the words

The words always help…and I have struggled with several drafts the last couple of months only to leave them unfinished and forgotten.  Unfinished business on my pages= unfinished business in my heart and weighing on my mind.  I have a lot that I suspect I’m afraid to say.

Eight long years I have been trying to make my way through this beast called special needs motherhood, and in eight years I know exactly zero more about how to handle it than I did on day one.  It is hard in a way that I cant describe with words; heartbreaking, suffocating, exhausting, frustrating…heartbreaking…heartbreaking…heartbreaking.  Over and over…and over and over every. single. day.  It is relentless, it never stops, and it is never going to stop.  I have tried many different ways to cope, and looking back over my blogs I can identify each phase, all of them almost comical.   People say to me often things like, “I dont know how you do it”…..and sometimes I feel like I am cheating because I go through phases where I take the easy way out of difficult situations with Sara, or need breaks.  Long ones.  And then other times I think to myself, god damn I’m all alone in this and they have no idea just how hard things really are.

Im tired.  My sweet boys are growing up quickly, and my time with them to create the childhood I wanted for them when they were babies is quickly expiring.  The window is not wide open anymore.  Right now I can still get through to them, and they are still kind to me, and still openly loving.  They are so precious and unique and compassionate.  I suppose their sister has forced many lessons on them that they would not have learned otherwise.  The kind that you can only learn from watching those you love suffer, and from suffering at the hands of someone you love.  Someone like Sara, who can’t help it either way.  I’ve always struggled with driving this one of a kind family of mine with my ill fitted manual.  I don’t know what I’m doing, and many times when I need help, I don’t even know what kind of help I need.  The basics are always an issue; money, babysitters, energy, ideas for dinner.  But I really sink into the deepest despair when Sara goes through phases of frequent outbursts that defy all reason and all efforts to soothe her.

The world keeps turning, and I can’t keep up with much beyond whats right in front of me.  Bill has moved away and I am home alone with these guys, or working 95% of the time.  I have no time to play anymore and in six short weeks my phone has stopped almost completely and my relationship has gone into an uncomfortable distant hibernation.  I am forced to slow down and be here, and in the process I have found the sweet spot with the boys that I haven’t had since before Sara came along.  Maybe it’s just that they are at ages where they are beginning to understand, or maybe it’s just that they never left it but I did trying to cope with all my hurts.  But we are all here now, loving eachother, laughing at eachother, and learning together how to get through each day with Sara.  I hope I can learn how to  lead Sara to join us, she doesn’t even know it, but she’s missing out.