Sometimes All I Know To Do is…
hug him and cry. I don’t write much about the meltdowns we experience as a family, mostly because somedays it would be all meltdowns, all the time if I did. Even now, the supper dishes are still on the table now over an hour after our yummy steak dinner was enjoyed. Jax got to the point of meltdown after supper, and in the middle of trying to play with his sister, and when push came to shove (most literally), Jax melted down.
This isn’t just a crying without cause kind of thing, although there are times it feels so much like that. It’s an air sucking, can’t talk or breathe, sweating, screaming, so very sad moment that can go on forever, or sometimes feel like it. I wish I could say that it wasn’t my fault but I live constantly wondering what I should have done to help him stay “just right” so that the “yuckies and itchies” ~ that’s what he describes when he is able to describe how he feels ~ don’t take over and Jax can’t control his anger. Should I have done more work than the walks and the playgrounds and the boxing and the trampoline and the…the…the…
What else could I have done? We do a strict schedule most afternoons where, if he gets any type of video at all (that is VERY rare these days), it is early and we always have energy-expensing, then calming experiences planned for him. And the routine is strict. And so are the rules. And still, there are meltdowns and sometimes…
sometimes all I know to do is experience the melt, and then hug him when it’s over. And cry all the while.
And tonight he snuggled in and we both cried, me with grief and longing for him to ever have more than a fleeting moment of peace, and him, I hope just feeling the comfort of the arms of a Momma who loves him so very much.
I cry for alot of reasons. Because I’m frustrated. And scared. And at a loss to know what to do. And wondering if I am doing enough. And feeling like if I do any more, if I take even less time to care for me and others while focusing on his needs, I will just waste away. I cry because I love him and want him to feel joy, not this perpetual frustration. I cry because I grieve “what might have been” if alcohol and drugs would have never entered his little body those first nine months of life, and then I feel sad all over again because I truly do love my son just the way he is.
I cry because I’m lonely in all of this.
My Jax is a handful and it really feels like no one really, truly understands or gets it. But then, how could they? They don’t live with him. They don’t see him through mother eyes who can truly say to her son and mean it, “there is nothing my dear, sweet boy, that you could ever do that would make you lose my love”.
Sometimes all I know to do is cry, and then… try… try again tomorrow, and hope and pray that we get it right, and that sometime along the way, ever so gently and miraculously, a new connection will makes it way in and through his brain to help him see what it feels like to be at peace even when life is overwhelming.
Because that is truly what it feels like to him because of his sensory differences, because of what alcohol did to his brain. What we see as every day life, he sees as a cloud that frustrates and confuses, and fills his mind and body with all sorts of stimulation he can’t sort out. And it makes him melt down, and the tears flow and words are angry and body is out of control and during that moment, I miss my sweet boy but still… love him just the same, and look forward to the moment when the meltdown is over and he is my sweet boy again.
And I can hug him close, and we can cry, because sometimes that is all we know to do.