Where I've Run Off To

Before anyone corrects my grammar, my title is a Southern colloquialism. “Where’d you go off to?” is a way of asking why you haven’t been around. It’s usually followed by “how’s ya mama?” The response to the later is, “old.” The former unfortunately can’t be answered so succinctly. Oh, before I forget, I’m not even stressing over grammar and punkchooashun in this one.

How I feel most of the time.

When I began my blog, I never thought anyone would actually read it. I hoped, but I wasn’t counting on it. But, I’ll be dipped, I thew out some scraps out and now I can’t shoo you away. Bless your hearts. (Which is Southern for many things but in this instance it means you must be a little nuts. Wow, I stink of country today.) It means a lot to me though, you hanging around on my porch like you do. That  in mind, you asked and I feel like I oughta answer. Where’d I go? Well, crazy town. And, to be honest, I’m still there. It’s not bad. More crowded than I expected.

I don’t talk about my personal life much to anyone. I am mindful that when I speak about me personally, I am speaking about those in my life by default: my husband, my kids. The second of those I guard closely. And my absence has been because of one of them. 

My son is on the autism spectrum. It wasn’t obvious at first, at least not to us. He was our normal. He has always been very bright and introverted. However, with age, that intelligence and introversion changed. Slowly, bit by bit, a toothbrush and single sock at a time, Aspergers syndrome interloped into our home and we didn’t have a clue what it was until it was hanging out on the couch making a real mess of things.

If you don’t know what Aspergers or autism is, join the club. Even those of us who are hip deep have trouble describing the thing. Best I can do is it’s a brain condition that hinders people in navigating the world mentally and physically. It doesn’t make it impossible, it just makes it hard. Like swimming through oatmeal hard. (For the record, I’ve never done that. As far as you know …)

Folks with Aspergers, in particular, are great people. I love being around them. My next post, if I can birth another - yes, this one feels a bit like birth. I’m grunting and breathing hard as I type. I’m also in a hospital gown and on tons of pain medication but that’s just because it’s Thursday. Tomorrow I will wear long johns and talk like a pirate. You know, the normal Friday thing. Anyway, if I can get another post written, it will be about the awesomeness of Aspergers.

Awesome though it is, it has difficulties, especially heading into puberty. Once the frontal lobe of the brain develops more, many of the struggles lessen. I keep saying that to myself, clinging to the day when our lives calm down. For now, we are, wow, how to describe it… Well to quote the

Cheshire cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad, your mad. We’re all quite mad.”

People with Autism are very sensitive to the world around them. They see, hear, smell, feel, taste everything. It overwhelms them and often to protect themselves they do one of two things: they go inside themselves and quietly ignore the outside world, maybe patting themselves, humming or rocking. Or, they have a meltdown, a very loud meltdown that looks like a tantrum. If it happens publicly that is what folks will think it is and they will make everything better by looking at you with heaping loads of judgement. (That’s sarcasm. It doesn’t make it better. At all.)

Sometimes we see the meltdown coming. Other times it’s like the stomach flu when one minute you’re fine, the next it all gets very real, very loud and painfully destructive. Either way, we live not knowing, for the most part, when it will all fall apart. And as his mother, I walk around sick with anxiety. I hold it together pretty well most of the time. Then, just like the stomach flu, the anxiety just comes out with an explosive shock except it’s tears not vomit and diarrhea. I am thankful for that, I have to admit. Although, I think if it were the later, folks would understand more. They wouldn’t question my absence or aloofness. They would smile, wave from a distance and say, “no, no, it’s ok, really. We don’t want you to volunteer/call back/attend/participate/act normal…no, really! Stay away! We will love you from way over here.”

Having anxiety is walking around too close to a ledge. Your stomach is sick, your legs feel weird, you tremble, feel off balance and use all of your energy to simply stay upright. But, nobody sees your ledge. They don’t even see you teetering. You look fine to them and you don’t want to tell them about it any more than they want to tell you they talk to themselves when they are alone. And, they do. We ALL do. But, we don’t want to talk about it. Too embarrassing. Too close to crazy. Same with anxiety. It’s totally normal to feel anxiety just like its totally normal to talk to yourself, dress up like Diana Ross

Diana Ross dog

and sing into a banana like it’s a microphone. Ok, forget that last part. Anxiety is normal. And, I feel it. I’m drowning in it.

I sometimes struggle to catch my breath, for no reason at all. That causes me to panic on occasion. Panic is the glass shard filled cherry on top of the anxiety milkshake. Just makes it all that much more interesting. It hits me a lot in BJJ. (Brazilian Jiujitsu) Can’t imagine why being tied in a knot brings it out in me (again, sarcasm). But, sometimes it does. I sit out and watch for a while, which kinda makes it worse. Then I cry. Folks at the gym are great. I love that place so much. They either don’t notice me crying, do and are too nice to ask or they just hug me. One girl assumed it was because I had been rolling so bad. I thought, wait, what? I’m rolling that bad! Anyway, the crying, yeah, I cry all the time. I should be a paid mourner, the hard core, Middle Eastern sort who tear their clothes and bang their chest. That would be awesome. I wonder how much they get paid. Maybe it would be enough for me to get private BJJ lessons so maybe folks wouldn’t assume I’m crying because of my crummy skillz!

Every now and then, anxiety creeps back just enough to let the warm blanket of depression slip over my head. It’s a fun filled cycle and I do try to laugh at it as much as I can. I just throw my head back and cackle like a crazy person because after all, I’m a citizen of said city. I already told you that.

I have been told to see a therapist/psychiatrist/therapy group. I’m not against that at all. I’m just against what that would require and that’s talking about it. To talk about it, I have to think about it. I have to put skin on it and I just can’t do that right now. It’s my son: my heart, walking around outside my chest. To describe what he’s going through is more than I can bear. Also, the thought of being in a therapy group listening to other people talk about their personal misery sounds about as inviting as a gasoline enema. (Is that a thing?) And, I’m pretty sure I would get irritated at some point and demand that everyone who didn’t seem to have it all that bad quit whining and put away all the folding chairs. Also, I would punish them by making them bring the snacks for the next meeting that I would attend only long enough to eat.

Living in Crazy-town is great for some creative types. Poe did

You gotta love this guy.

very, very well here. But, the raven on my door isn’t doing much for me. I can’t write. This is the first I have written in months. And, honestly, what I have written over the past year hasn’t been stellar. I brought the creative drought issue to a writer friend of mine for advice, I wanted to get out of it, at least turn on a sprinkler or something. He’s actually more than a writer. He’s an editor, publisher and writer. In short, a big deal. I knew whatever he said would be golden. Also, he knows about autism, what I’m experiencing with my son. He told me to give writing a break. The stress was draining my creative juices dry. I needed to focus on just staying sane, being good to myself. Oh, it was music to my ears.

So, I haven’t been writing. I haven’t had it in me. I even went to a writing conference and hoped it would pull me out of this. Nope, I cried while I was there. I made a professional appointment with that same friend (He had one on one appointments with writers at the conference, helping them with their manuscripts, giving them writing advice etc) and I cried. I’m sure the other writers were watching me from a distance and thinking, “wow, her manuscript must be awful!”

But, here’s the good side, and, yes, there is one, which is another reason I’ve written this. There’s 3 reasons, this is number 2: I’ve gotten to a place where I’ve accepted that this is what God has planned for me. As Beth Moore said in her book, Get Out of that Pit, “you think you’re being picked on, but you’ve been picked out.” God chose me for this. He took a look at Crazy Town and said, “oh yeah, that house is super cute. She needs to be in there for a while.” 

Why has He chosen our family for this? I don’t know. And, I don’t have to know. I trust Him. Doesn’t make any of it easier. But, it reminds me that my spot here is just a lease. I won’t be a Crazy-ite (Crazilian?) forever. And, when my lease is up, I’ll be stronger. Tougher. As I say about fight training: tougher the training is to take, the harder you’ll be to break. I feel that way about faith as well. God’s got something brewing here. No clue what but I know I can count on it. (Unlike my Keurig that has the brewing dependability of the coffee pot in my daughter’s Barbie RV. Seriously, I got up at 5:45AM, stood in front of the Keurig and it just spat at me like a coffee

This llama is so committed
to this spit!

llama. Pretty sure it’s got something to do with ISIS.)

Now, before anyone of you offer the condolence that God won’t give anyone more than they can take, I have to tell you that isn’t in the Bible. It’s not scriptural. If it were, John the Baptist would have been buried with his head and Joan of Arc wouldn’t have a syndrome named after her. So far, I’m creaking under the pressure, but have yet to explode. I’ve rubbed my arms raw, gotten a tic or two but I haven’t exploded. And, I’m keeping perspective. It could be worse. I pray it never is but I understand it can be. When I jumped on the Jesus train as a pre-teen, I had no idea how hard it would be and I warn all of you, if you think loving the Lord will make your life easy, you will be quickly disappointed. God doesn’t make wimps of us. I have long since learned the truth of it: God is tough on those He loves. And thus far, He has loved me to the brink. I praise Him for not loving me over the edge! He’s pulled the rug out from under me and in the fall I have learned He alone is in charge and who among my loved ones is willing to hang out on the floor with me. In some ways, this very difficult time has been a blessing.

So now the third reason I wrote this… A lot people are having a hard time in life. That’s how life is. And, I’m afraid sometimes we get drunk with the delusion we’re the only ones hurting. We scroll through Facebook and all the nauseatingly perfect, posed and color corrected posts and assume that’s life. We assume that the cleverness of the memes are directly correlated to the perfection of the person who posted it. (Woah, check that alliteration Eminem. Bam!) That’s just not the case. No matter how great somebody’s life seems, they too are human. It’s like the baboons, (I know it’s a leap, work with me) one may be the Alpha with the best leaf bed, but in the end they all have weird looking butts. That’s how I see it. Everyone hurts, everyone has problems. Some are just really, really good at hiding it. Maybe if we didn’t hide it so much, maybe if we just all turned around and showed that our butts were as weird as the next baboon, it

The least offensive baboon butt pic available.

would be a little easier to navigate the savanna.

In summary: 1. Where’d I go? Crazy. And, that’s ok. It’s just as normal as talking to yourself which we all do. I’m doing it now actually. 2. At the end of the day, God is in His heaven and does as He pleases. I don’t have to understand Him. I just have to trust Him and I am. I will keep on keeping on. I will embrace my crazy until sanity slips back in place. (Although, if you know me, you will know my sanity has never been terribly sane. Lucidity is often highly over-rated.) And, finally, 3, we’re all struggling. I’m no different than any other baboon. I just had the nerve to show my butt. Join me, won’t you? (That’s not literal. I do not, under any circumstances, want to see your butt. I know what it looks like, in theory. That’s enough.)