The house stank of bleach. A two hour marathon of scrubbing and cleaning. No clutter remained, each piece of rubbish discarded, with papers filed and books returned to their shelves.
But it still wasn’t right.
It was like one of those makeover shows. Looking around my house I could still only see the before shot, the one through the grey filter, no sparkles or brightness surrounded me. I felt defeated, the need to find some control in my life when everything was falling apart, but my world still looked physically dull and uninviting.
A cry came from the other room and with a deep breath, I pushed my feelings down into my stomach, I wiped the tears from my face, smiled a fake smile and walked through to my three year old son who had awoken from a nap on the couch. His cry was the only sound he could make, the only method of asking for attention. There were no words or babbles, unlike my friends children of the same age.
He was non-verbal with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. A diagnosis we had received a few months earlier.
But it was not the diagnosis that had changed my current mental state, it was the lead up to it. It was the constant changes in our lives. The change from the lives we thought we would have, to a life that was spiralling out of control. A new path that we didn’t have the map to. A new set of rules we didn’t know how to follow.
Every day I woke with a fresh positive perspective, with a view that each new day would be better, but it never materialised. Each day grew darker, with feelings and emotions bottled up. The need to not lose strengh or show weakness in a world of comparison at the school gates.
I felt so alone.
No one understood.
My friends led different lives, where their biggest worries were of lost jumpers and water bottles, or what day was PE. Had their child got the right pencil case or whose playdate was next?
My worries were greater. The same things which were routine to everyone else were impossible to me.
I worried about how to leave the house without my son having a meltdown. I worried about whether he would ever speak, whether he would ever understand me, whether he would be able to live an independent life.
I couldnt walk into a shop, an activity centre or a church hall, because they were unfamiliar to my son. I couldn’t bend down to his level and explain, or talk him through it – words were meaningless. They were useless to a boy who didn’t know their meaning. We were foreigners from different worlds.
So as I sat next to him, I cried. The feelings I pushed down had run out of space to hide. My body ached with pain from the overload of emotion, where my world was an entrapment that closed in on me.
The cries of excited children ran past my window, calling after their friends, and it made me feel worse. My son silent next to me, oblivious to what I was feeling.
I felt like I had fallen from a place of control and shattered into a million pieces. But somehow I had held it all together whenever in public. No one who understood, and I had not allowed them in to understand.
As I cried alone in my front room, the front door opened. My husband stood in the doorway and without words approached me and took me in his arms. He didn’t tell me it would be alright. He didn’t tell me we would get through it. All those words had been said before and were being said without even saying them.
But he said he was there with me. We were in it together, and he would sit in the dark with me. And we would make it.
And we have.
We have come out that grey. The world took a while to get its glimmer back. It took time for us to work out that path and find the way.
Parenting the special needs way is hard. I know that because I do it, and will continue to do it.
It starts out dark, but it does get brighter, and as longs as you are willing to invite others in, they will sit in the dark with you.
You don’t need to sit in that dark alone.
There are many of us here to do that with you.
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