From the Trenches

 I am sitting here in tears. I know this blog needs to be written but I don't know where to start. We had a bad day here. Gabriel was out of control most of the day. It was meltdown after meltdown and many of them were violent. It's 9 p.m. and he is supposed to be sleeping and I just heard him start banging his head on the crib again. I am going to have to go in there and make sure he's not hurting himself and start again when I know he's safe. 

     He is still awake at now, 10 p.m., but I think that he is calm enough not to be engaging in self injurious behavior. I know that autism is hard to understand. I know that autism changes every aspect of life. I know that the only way to make it through days like this is to celebrate the small victories and changes with our autistic child. I have read more articles than I can count on how to help the child through meltdowns, how to limit meltdowns, what to track, what to change and how to help make the number of violent meltdowns diminish and the one thing I have found that carries through all of them is this; not one single article is written for a toddler who cannot express himself or understand most of what is asked of them. 

     So here I sit, loving the ideas on how to get him toward no meltdowns when he is older but at a loss how to make it through these days until then. I would consider myself a positive person. I try to do what I can to ensure that I look at the world with a positive outlook. I don't dwell on things I cannot change (for the most part) and I believe that everyday we have a choice to either be positive or negative when we look at our lives. My father told me when I was very young that life is 20% what happens to you and 80% how you react to it. I took that to heart. I want to be a good role model for my children. I want them to look at me and see strength. I want them to look at me and know that you can make it through almost anything if you choose to do things differently. I want them to know that change is possible, but today I fell down. I had to leave the room. For the first time, in a very long time, I just wanted to get into our car and drive away. I felt like a failure and so I did what I do... research. However, I didn't find what I was looking for and I felt even more let down, even more like a failure, even more hopeless. 

     Today I had to defend my toddler from my autistic 2 year old. I had to sit right next to him to make sure that he didn't hurt her. Today I had my hair pulled, I was bitten, my face was clawed, I was scratched on my neck to the point that it bled. To put it plainly, I was attacked. I was attacked by my child. There is nothing in this world, no amount of talking, no amount of reading, no amount of education that can truly enable you to be "prepared" for that reality. There is something so soul crushing about your child looking straight at you with the intent of injuring you. When it happens over and over again and you walk away with a reminder (like bleeding), it does something to your soul. This is your child, the one you held inside of you for nine months, the one you gave birth to, held to your chest, fed, nurtured and protected, looking at you with anger and hostility, purposely trying to make you hurt.There is no way to make that any easier. I am still looking and I keep thinking I'll "get used to it" but I don't think that's true, because every time it happens, it hurts more.

     Now, I am not an idiot. I do not believe that my son is doing it out of malice. I am very aware, that it is out of desperation, and that it is not because he hates me. I know that I'm not failing as a mother. I know that I am doing the best that I can. I know that we are making progress and this will not always be. But, those are the things that I know in my brain. Unfortunately my heart and soul feels things differently than the things that my intellectual self does. I am not a stupid person, but I am a mother and my children are a part of my heart. When they hurt, I hurt, when they cry, I cry, and when they hurt me, I fall down. It was not meant to be this way. There is just something horribly unnatural about a child trying to hurt their mother and it hurts me to the core. I had to say that. I just had to get it out there. To scream it, even if no one is listening and that is why I am putting it here. In all the research I did today, I didn't hear one mother say, when my child hurts me, it hurts my heart, it hurts my soul and it makes me feel like I'm failing my child, and THAT is how I feel. 

     Now that I've taken the time to admit to the way I feel I can take a breath and take a step back and just let it go. Tomorrow is another day. A day that will, hopefully, be better and hold more laughter than tears. I think it's really important to realize that none of us are superman. We are human and we need to know that feeling like we spend more time trying to get up than we do on our feet is acceptable. It's okay to feel overwhelmed and lonely and heartbroken. We are autism mom's. We are in the trenches every single day. We are the ones who step in when no one else can handle it. We are the maternal warriors and we do it, without question day in and day out. That is something to be proud of. Today I felt like a failure but tomorrow I will get up and do it all over again. I will smile through the tears, and show my children (and everyone else) that this will not break me. I will be an advocate for my child and when the night begins... and everything becomes silent, I will let myself feel, accept myself for who I am, and try my hardest to love myself as much as I do everyone else.