Blips

Sometimes life seems like a big grassy meadow and other times it seems like a brutal climb to the top of something, right? The top of something that you can't even identify and don't even know for sure you want to reach...

My life over the past week has been hilly. Owen got suspended from school on Friday. I thought I'd been thrown off a cliff or something, I was so panicked. 

He got so mad that he stood on his desk and screamed. And then he hit his teacher, which has never happened before. And I was terrified for him because he probably had felt so scared and out of control. And because I worried that they would tell us he couldn't stay in his mainstream classroom, which is crazy, of course, because that's where he's always been and this was only one incident, but that's what I was scared of when I found out. As if he doesn't have the same right to be there as every other kid who's ever flipped out for any number of reasons. 

It's been resolved. The short version is that he had been asked to clean his desk - an activity that was not on the daily schedule that is taped to his desk - and when he refused, he was informed that he would miss out on Friday "choice" time, which is probably the 30 minutes he most looks forward to the entire week. The whole thing seemed unfair to him. The injustice was too much to bear. He couldn't calm himself down and, really, it doesn't sound like anyone was paying close enough attention until he got on his desk. Not that he had the right to hit anyone. Of course not. But the whole thing became so much less scary once I understood his point of view. I wish that his school wasn't so under-resourced so that they could have someone whose job it was to consider his point-of-view. 

Anyway, the very same weekend we were dealing with the suspension (which looked like me pulling info out of Owen like a dentist extracting molars, and researching autism service dogs), the (former) teenager had an emotional breakdown of his own that involved the bubbling up of all those horrible things that I could tell you that I feared he felt, but that he had never voiced, the big one being "I haven't had parents for 4 years." 

We could debate the validity of such a statement for hours. It wouldn't change the fact that when he's at his worst, that's how he feels. The tragedy, I suppose, is that now that he's an adult, he wants exactly what we were killing ourselves to try to give him for so long. 

Again, it's been resolved. Or, rather soothed for now. He and his dad were able to have a hard talk and I think both of them feel a little better...as evidenced by the call I got today saying that the (former) teenager is now thinking of applying to college again. Out of state, where he has friends who also attend college and hold jobs and live independently. Please, set aside all the potential pitfalls of such a scenario to enjoy the good parts of it with me. He has set a goal and sounds excited about it. And that's enough for today.

And so you see, as fast as life feels like it's veering off course, we can just as quickly be back on track. It's hilly. And it's good. And I'm learning...learning...to let myself believe that what feels like the end of the world at the time could very well turn out to be nothing more than a blip in what is a pretty great life.