Heartsick

September isn't over yet but twice I've got a call to come pick up my son from school.  He says he doesn't feel well.  In my heart, I know that it isn't his body but his mind that feels sick.  My heart breaks a little as I drive across town to pick him up.  He isn't coping well with the transition to middle school.

Later, I read an e-mail from his teacher.  He was refusing to do work in class.  He was throwing papers, yelling at his teacher and his helper.  Security escorted him out of the classroom.  Inside my heart breaks again, only sharper and deeper this time.  I try and imagine his future and I start to panic inside.  He copes so poorly with life.  If he knew what awaits would it crush him?  It almost crushes me.


On the drive home, he reads my broken heart and it frightens him.
"I love you, Mom", he says in a feigned weak voice.
"I love you too."
"Are you mad at me?"  He asks.
He is afraid of the answer.
"No, I'm not mad.  I'm really concerned and frustrated.  You've got to make better choices.  I'm not sure how to help you.  You know that thinking yourself sick to get out of something isn't the best way to deal with  a problem."

"I know, Mom", he says sadly.

"I'm really concerned about this problem cooperating.  School is often work and you are expected to rise to the occasion.  Not cooperating  makes your life more difficult than it has to be."

He doesn't know how often I convinced myself I was sick to avoid the exquisite torture that school provided me and later work.  There were consequences.  I don't always cope as well as I should.  I can make my life more difficult than it has to be.

His father and I work out some new "rules" for coming home during the school day.

Vomiting.
Fever.
A medical condition that requires immediate attention.

Those are his get-out-of-school free cards.  Tough love is tough.  My heart breaks a little again but not as sharply and deeply this time.     I know what needs to guide my choices.  I stand on a top of the years, looking down.  I know how important it is for him to learn how to deal with life.  I want to give my energy, my faith, and my hope to his potential to overcome what holds him back inside.

But, there are things I can't control.   This fact feeds a growing mass of worry inside my heart.  My heart breaks again, sharply and deeply.  I look at the pieces of my heart and realize that broken again and again, my heart has become stronger in all the broken places.
I tell myself,  "I can do this.  I can cope and so can he."

Mercurial

Wordy Wednesday

Carol's 3rd grade photo

Mercurial.    I do not like what it means: changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic: a mercurial nature.   It describes how I often feel. . . maybe even, how I've always felt. 

On good days, it makes me feel alive, creative, some times even witty.  On bad days, my mercurial nature is a source of embarrassment and shame.  I wrap myself in side it and look out at a world covered in cold gray fog.  It is a world I have created, my mercurial mind and I.

Last night, I finished a book:  The Dark Side of Innocence.  Terri Cheney writes of her childhood.  After struggling for years with depression and its evil cousin, mania, she was diagnosed as bipolar.  Her first book, Manic surprised her with its success.  Encouraged to write of her childhood, she resisted until realizing that telling the tale might help others and herself.

I'm no Terri Cheney.  Mania and I are not as well acquainted. It teases me from a greater distance.   I did not label the darkness within as the Black Beast when still very young.  She is brilliant and talented in ways I am not and yet, when I read about her childhood, the feeling her words conveyed, tapped into memories that I had long tried to escape.  The circumstances of our lives were very different in so many ways and yet, I knew on the most basic level that the things I felt, the things I tried to run from and deny, the things that haunt me at the oddest moments, were experiences and emotions so similar to hers that reading them felt like being kicked in the stomach.  Like Terri, I, too was the unusual child who began her struggles with light and darkness when still very young.

Maybe it's no coincidence that I came across her book, when I did.  Lately, I have felt the weight of being a mother to a bipolar child.  I look at my son and feel the terror of uncertainty. 

I often close my eyes to it but, there are times when his unique way of being forces my eyes open.  At those times,  I have to face what I have always known.  He is not an average child.  His world is tormented by worry and obsession.  His despair can feel bottomless.  He questions his worth, his life and often needs help to carry on.    The depth of his sadness is profound and frightening.  We both tumble through space in pitch-black darkness and wonder when will we hit bottom and what will it look like?  Can I save him?  Can I teach him to save himself?

Once in a while, a light shatters the darkness and we are blinded.  We forget we are falling.  We are saved by our own glory.  Always, the light fades and disappears.  We return to our dark descent and wonder, have we ever left it.  Was the light a dream?

In my own private, mercurial hell, I often avoid dealing with the facts.  Facts.  I can not escape some of them.  The fact that he requires so much supervision, so much encouragement, so much attention is one I often ignore.  Recently, his ability to upset others couldn't be denied.  As much as he wants the love and approval of everyone, he becomes his own worst enemy and pursues his own brand of madness in such a way as to make those around him frustrated and annoyed.  Once he's achieved this alienation, he is filled with despair and remorse. 

My awareness of this tapped into something very primal within me.  I grieved for the child he is and the child he is not.  Words failed me.  I began my own odd mercurial shifting, swinging slightly between two extremes: hope and despair.  I couldn't write about it or talk about it.  I had to learn to walk around with this secret burning inside me until I felt empty and hollow.  And, then, I read Terri Cheney's book.  I saw myself.  I saw my son.  I felt for both of us and then for all of us cursed in this way.

But it is more than a curse.  No matter the reason, it is what is.  It is not all bad.  I realized that there is a great value in being honest and open about the truth about oneself.  Terri Cheney did not have to write her books.  She did not have to tell her story.  I did not have to read it.  But, she did and I did and one day my son might read it or another book like hers and feel hope.  Maybe some where between the crazy kaleidoscope of light and dark that plays across the mind and heart and soul, he will see how special he is.  That is what I saw in between all the words, those in Cheney's book and those in my own head.  Mercury is part of who I am.  It is one of the things that makes me uniquely me.  I am no better or more "special" than another.  It is simply one of the tools in my kit and it's one I can embrace as my own. 

My Creative Son

Today, I'm at the library with my number one son. On the way over he asked, "Can we have our ten minutes now?"
This question is usually followed by his asking, "What do you want to talk about?"
To which I reply, "I don't know, it's your dime."
Once we get this formulaic ritual out of the way, he begins talking about almost anything.

Today he said, "I think I get my writing skills from you. I'm a good writer, when I want to write. Sometimes I don't. At school, they mess up my creativity by making me stick to a plot."
To this I reply, "I know what you mean."
He then asked, Do you ever mistake a cat for a fox? I really want to see another fox so sometimes, when I'm looking, I think a cat is a fox for a second. It's not but I keep looking."

Sticking to a plot, an idea, a point isn't always an easy thing, especially when your mind floats from one topic to the next. My number one son, is one of a kind. Sticking to a plot or idea is hard for him unless it's important to him. For something important he is very focused. This is great if we both agree on what's important but we often see importance very differently.

Recently, he was having a lot of trouble at school. He'd been assigned several new assistants who just didn't mesh with his style. When I'd ask him what was wrong, he said, "They just don't respect me. They treat me like a special kid."
How do I tell him that he is a special kid but that being a special kid can't be an excuse? It seems a rather subtle distinction. It's not.

Number one son is not a typical functioning kid. He never has been. While only hours old, I knew that he was not like most other babies. When he looked at me, I could see it in his eyes. He'd be keenly aware of his surroundings for a while (about 20 minutes). After taking everything in, he would turn his gaze inward and shut down. The world was often too much for him. The noise, the sights, the smells were overwhelming.

He didn't talk until he was well past his 2nd birthday. I began to wonder if something was wrong with his hearing but I knew there wasn't. I wanted some explanation as to why he had yet to speak. When he did start talking, it was in full sentences. I think the first thing he ever said was, "Mom, when are we going to eat?" He'd ask that same question over and over, following me around the house from room to room. Without realizing it, I'd drift from room to room hoping to shake him. When he was three, I had to ask the pediatrician if his behavior was normal. The pediatrician seemed to have been waiting for my question. Soon we were meeting with a panel of experts who tested my son. The panel decided to go with Aspergers as a diagnosis. It opened more doors. A lot of his behavior's fit. A lot did not. He really was too unique to be so easily defined.

He still is impossible to define. He has some social blind spots. He has less emotional armor than many kids. According to the school, Asperger's no longer qualifies him to receive special ed. He is now granted special ed due to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Labels can be hard to carry. I've tried to explain to him that some things will always be hard for him but that he has talents and gifts that are his alone. The world needs people like him, who think outside the box. Sometime, the "inside-the-box thinkers" need a fresh perspective. Most importantly, I've tried to teach him that while his diagnosis/label helps define him in some ways, it is not an excuse and it's not who he is. It's not a free pass to act less than honorably.

My clever-as-a-fox son sometimes tries to use his "specialness" as an excuse. Last time he was tested by the school psychologist, his IQ was a 140. I had to wonder if it might have been higher if his attention didn't wander so easily. He often matches his wits and cunning with those who are much less wily. When these are authority figures, it doesn't always go well for him. His life isn't easy.

I'm not as smart as he is but I understand him. We seem to have a supernatural connection. If I awake during the night unable to sleep, within minutes, he awakens and finds me. The other night we both had a nightmare at the same time.
Sometimes he says out loud what I've been thinking.

As I sit and write these words, I try to decide what to write next. Do I express my concern for this child who may be too attached to his mother to really connect with kids his own age? How do I help him fly on his own without leaving him feeling abandoned? My mind drifts back to our Just10 minutes this morning. Maybe I'm trying to force a plot upon his story. Maybe it is I who needs to learn to be more of a flexible thinker.