The Heaviness…

It has been a little bit since I posted last. That is for a couple reasons. The first is I started basketball season. It is very time consuming to be a high school basketball coach, along with a mom. I've missed a lot of my boys' sporting events and quality time with Alley. Secondly, we have been in a weird limbo state with Alley. He really has a hard time when the seasons change. He does not do well being cooped up in our house. Alley loves the outdoors and the winter months in the Midwest are not our favorite around here. But something happened this morning and I felt the need to share it in case anyone out there feels this way some days.

Today started off very normally. I wasn't feeling any certain way. Vinny woke me up first, as soon as the littlest piece of sunlight pokes through the window shades, he's up. So like any other day I sent him downstairs quietly so he didn't wake his brothers or Dad. I followed shortly behind him. We were downstairs cuddling on the couch while watching the 6am news. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. No anxiety, no feelings of sadness, just normal. A little bit after that his Dad got up, and we went about our morning "duties" as a typical Wednesday.

It was about 7:15am at this point and usually Alley is awake by now. His bus comes shortly after 8:00 so I knew I had to go wake him up, which I despise doing. This child didn't sleep through the night for three whole years of his life, and waking him up literally kills me. I love watching him sleep so peacefully and comfortably. I was on my way up to his bedroom to make sure he had enough time to acclimate to the morning before the bus came. I opened his door, he slept through it. I opened his blinds, he slept through it. Now this child can hear a pin drop! I mean he has supersonic hearing. He can be in the basement, I can turn on a show very very very quietly on the main level of the house and if it is of interest to him, I will hear his feet running up the basement stairs. It's truly a gift of his. But this morning, he was not budging. Maybe it's the weather, or having three hours of ABA last night after a full day of school, but he was snug so tight with his favorite blanket in his bed.

I do what I usually do when I have to wake him from such a sound proof sleep. I start petting his head. It's something I've always done and I'm not even sure why. I sit next to his bed and stroke his hair over and over until I see his little eyes start to flutter. He looked so peaceful, rested and calm laying there. At this moment, it hit me so fricken hard, like something that weighed 100 pounds fell and crushed my chest. I started crying, I mean sobbing uncontrollably. He was still fluttering those eyes, trying to keep them open but they were just too heavy and he kept dozing back off. As I'm crying, right in front of his perfectly sleeping face the only words that came out, and I didn't even know I was feeling this way were, "I'm sorry I gave you this life. I'm so sorry I gave you this life with nonverbal Autism." And as I said those words to my half sleeping boy, they cut me even deeper. Truly, I love my Alan so much that it physically hurts me. It hurts me that he grew inside of me without the capability of being able to speak. It hurts me that my body did this to him. It's SO hard to not feel this way, and it's okay if I do. We have every right to feel what we feel about our Autism journeys. Every single one is so different, from minute to minute, second to second and man do we ride that rollercoaster of emotions.

It just gets very tricky when they come out of nowhere. This morning, there was no reason for me to feel this way. He wasn't upset, or melting down, far from it. He was so innocent and I think that's what got me, like a dagger. I eventually got myself together and woke my smiley boy up, again. We carried on with our morning in a very typical way. He fought my husband on his vitamins and really didn't eat breakfast, very typical in this house. In the end, I know I shouldn't blame myself for Alan's diagnosis. I know that. But man there is just some times that these feelings hit you so hard they freeze you until you get them out. And today was just one of those days.....

With grace-

This Autism Mama