I’m writing this on a Sunday morning, curtains drawn closed because I can’t stand the light. It hurts. I’m sad today. So sad it feels like the waves of the ocean are just bringing more and more sadness upon me. The weight of the world sitting on my chest as I try to breathe in and out, to make it through today.
I started my morning by being woken up to the Big One and the Little One arguing. I knew my day was already going to go badly. I tried to cover myself back up and find a peaceful sleep, but I knew it wouldn’t come. It rarely does without some pharmaceutical help.
So I got up. I calmed the children and they decided to go outside to explore the woods behind our house. Something I knew could end in disaster because they are like oil and water those two…. except in some ways so much alike, if they could only see it.
As they were outside I settled myself in my chair with coffee and Sally Clarkson’s new book “Different”. A collaboration between her and her son a Nathan and their story of raising a child with abbreviated diagnoses after his name…. just like my kid…. kids…. I read the introduction, and a couple pages into the first chapter and my head was spinning. Maybe this isn’t the right time to read this book. Maybe it’s all too raw. My son has been diagnosed for years, but we are just starting the process on my daughter, and it was only last month that I received (finally) my diagnoses.
It prompted an email to my mom. Pleading with her to tell me what I was like as a child. Tell me was I obstinate, was I non-compliant, was I “bad”. I already knew I was hyperactive… but maybe, just maybe it’s not all my fault. Maybe passing my genes on to my children didn’t do all this…. maybe just maybe some of the guilt will lessen? Maybe some of this sadness I carry like Marley’s chains in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol will subside?
I wait patiently for her reply. But I also wait with fear and trepidation, because in my heart I know, how can it be anything else but…. all.my.fault?
The Things We Hide Inside 