, floating aimlessly. My son is very verbal and if it weren’t for the behaviors he would be considered by most “high functioning”. I feel like that label discounts how much he struggles ,how hard it is for him every.single.day. Sometimes I feel like we don’t belong in the autism community because Sammy can often seem so freaking normal to people who don’t get it. I have friends with completely non-verbal kids, kids still in diapers at 10 , kids who don’t even acknowledge when their mother walks in a room. They seem to have it way more together than I do. How do I go to them and complain that I’m struggling? So I don’t. I sit here and I write.I fight the lump in my throat that threatens to bubble up when I speak. I am resigned and beaten tonight. I sensor myself in the world and deflect the stares I get in the store when Sammy begins screaming. I just continue to sit here and write. —————- |
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I wish I could give you a hug. I am one of those moms with a “low functioning” child that on the surface can look I am keeping it all together but I have my drowning moments too. If there is one thing I have learned since getting involved with a support group- a couple of friends and I started one in our community, is that no matter the label our kids have we all have VERY difficult challenges but they are different and can be as unique to our kids as they are. I wanted to form a support group because I wanted to pay it forward the help I got and when I got started I realized how much I still needed their support and how many times with out them I would feel isolated and buried or drowning. Hang in there lady, I hope you have someone to give you that hug since a cyber hug is not very warm.