There Will be Cloudy Days

Today is a day. Today is a day and it’s only halfway over. There are some days where I can read Al like a book. For not being able to say a word, I am still able to read the heck out of his every move. Then there are “cloudy” days like today has been and it’s all just so confusing. His nonverbalness killed me today and mostly because he is coming down with something, but it affects everything.

The last two nights he’s been awake at 2:30am, like the calm before the storm, I knew something was brewing. I hopelessly was thinking that it was the start of the new school year that his him out of sorts, which is a very logical reason. But unfortunately I was wrong. Yesterday he started looking sick to me, his eyes, his nose, no appetite, you know all the good things that come along with sicknesses. His hit differently though. I’m not down playing any other child’s sickness but when you cannot communicate verbally what hurts, how you feel, why you won’t eat or drink, it makes navigating a child sickness ten times harder on him and us. It’s been cloudy, he’s been agitated and sad where he just starts sobbing out of nowhere. It’s truly heartbreaking to watch your child just sob. You’re trying everything. Is he hungry? Does something hurt? What is it that hurts? Is he thirsty? Is something on his IPad upsetting him? Are his brothers too loud? The list of possibilities is endless. We still don’t know what the problem was. He was getting very frustrated with me so we separated for a bit, cooled off and restarted our day after he came back downstairs by me. I can tell he is still off, and I don’t know how to explain it but he is.

On our cloudy days in our house, we have learned how to tread lightly. All of us. With Alley being sick he is a million times more sensitive to everything around him. His senses are heightened to the highest of highs which in turn leads to the lowest of lows. It’s a fine line to walk but we are getting through it. There are times where my frustrations come through because I feel like I’m failing him as a mother who cannot fix or help him when I don’t know what the actual problem is. This nonverbal stuff is a killer. I swear it takes years off of my life due to stress and I hate when I let it win.

I would be very naive to think that this will not continue to happen. Everyone has these days just at different magnitudes. Our cloudy days are here to stay and that’s something I know. I always think I am ready to embrace them and then fix them. But the truth is there is no “fixing” the clouds. Clouds are part of the sky. They will come and go just like any other day. Alleys clouds make his bright blue sky behind them, that much more beautiful.

With grace,

This Autism Mama