Monday, April 22, 2013

The sum of the Parts

Part 1
In an emergency situation, I'm a ROCK STAR. As soon as shit hits the fan, an eerie calm comes over me and I'm able to think logically and rationally while everyone around me is in total meltdown. In times of crisis, I get the sense that everything around me is in slow motion and I'm better able to dodge the bullets coming at me (I'm channeling my inner Neo), but put me in a longterm crisis situation and I start to implode and all areas of my life fall to pieces.  My issue is, that if I can't fix something right away, I can't deal with it. In this scenario, everything around me is moving in slow motion, but I'm passively watching it all turn to shit instead of taking charge and making things right. I can't fix my kid, I can't even find someone to help me fix him, some days I'm not even totally sure what is wrong with him. I'm not coping with this well. Well, I'm not coping with this at all.
Part 2
I have a depressive personality. Some people who know me can not be convinced of this, but if they could see inside my head, there'd be no argument.
I've had episodes of depression, all of which I've refused to be medicated for.
I don't refuse medication because I'm against it.  I refuse it because... I like being depressed.
You read that right, but I should clarify.
I don't wake up in the morning and hope to be depressed that day. I don't want to feel sad and hopeless and otherwise out of commission, but I also can't resist the feeling when it calls for me.
I don't think it's much different than a drug addict's relationship with their drug/s.  You know it's bad, you know life is better without it, but you can't resist indulging in it.
The good news for me is that I've learned to cope with this part of me, and I'm successful enough that most people aren't even aware of the devil sitting on my shoulder, telling me to jump into the abyss.
The bad news is that if my life is in crisis, (which it is right now) I lose all ability to cope with this part of me. This is very bad news.

You do the math:
Part 1 + Part 2 = not muy bueno.

I'm not suicidal, or homicidal or a danger to myself or others, but I am inching ever closer to the edge of a cliff I've jumped off many times before. With each day that passes I lose the will to stop myself. Historically, my kids have been the reason I snap out of it. I don't want to be that mom, but when I talk myself out of it I'm never saying "no, you can't do this".  My internal dialogue is more like "soon enough, you can jump." I do realize this is fucked up in more than a few ways, but the beauty is that I don't care.

Friday, April 19, 2013

The notion of being a "grown up"

I remember the day, in college, when I first glimpsed at the notion that the invisible line between being a child and being an adult had always been a figment of world's collective imagination. I'd always assumed some sort of enlightenment would reign down on me so I could acquire the secret knowledge of "grown-ups" and move forward with my life, but the ridiculousness of that epiphanous assumption slapped me in the face like the hand of a disapproving mother. Since then, I've been confronted, numerous times, with the scary reality that being older doesn't really mean you're better equipped to deal with life.
The truth is,  though the world may see an adult and expect you to behave as such, you're never really a "grown up" in your own mind.  
You're always just the person you've always been with no more answers than you had before, there's no unfaltering foundation upon which to lay the confidence of your decisions, actions, knowledge, etc. 

You're just surviving, and sometimes that comes with happiness and easy decisions, but other times there's darkness and moments so difficult to navigate that you'd rather just..not. I keep finding myself slipping into unnavigable territory because being a "grown up" is too cumbersome. 
The caveat here, though, is that I'm trying to navigate this with my child when I don't have any more of an idea what the future holds than he does.  
He is struggling with a difficult situation, a situation that feels more than unfair and disgusting, and I have to be the grown up. 

We are struggling.

He needs me. I have to cross that invisible line and be the strength he needs. I am supposed to have an answer for him when he asks me why he should care about living if his life is being fucked over by his own brain. 
How does a "grown up" answer that question?
 Keeping in mind that the "grown-up" in question here is the one who made him.

I made him. 

Think about that, 

my body made this child who is being attacked by the faulty wiring in his brain, 
and now I'm supposed to tell him that it's going to be ok.

The irony is that it makes me want my own mother to cross that invisible line...I want her to be the grown up and fix it for me, so I can fix it for him.

The notion of being a "grown-up" is a fraudulent one, 

and I feel duped.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Fu$K, Sh*t, C^ck! Tourette's SUCKS

It's been awhile...
get over it...

So my 12yo son has Tourette's Syndrome, I've written about it before and I wish I could say things have gotten better since then, but that wouldn't be totally true.
I've finally realized that I must accept the fact that we will be living with this for awhile, if not forever. I'm trying to just go on with life and learn to deal with other people's ugliness (you know, the staring, the laughing, the videoing, the complaints).  I'm trying to focus on the positive of the situation, i.e. my son still lives with the notion that things will be OK, but some days dealing with TS just S.U.C.K.S.

It's one of those disorders that sneaks up on you.  Just when you think you have things under control, a new, more life altering tic appears, and you're flung back to the beginning of the race. Recently we started with the cussing tics, which I had been so thankful that we didn't have, but we learned to deal and things seemed to improve.  Today though, the cursing turned to racial slurs...yes that word, and now I'm scared.  I'm scared to let him go to school.  I'm scared to let him go anywhere.  I have had more than one family member laugh at his inappropriate cussing, but no one is going to laugh at this.
He's going to go out there and get his ass kicked, and I won't be around to explain that he isn't a racist.  He's so far from it...He has no hatred or intolerance for anyone (excluding his brothers, and the willfully ignorant).

I worry that I am not made of the stuff it takes to deal with this.  I worry that I'll be the one to crumble and he'll be helping me.  I don't want to be one of those family's looking for more initials to diagnose my kid with. I just want this fucking disorder to leave my kid alone. I want to be able to keep it in perspective and be grateful that it isn't terminal or physically debilitating (though it could be the latter at some point), but right now I'm stuck in this pissed off place.  People have praised us for our strength in dealing with this, he's the only one with strength.  I just try to time my face-in-the-pillow-screaming-fits so that no one can see. I'm such a wimp, I don't deserve him and he doesn't deserve Tourette's!!!