Wednesday, December 28, 2016

2016

    Where do I begin...2016...you started out just like every new year full of promise. My little family was just beginning to feel comfortable in our skin again. Things beginning to look like they were falling into place. Even old relationships were being mended. And then just like that, you started pulling on that rug I was beginning to trust again. You know, the one you ripped so suddenly, so violently out from under me when Sterling died? I was just beginning to trust it again.
 
     I guess I should thank you for not ripping so violently this time. No. This time you started back in Spring with a little tug, made me lose my balance a little. But you let me regain my footing and stand on it with even more purpose then before. A "little' blip on the map of life, we survived and recovered quite quickly. If I really look back, I would say too quickly. It wasn't quite the same but I so desperately needed it to be. I overlooked issues building, smoldering, preparing to explode.

     I needed to feel that safety of the firm footing on that rug. I clung to it really. I am a fighter and I keep looking for ways to fix things, people, everything. I don't believe in giving up on my children or on other people or projects. I will try everything I can think of to make it "right." Even if it means I  sacrifice myself in the process.

     Then Fall came. Back to school. Transitions. Sterling's birthday. The possibility of losing our precious foster baby. That rug started feeling a bit shaky. But still I try. New medications. IEP's at school for a few of my kids. Anything. Everything. We must be "normal" or at least appear to be. No one can see we are barely able to stand on that rug we cling to for stability.

     Things begin to calm. But I should've known. That false sense of security, just like the calm before the storm. And just like that, EXPLOSION. Where is that rug? I can't find it. But I MUST keep my family together, at all costs. Thats what family does, they stick together. Always. Even as my 12 year old punched me in the side of the head. Even as he had my hair in his fists, violently yanking, pulling as the screams of pain came from my mouth. Even as I am looking at his eyes, once so full of love, now full of something I can't describe, now void of anything I once knew. Even as I'm swollen and sore and scared wondering what is happening to my boy, there has to be a reason. Something we can fix.

     We try to fix it. With hospital stays and medication changes. We miss him. He misses us. He comes home. Only to turn around just days later, in the midst of the 3 worst dates of my life, the days Sterling died. He was doing so well. So well. And in an instant he took off running. Breaking things and hitting those of us trying to help him. Back to the hospital we go. This time broken in so many ways. That rug is gone, I fear it might be gone for good this time. December is not our friend. December now holds so much loss and pain.

     When he came home this time he lasted not even 24 hours before losing it again. It was in my panic running after him watching as he headed for a major road with traffic that I knew. I knew without a doubt this isn't ok. I cannot do this. I could not keep Sterling safe, or alive because of things going on in his body that I couldn't see. But this child? This child's needs are right in front of my face. And if I choose to ignore, I may end up responsible for his death. I would never survive that, I barely survived Sterling's. In that moment when the police showed up and my son was safe, I hoped into the back of the squad car to give him information and instead the sobs came so deep I couldn't speak. Our lives are never going to be the same.

     But one thing I clung so deeply to after Sterling's death is that our lives can be different. Different doesn't have to mean better or worse, its just different. I am so tired of making plans with my children only to have life laugh at me and make it something different. This life, with a dead child and a child with developmental disabilities is not what I ever, ever, imagined for myself. But I am a fighter. I will grieve what is lost and I will find the joy again one day. I promise I will.