Today was a difficult day. One of those days where part of you wants to go back and try it again and the other part of you can't believe you made it to the other side. Today may have been the most difficult one I have ever had with my son. It is hard to say if he was the problem or if I was. I am not sure what made this one the one that put me over the top. But it was that one.
It started off bad, the truth is the last two weeks have been quite challenging. I don't ever know what is going on in that mind of his, or what sets him off but it has been this way for more than a week. He has really been giving us a run for our money. From the start, he was being difficult this morning. I should have known when he flagged down one of my neighbors and climbed into her car that it was only going to get to get worse from there, but somehow I decided to continue on with the day. Mistake #1.
Every Sunday morning we go to The Coffee Bean. It is a long standing tradition. One I hate to punish him from and so I took him. My husband went to baseball with my middle son and My oldest and youngest went with me. We started off OK there but quickly spiraled downhill.
I am not sure when the exact moment was when I began to lose it. It may have been when I had to drag him out of the Office Depot next door because he ran in the door, when the store was still closed, and they had opened to let an employee in. It could have been when I had to physically remove him from The Coffee Bean, dragging him by the arms in front of many people I knew. Possibly, when I realized that I could honestly care less what people think of me or when I realized I didn't even care what I thought about me. Maybe it was when I shoved him into the car in a pretzel fold and lodged him between the front and back seat so I would have enough time to get in the front seat and lock the doors before he could get out. It might have been when I actually drove home with him climbing between the front and back seat, a seatbelt a long lost dream. Or at the moment when I realized that if I was pulled over by a cop with an 8 year unbuckled in the front seat, tears streaming down my face, mascara everywhere he would likely arrest me and jail might have been a reprieve. Possibly, when I dragged him out of the car and gave up trying to get him in to the house because I was sweating so badly and shaking so much from all of the physical exertion and then told my son when he threatened to run away that "it was fine with me", sat myself down on the stoop and waited for my husband to come home and force him into the house. When I realized that he is already much stronger than me and that this is what the rest of my life looks like?
I am not sure which moment it was. I can say that for the first time ever, as I was packing to go away for Passover, I looked at my husband and said "this may be a suicide mission and we should just stay home" and that we must be crazy to get on a 15 hour plane ride with him and then have him out of his routine for two weeks. Maybe it was the guilt that I felt over having made my other son leave his baseball game early. Or that fact that I left my 2 year old at Coffee Bean with my Aunt with out even a backwards glance.
I don't know why today was the day that I thought to myself "I can't do this anymore" but now that the day is over, and my house is finally quiet (dirty and messy too, but at least quiet). Now that I have taken 3 showers because honestly that is the only place in the house where I can lock the door and be alone and breath, I know that I will do it again tomorrow. I know that I will, because I have no choice. We don't get to choose, that is not an option. And so I will wake up tomorrow morning, get my kids dressed for school, work all day, make dinner and finish packing for our trip (and yes, when I say finish packing I mean packing LOTS of drugs) because that is what we parents of special needs children do. We just keep doing. We also never stop hoping that tomorrow will be a better day.
