Today is W’s birthday. 12 years old.
I had every intention of telling his story at a quicker pace, but I’ve found myself lost in a sea of anger a lot of the time this summer. Writing should be my therapy, the thing I can do for him that may outlast the wild cycle of destructions, frustrations, repair, and progress we live through on a daily basis. But it’s hard to write through that kind of frustration.
I am frequently angry at the life that was stolen from my boys. The children that were stolen from me. The brothers that were stolen from my daughter. And the injury and the suffering they endure while they are increasingly left behind, isolated, their injuries whitewashed and normalized in this bizarre world of mass identity confusion.
W bears the marks of damage to his body and mind that I have allowed to happen. It came in needles, it came in pill bottles. It came requested by me and came by routine schedules and routine treatments. It came in food and personal products.
But regardless of how it came, I let it in. I was his first line of defense. We always say we need to be “gentle on ourselves” as we realize these things because we didn’t know, but perhaps we can be TOO gentle on ourselves. Absolution can’t come without paying a price for failing to protect what was given to us.
It feels like it’s time for some real bravery.
Happy birthday to my baby boy.
P.S. I promise a second installment of the Autism Chronicles soon!