I took some time away from thinking. (Not really.) I took some time away from talking. (That’s more like it.)
Mostly because my whole being came to a choking halt when my son’s developmental pediatrician drew a little diagram in front of me to help explain why she felt that my four-year-old has obsessive compulsive disorder.
After that I heard the words “child psychiatrist” and “anxiety disorder” and I shattered.
I didn’t (don’t) know how to talk about it, the abrupt shift-change.
When my dad called that evening, I practiced saying it, got the words out calmly. And he said, “Okay, sounds good,” and it was a non-issue, just another answer. But I felt like I was ten years old screwing up my scales at the piano or getting a D on a math quiz.
“That’s crazy you know,” my husband said, letting me cry on him.
**
We’ve been on this road for so long, for a couple of years, the quirky what-if maybe-autism maybe-this maybe-that but not that and not that because. Because, I don’t know why not. I don’t know.
“I’m sorry,” I cried, later, but not to him. Alone. Thinking about what anxiety means to me, thinking about how it feels, how it runs in my veins and that I gave it to him.
(Shh, I know. I know I didn’t give it to him I know this isn’t my fault.)
His doctor looked me in the eye and said, “We do know that this runs in families, and with your history and your family’s history…” She trailed off.
He sat on the floor on the other side of the room, squeezing trucks and lining them up.
I nodded, of course, yes, of course. Sure.
**
He’s four. He is four.
What does he have to be anxious about? Not bills or deadlines (does he feel it when I’m tense and stressed?) not death or illness.
(Oh but he loves to talk about death, dead things, broken things.)
His sensory integration issues don’t help, probably, his occupational therapist tells me, all warmth and smiles and keeping me from going crazy. He feels different, the world feels different, other kids stress him out.
“He doesn’t talk about being afraid that much,” I say (seeking evidence to the contrary of this distressing possibility), trying to remember every time he’s ever been afraid of something. The dark? That’s normal. Dinosaurs? Dinosaurs are scary, man. Twisters? Blame the Wizard of Oz.
But it isn’t cut and dry, none of this is. Hell, we don’t even have a diagnosis yet, just more appointments on the horizon.
**
I don’t know how to tell this story, only how to live it. I fumble for the lines between his story and mine, I hope for the wisdom to know how to share this with grace and respect for a little indivdual who has only been around this crazy world for four years.
**
Bedtime and saying goodbye are the most rigid. Ten kisses, a hug, and a short script.
This week, the script became more complicated. Like a Doctor Seuss book. Back and forth.
“Goodbye,” he says.
“Goodbye.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I love you,” he repeats.
“I love you too.”
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
He watches my face, waiting for the right words, the whites of his eyes showing a little and I can see the need there.
Something I read last week talked about rituals slowly, as kids get older, becoming more complicated, becoming more disruptive. I wonder at this as he bats his brother away and then simply screams inhumanly. Because a careful line of toys has been knocked out of order.
**
As he squeezes and carefully arranges and then grunts and hums and squeezes some more, his therapist nods and speaks to me in hushed tones. “That is what it looks like to me,” she says solemnly.
But we agree, smiling, that it’s fascinating, that he’s fascinating. So smart, so funny. So absolutely loving.
I don’t know why the thought of autism was easier, and why this is more frightening to me. I don’t know who my community is, or where to turn, or who else has kids like this or what the hell I do. I’m scrambling to re-gain my footing, to shake off the stigma I never knew I held.
I feel guilty for being freaked out now when I felt so assured before.
**
He’s just a little kid, barely more than a baby, and anxiety disorder makes my brain fast-forward to middle school and high school and college and sleepless nights and unhappy adulthood and God-DAMN-it I just want my little boy to be happy. Happy every day. Happy. Not scared, not scared of things I can’t see or touch or fight.
I am his mother and if I could I would tear the monsters down with my fingers and fists, stomp them into the Earth with my bare feet, shatter them with an unholy roar. You leave my son my alone.
**
When I pick myself up from my little meltdown, I settle into the words, into the thought of it, onto the road. This is a road I’m on, that we’re on together, that we’re all on. Slowly, so slowly, I’m coming to peace with the path—with the understanding that we have no destination. No final answer.
We only walk together, hand in hand, holding tight to each other.
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