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Adrift by Regina Walker
I am feeling emotionally adrift these days. I have always been prone to internal storm, and though I know it is not the healthiest way to conduct a life, knowing doesn't always translate into changing. At least not for me. My tendency to create a certain amount of chaos in my own life can feel almost unintentional, but I know I need to make that which is unconscious conscious. I have paid a high price for diversion, and I no longer can afford it. I guess my awareness of that tendency is slowly emerging and becoming conscious. Perhaps that is a form of improvement, though I just don’t always like what I see. Chaos is a habit, a bad habit of mine and it is exhausting, especially as I get older. I am feeling a bit burned out, and I find myself questioning everything. I don’t trust myself anymore. I used to love to write but I find myself now having difficulty getting words out, and once I do, I just tear them to shreds.
I guess I am a lot like my son Sam in that way.
Life seems down right out of control lately. Work and the kids absorb so much of my time and energy, but I imagine that is as it should be. Or should it? I don't always know, and there remains a part of me that believes life should be lived in a certain way (though I can't quite figure out what that certain way is), and I always feel like I am coming up short. Too little too late. But hey, thanks for playing!
I am looking for schools for Sam for this upcoming September. Autism is a strange world. It is a strange world to visit, and I am a reluctant visitor at best some days. I feel somehow muted, underwater, and like I just don't quite get it. I don’t know which direction to go in and at the core of it all is fear mixed with guilt. I don’t really want to be here. And I wonder if that is how Sam feels, though he can't seem to tell me. I spoke to one of the head teachers at his present school recently, and I jotted down some of her thoughts:
"Sam is quirky."
"His processing is off."
"Sam shuts down often."
“Well, he’s Sam, so you know what I mean.”
But I don’t. I really don’t. And that scares me sometimes.
What am I to do with all this? Sam is 5 years old so he is now entering "school age" but he just ain't your average Kindergartener. I am so afraid of doing the wrong thing, making a bad decision, or not doing enough that I get paralyzed sometimes. I shut down or I turn away. And I realize that the chaos I create in my life somehow seems easier to deal with then the chaos that visits me from strange, uninvited worlds. Strange worlds like Autism. I want a 5-minute glimpse of the world, my world, his world, our world, 15 years from now. Who will Sam be? Where will he be? What I want is reassurance that he will be okay, though I am not even sure what okay would look like. Even if I knew, what would I do differently now? Would the knowledge of some distant peace help me to quiet the current storms? I don't want to make a mistake but sometimes it feels like it is all about making mistakes and not knowing and flailing around in this vague, unknown world.
Chaos. I live in a town called Chaos. I built it myself.
Regina Walker is a psychotherapist in NYC. Her work has appeared in Hip Mama, Mamaphonic, The Mothers Movement Online, Mamazine, and others. She is the author of the biweekly "Clinical Viewpoint" column in the Substance Abuse Letter published by Letter Publications. She can be reached at cswcasac@aol.com.
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