Thanksgiving Thoughts

 The thought I had as I dropped elder off for his weekly (socially distanced) bingo outing was "Thank God things aren't worse."

"That's a weird thing to be thankful for," was the thought that chased the former as I turned out onto 611.

So I sat with that while I drove. This....was not the life I imagined for myself when I was young. I imagined a family, I imagined staying home and being a full time mom, but there's no way I could have planned for the way it all played out. 

Autism looms large here, but it's not the only thing. Mental health and all the hard wiring hubby and I came with and discovered in middle age factors in here. How our hard wiring replicated in our kids factors here too. 

Not that we have any control over any of the above, but when you throw in the wild card of OTHER PEOPLE, you can be well and truly screwed if you aren't lucky enough to find yours in the course of life events.

As a child, I was always looking outward beyond our block, beyond our neighborhood. My sister laid claim to all the girls around our ages, and the fact that we were 21 months apart, and she was arguably more normal than me meant that there was no room for me in any of these relationships.

So as soon as I was allowed across the street, I crossed it. Walked around blocks and blocks in our neighborhood. If I wasn't hanging out on the front steps with the old people up the street, I was wandering looking for someone who might want to be my friend. 

I looked for a long time. I clung to people who were kind to me as if my life depended on it.(in retrospect, I feel sorry for them) I put up with a lot of abuse because I was made to feel I deserved whatever I got. 

Finally, it occurred to me I'd rather be alone than be miserable in the company of people that didn't want me around, anyway. 

I figured that out, and then suddenly, I started seeing my people. Some of those people stuck around for a reason or a season; I am blessed to have a number of people who have stuck around despite autism, despite mental health struggles, despite waxing and waning fortunes.

Coming into the autism life, I didn't know what life would hold for either son. Make no mistake: we are struggling in this time of COVD--elder lost a lot the last 8 months.  We're hoping to get his health back.  Younger would be just as happy if he never had to people again. We didn't expect either kid to get as far as either of them have come. And we don't stop here. We keep going. 

I am thankful for all the ground we've covered. And all the people who helped us cover it. 

Raising a glass to the next 1000 miles. Hoping for brighter days. 

Take a Giant Step

 It's been a week. I'm so grateful for my peeps.

For the longest time I had one friend outside hubby who I confided literally everything in. I sensed her pulling away because one crucial matter over which I had been struggling a long time was one that she could simply not relate to. 

I guess I have been in a years-long process figuring out the solve for this while life itself has been going along and providing solutions at the ready for the moment I came to this week.  Seeing as I can be torturously slow on the uptake and that penny can take FOREVER to drop, it was kind of amazing that my solve came during younger's goal update last night.

He and I have more in common than I think at first blush. I always think of him as his dad's kid, from looks to general demeanor. I've discovered that he has a deep love for the arcane and can wax poetic for hours at a time about some random fact he stumbled upon by way of a video or something he heard over NPR (which is on all day, every day, except for those days I can no longer stand the news and switch off to the Original Cast Recording of Hamilton. But anyway.)

One of his goals was to find more common ground in casual conversation (wish I had this as a teenager), and right then and there I had my solve for my problem--the WHO I needed to have a conversation with. 

A year ago about this time we headed to NYC to meet up with virtual strangers to spend a weekend. The son is a good friend to both my boys, and his mom was a wild card.  I knew her from when my boys began league bowling almost a decade ago and wasn't sure if she remembered me, since I didn't think she liked me. 

Anyway. We got on like a house on fire. We took to texting and calling, not regularly, but certainly more often than I text or call anyone else.  She became family because she got our lives, and we were never any less because of who we were.

So, she was the person I called last night. 

It was the right call. 

She has a unique perspective that my other near and dears don't have.  But I am understanding now that my near and dears all dovetail nicely in my life, the way I must in theirs.

Not showing these cards. The only important thing to note is that my boys had visceral negative reactions, and M pointed out that They Know. 

At one point yesterday, I had burst into tears, cried it out, recovered, and went in to talk to elder, who was doing his school work. He looked up and asked me what was wrong. This is the kid who shares my wiring and always knows when I am struggling to keep it together. Well, that did it. There I was, crying on his shoulder for a hot minute until he became impatient and pulled away. I asked him if he thought I was overreacting.

"Yes and no."

"Explain"

"Well, yes because I'm fine, and you worry too much. And no because," he paused, shrugged and shook his head. "You are sensitive, and that's okay."  Then he went back to his books. 

I went back to work, but not before texting M and asking her for an audience. 

This all ties into my previous post. There's so much to unpack, but in the end. I've decided to leave it packed and in the rear view mirror. My boys have spoken their piece and counted to three. My life is in the here and now. 

And I have work to do. 

All Over But the Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

 Oh my, this has no shortage of applications today, no?  Where does one start?

We'll whistle past the graveyard of past being prologue. Stuff I feared four years ago is coming to fruition, but aren't our worst fears the things that have already happened?

I'm in the process of reorganizing the inside of my head. It's been a lifelong process, but unlearning what you have been taught often is. I keep weighing reality as I know it against reality as I perceive it. This is the work of living with depression, constantly working against one's perceptions. No matter how astute they might be, they are also mightily subjective.

Life goes on, whether or not you choose to participate. People live and die, and all this is in the background. Until it becomes present, urgent, needs to be fixed right now. 

Except:  after a certain point, one needs to accept that not everything can be repaired. And just because you can, does it mean you should?

Thinking about a former friend and his wife. Every time hubby and I got together with them, we had to win over the wife. Literally. Every freaking time. It was like rolling that boulder up the mountain. If she allowed us to get to the end of the evening, she was relaxed, and hubby and I would look at one another and say "Oh, good.  Next time should be better."

Except next time, we were back to square one. And some days she decided we didn't get a whole evening. Or if we did, she'd be squirreled away in a corner where she didn't have to deal with us. 

This is analogous to the stuff I am working through. All the phone calls where I was put on the defensive, because a certain someone "needed to address" whatever the fuck was on her mind at the moment, and all the time I was expected to apologize for hurting her feelings, breaking some unwritten rule or some other vague wrongdoing.

If I were keeping score, same person hurt me, intentionally, time and time again over decades. I let the transgressions pass, because I was expected to, for the sake of everyone's peace and comfort, regardless of what it cost me. 

And good Lord, if I looked askance at anyone, I would be summarily banished until I came cowering, quivering and apologetic to the door. If I questioned, I was admonished for questioning. Or, there would be the blaming of the victim. I was so often asked "So what did YOU do?" As if I deserved whatever abuse came my way. 

It took telling my therapist all this to make me see, through someone else's eyes, that this is bullshit. 

This last time, I apologized one last time, and was still in the wrong.

So? I'm done. 

I still have my moments of grieving, but at least I know peace now. 

Utility Grass and Other Random Thoughts

 Utility grass is stuck in my head as a dream remnant. Grass that is useful.  I was thinking this as a distraction from something else in the dream.

Which brings me to the current moment. Eight months into this lockdown, I am tired. I have watched time and solitude erode all the progress my elder has made, and thanks to that erosion (among other things), we are off to a GI doctor because of elevated enzyme levels. Second time in four years we are in a crisis owing to eating. 

He's not even insanely heavy. He's wired to rebel when his weight moves beyond a prescribed threshold. We're there now. Trying to convince him to do better for himself is impossible; after all, he doesn't feel sick, so what's the problem?

The problem, my dear, is that you can drive yourself to a way early grave. And you might not get any warning. 

I talk to a wall. 

I know where my energies need to go right now. And I need to make that happen, no matter how difficult for me this is. 

But?  I am tired. This is my third decade into this and it is not getting easier. 

I am running out of time. 

I need to help him figure this out. 

Breadcrumbs and Microaggressions

 My bandwidth isn't what it used to be. 

I've circled the wagons and hunker down with my core of four (of which I am one). I've determined who loves me and who doesn't.  And I proceed accordingly. 

I've spent a majority of my life pleading for what really should have been de facto mine all along. It's taken me decades to realize that the only place I ever really came up short was with the very people who should have withheld judgment but thought withholding love was a better plan for me. 

These same people never lose an opportunity to think badly of me.  

Meanwhile, me and mine were expected to take whatever got shoveled our way and be happy with that.

I've learned that I am worthy of love. So are my boys. And that people love us and support us.

So that's where our energies go now. 

Whatever others think of us is none of our business.