Angry Day

I haven't even written this entry yet, and I'm already thinking of a million retorts with which a person could present me. Don't use them. As you see from this title, I am angry, and I will take off your face.

I'm not sure there's any one thing that's happened to stuff this particular bee in my bonnet. Well, that might not be true. I'm mad at autism. I'm angry it happened to us. I'm angry that I've eliminated enough foods out of our diet that I am absolutely despising my cooking these days. I'm angry that it has created behavioral issues in our daughter (don't try to tell me that it hasn't) which are increasingly tricky to parent. Sure, behavioral issues happen in every child, and sure, we don't expect her to have 100% of our undivided, compassionate attention if not for her autistic brother. But it's amplified. It's a much, much bigger problem than it would be otherwise.

And I think that's the core of it. So many people seem to think that the issues I have as a person and as a parent are things that everyone goes through. You know what? They are. They're what everyone deals with...multiplied by 8. It's the same, but it is not the same. Not the same at all. And it makes me angry that people think it's the same. It's like a guy making $100,000/year telling the guy who makes $15,000, hey, we have money issues, too. Mr. 15,000's like, screw you.

So I'm angry. I'm angry that I seem to look like everyone else in the way we suffer and struggle, and I'm not. I'm angry about every little corner of it, and it bubbles up and bubbles up, and when I start to feel like a pressure cooker, I try to let off steam. And maybe I do it at the wrong times, but so many people seem to think they have the exact same problems, and that doesn't let off steam; it makes more. Someone used this beaut on me not too long ago:

Me: ...so that's why William was throwing up for an entire month. I've never been so scared for the life of my child.

Friend: I know what you mean. Just yesterday, my kiddo cried for hours and we didn't know what was wrong. I gave him some Tylenol, and that seemed to do the trick. He must've been teething. But, before the Tylenol, I really did think about taking him to the ER.

I mean, whoa. You know what I mean? You KNOW...what I MEAN?!? No! No you don't. You don't know what I mean at all. You know what it's like to have an average child and worry about him. You did not worry for an entire month that your child was going to die. I mean, no. And don't even get me started on the people who compare my children to their cats.

I wish people would stop doing that nonsense, but they won't. They won't because they're people, and people try to relate. They don't know they're being invalidating. They think they're getting in the trenches with you, and I actually appreciate the effort. But nonetheless, it's excruciating to listen to, and it's never, ever going to stop. It's not going to stop because I have a special needs child, and that is never going to go away.

So, I called George at work today to see if he could make sure he's home tonight. The Great Annual Back-to-School Mess 2011 has begun already, so he's been at the office most nights this week, coming home around midnight or 1. Anyway, I asked if he could be home tonight to give me a break, and he goes into fix-depressed-wife mode. I mean...what? I thought we were past all that, you know? So now he's all worried, and it made me angry. It's not his fault. I did go through a long depression in which I used to call him home from work, and often enough that it was a problem. It's not completely unreasonable that he responded that way. But it was humiliating. I wanted to yell at him, "I'm fine! Well, I'm not fine, but it's not like that! I just hate the world and I'm really hungry because I hate all the stupid food in this house!"

I know I'm going to have days like this. I have an autistic child; I know I'm going to hate the world some days. But I don't want to. Today, I want average. I want the struggles everyone has. I want to worry about my child, but fix it with Tylenol. I want to worry that my children are eating too much sugar and carbs, instead of worrying about the potential fleck of Cheerio under a friend's couch that William could find and put him in intestinal agony for the next week and a half. I want to worry about how to put our kids through college, not how we're supposed to sustain intensive therapy and a massive commute every day.

I'm just so freaking tired of it. Lord, have mercy.