Psychological Over-Exercise
What I don't want.
It doesn't matter anyway - four or five hours ago it was a whole other list.
- I don't want my Aspergers Son to have a bad day at school and decide to share for two hours solid in tones of doom.
- I don't want his mood to change from one day to the next.
- I don't want the yo-yo effect of switching from 'yeah great day' to 'no nobody likes me, nobody's ever liked me'
- I don't want all the 'but's that follow, all the assumptions (at 11) that I don't know what I am talking about, that nobody in the whole world understands him, me included, and that the world and his dog is to blame.
- I don't want the sight of his sister, younger by a year, keeping herself to herself for hours, bored stupid but hoping to be noticed and praised for not harassing mummy like her brother does.
- I don't want that sometimes Mr 'nobody listens to me' is so forceful that he gets the whole evening and she gets two minutes of my time and a kiss goodnight. That breaks my heart.
- I don't want the fear that on the days he says he feels like that, he might really feel like that.
- I don't want the fear that on the days he says he feels like that he may not actually feel like that, but feel instead that having 'issues' is a way to demand my attention even after I've told him to drop it. I must be transparent - emergencies and heartaches always, always take me from whatever I want or need to do.
- I don't want the occasional insight into his school life when all that does is prove how he takes the reality at home and twists it to his teachers in a most bizarre way, usually humiliating to me, to make himself feel more valid.
- I don't want the temptation to always assume he is pulling the same trick on me, just so I can rest easy that his life isn't really a living hell.
- I don't want the way that his sister has no friends either because of the way her brother is.
- I don't want my own imperfections, the way I feel jaded and exhausted and ultimately stressed when he just keeps droning on and on, refusing to take an answer or be proactive.
- I don't want the way I finally get snappy
- I don't want the way this seems to be the only cue he will take to shut up, anyway.
- Most, most of all, I don't want the memories of having gone through all this with his older brother. Even when I was ten years younger it was a killer and all the old emotions are dredged up in anticipation. I deserve to be exhausted for being a decade older, never mind for knowing what's happening. Its like having to put your feet back in the shoes that blistered them, before you've healed.
It doesn't matter anyway - four or five hours ago it was a whole other list.
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