Reluctant.

Adjective: Unwilling and hesitant; disinclined.

This isn’t about autism. But it is.

I am SO OVER autism. So much so, I ain’t proof reading tonight. Deal with it.

It’s April 1st. April Fools Day! That one day a year, every year that I would call home and tell them I was pregnant!
I haven’t done that in a while! I really shouldn’t let an opportunity like April Fools Day pass by! I think I’ll text the old whatever-he-was and tell him I am pregnant (mental note made) –and then turn off my cell phone I DIGRESS!

It’s also my adopted cat, Donald’s, birthday… or at least the day I guessed was close enough. He’s 5. He is my LSU Law School cat. That is when I got him.

Let’s see… what else is today… I think I am forgetting something… Hmmmm April… April….

Mmmm April… Spring time…
My retro loving brain takes me back in time… especially on a day like today.

1995.
He was dreamy.
He was a pre-med student taking a financial break… joined the reserves and decided that X-ray school in the Army would look good on his future med school apps. So he said… who knows really.
He was dating my good friend… never so bold in my entire life, I told her one day, “I want him, and I can’t stay away.” She appreciated my honestly.  So she said… who knows really. I lost my friend.  I gained her man.

Our first date was in this incredibly pretentious coffee shop somewhere in San Antonio… it wasn’t my type of place. It was his.
A second date was at a piano bar –it wasn’t my kind of place, it was his.
I took him camping… not his kinda place, it was mine.
I made him go to Mexico with me… not his kinda place, it was mine.
He bought a lovely glass chess set at a souvenir shop, and his face paled when I made my purchase –a bull whip
I can remember how he tried so hard to teach me chess, he’d try so hard to let me win… still I would lose.
I can remember teaching him how to aim with the whip! His never-worked-hard-a-day-in-his-life hands would fumble every time.
We were two very different people.  But neither of us cared. It was an incredibly fun, temporary thing.

Most guys there got a kiss from me just by saying, “Hello” –I was friendly.
It didn’t happen like that with him… it was different.  It took a while. I think I liked him too much.  I was reluctant.
I think it was after the coffee shop.  It was a steamy hot night, windows down in the car… sitting in the parking lot, neither of us really wanting to say goodnight… Finally it was time that I HAD to go.  Damn curfew! He got out of the car and walked around to my door and that song came on the radio. He leaned in and turned it up… then he grabbed me for a kiss. *Melt*
19 year old Jenny was playing it cool… very cool… But I am pretty sure once I left and my car turned the corner I smacked my hands off the steering wheel several times and then high-fived myself! After that we were together until I moved on to Washington DC.

Every time I hear that song I think of him.  Every time I listen to Bob Seger I am transported back to that time.
I have a lot of memories like that from back in the day… I share this one because he was my favorite.
The Good Ol’ Days. Carefree. Childless… young… foolish… ZERO responsibility!!
The memories come back to me in flashes.  Good friends, good times, good booze.  Beaches, camping trips, house parties, picnics… boys boys boys!!! Never planning a thing, just going with the flow and having the best weekend of my LIFE –EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND!

I didn’t expect to live that way forever… not that I made future plans for my adult self.  I never do.  I’m a “roll with it” kinda girl.  I think that is the only way I manage to deal with it everyday.  I knew that having kids would change things… I think… I think I knew that.  When I found out I was pregnant with my first child I just shrugged it off and vaguely imagined the gypsy life we would share together. Whatever comes our way, we’ll deal with it. Maybe no more “boys boys boys” and bars… but the road trips and spontaneous vacations and good times with good friends would never have to come to an end! This child would be my side kick! But Autism stole that from me.
–And we have.  We have dealt with it… though some days “dealing with it” can be a bit too much.

That is where I am today.  It wasn’t a particularly bad day –not from my child.  It was just the totality of it all.
All this autism SHIT in the news –the ignorance, the denials, the same-old-excuse crappola… The headline on the local paper that said the new numbers are chalked up to awareness and diagnosing… April 1st.  The beginning of Autism Awareness Month. It feels like a knife in the back.

I don’t want to deal with it today.  I don’t want to be AWARE today –I don’t want to be aware that I can’t be spontaneous… that I can’t go do 99% of the things I want to do because of AUTISM. In one way or another… Gavin won’t go outside, the fire sirens might go off.  We can’t go do normal family things because there are too many considerations, too many things I can’t handle as ONE person trying to deal with my TWO kids.  I don’t want to be aware that if I do manage to think of something we can all do, that I don’t have the money to do it BECAUSE OF AUTISM. I don’t want to be aware that he is 15 and I should be able to put him in charge of my youngest so that I can go out and have a fun, carefree night with some boys boys boys.  I don’t want to be aware that a date takes an Act of Congress to clear my schedule and find a sitter and a refresher course in how grown ups interact and converse because I have become a social hermit –awkward and only knowing how to talk about autism and vaccines and methylation cycles.

I am more aware than I ever want to be.

I am reluctant. I am a reluctant “Mother Warrior” tonight.  So I am betraying a promise I made to myself with the memories and the dwelling… tonight… maybe tomorrow, maybe all week.  I am taking a break. Allow me to wallow in the memories of easier times for a little while longer.

Play me out, Bob:

Mean Girls.

And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s goin’ on?

Bitches be hatin’

I believe that Autism is caused by the Tree Goddess, Twiggy, as revenge for chain saws –and if you don’t KNOW it too, then fuck you.

I wrote a book, people know my name. I am better than you. So fuck you, and please, buy my book.

I am a lawyer.  I am smart.  I am better than you. Fuck off.

My child’s autism was a gift from God, because you know God thought I was special and he knew I could handle it.  Don’t think so? Fuck off.

I am a doctor.  I inject kids with vaccines all day, even my own autistic kid! It wasn’t the vaccines! Don’t think so? Fuck off.

I’m not anti-vaccine, I want safer vaccines, so fuck off.

I am anti-vaccine, fuck off.

My child is an Indigo Child. He’s just quirky, fuck off.

You know, my research shows that bad parenting is at the core of autism, Fuck you for questioning my “NEW” (60+ year old) theory.

I am RIGHT. YOU are WRONG.  YOU tried to point out my wrongness.  My insensitive remark.  SO…. FUCK OFF! I will belittle you, I will lie… I will make you look small and stupid.  FUCK OFF, I’m the queen!

“AND I try, OH MY GOD do I try. I try ALL the time… in this institution.”

It is a fucking shame –and it’s a fucking shame that I repeat this like a GOD DAMMED BROKEN RECORD. Think of what we could accomplish as a community if it was a love-you fest vs. a fuck-you fest. Our kids are the ones losing out.  All this wasted energy.

Own your actions.
Apologize when you do something douche-y.
Drive on.

“And I PRAY, OH MY GOD do I PRAY, I pray every single day, for a REVOLUTION!!”

In my wildest dreams we take all this I’m-right-you’re-wrong-fuck-you energy and go after those who deserve it.
Pharma.
Psychiatry.
Brian Deer.
Paul Offit.
That Whore Amanda Peet.
Congress.
FDA, CDC
Monsanto.

Do something for your kids today, not your ego.
That is all.

God of Rationalizations, I pray to thee.

The Human Body can only take so much abuse.

You know, I try so hard to be organized.  Some days it seems like I am really on top of it. It feels good to be ahead, to be getting shit done. Oh, but then… something will happen to throw me off course. It can big, it can be little, it can go unnoticed… but suddenly I find myself struggling to get control of it all again.

Tonight a burst of inspiration hit me and I was getting more writing done than I have in months… it’s actually for a non autism project, but important.  And shit was gettin’ done! THEN A SCREAM.

My autistic son has learned that screaming gets results.  Of course it does. He can be loud. Some of it makes me laugh, like the middle of the day request for a Kleenex.   You Normals out there have children who may, perhaps, walk out into the living room and say, “Mummy dearest, I request a Kleenex for my runny nose” –I get “KLEENEX” screamed louder than you can imagine.  During the day it doesn’t bother me.

But see, day or night my child has needs. And the human body is equipped with the fight or flight response for good reason.  Trust me, screams in the middle of the night, while your mind is sleeping, body relaxed, defenses down… activates the fight or flight response. His middle of the night screams?? “FIX THE COVERS!!” The first scream wakes you –you know someone screamed but you don’t know why… this is followed by a second or third before the fog wears off and you realized that NO, you aren’t going to die (not from the imminent danger anyway –the heart attack, maybe), but that your 15 year old is not capable of fixing his own god-damned mother-fucking covers.

Well, I just got a “FIX THE COVERS” in the middle of my roll and it stops me dead in my tracks.  I was mid-loud-yawn and didn’t hear the details –just the scream, much like if I had been sleeping, it startled me.  I go in there, agitated… no longer sympathetic that he isn’t feeling well, or that his vaccine injuries have left him unable to know any better.  But I am not agitated with HIM, I am really angry at the fucking bed.  The sheets don’t fit the mattress well, I find myself making that bed fucking constantly.  I want to smash it to pieces, throw them all out the window and set it on fire.  I want to sit and watch the fire burn with a bottle of rum in one hand and a stick roasting marshmallows in the other. FUCK THAT BED!

I used to think I would die tripping up the stairs, falling over and impaling myself on a pencil –for example, as I am very klutzy. Now I am just sure that one day –soon, my heart is going to say, “Fuck it, I quit!” How long can we survive when we are shoved into fight or flight multiple times a day? Some of you who are on my facebook page might remember what happened last fall when something that shouldn’t have upset me caused a fight or flight reaction and I couldn’t shut it off… adrenalin kept surging, for hours.  Finally a friend came by and we drank rum and he made me laugh and several hours later I was finally calm. It took alcohol and hours of laughter to come back down. I thought my heart would explode, my skin stayed bright red for hours.

Cortisol. My real enemy.  I know in a past post I talked about the study that showed the mother caregivers of special needs kids have telomeres that age 6 times faster than those of the Normals. Thank Cortisol.  I hate it the most for the belly fat.  When I lived a stress free life my ass would get fatter, sure. But never before this mess did I have belly fat.  Even now as I have been losing weight, I look at it –it taunts me, and I swear it has decided that it will be the last to go… Fuck Cortisol.  I get derailed so easily… my concentration is blown. It gets harder and harder to get back on track.  Oh, thank cortisol again.

I don’t know… you think you’d be able to rationalize it all with your inner primal self, “Ok, look body… I KNOW you THINK that the shit be goin’ down, and we’re all going to die… But it’s 2012 and we don’t sleep in caves anymore and wild animals aren’t going to come and eat us in the middle of the night.  If you hear a scream… it’s just the fucking sheets on that fucking bed.  DON’T PANIC”

Yes, I am going to try that tonight –a little mind over matter. I am going to try to sleep now, even though my body is still telling my brain to arm myself and get ready for battle.  And tomorrow I will try to get caught back up when all I really want to do is sleep for a couple days straight. –Well, that and lie in bed watching Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill. That clip is really my favorite line from my favorite movie from my favorite tall, lanky, geeky guy crush. I *HEART* Jeff Goldblum. I can admit it.
P.S. Is it time for Chicago yet?????? I need a drink!

Sometimes we are LOUD and ObNoXiOuS!

This one is for my girls who are wrong in all the right ways!

“My friends and I have been through hell with our exes, abandoning us, our kids, leaving us homeless, we should all be in a fucking clock tower, taking people out.” –Kelly Dunham

Yesterday, one of my friends shared this link with me –a fascinating column from The Onion (my only source of news). Kids, Your Mother Is Ready To Start Fucking Again.  We got a little silly… we got a little carried away on Facebook… perhaps we should have taken it to our double secret private group where we talk about boys on a regular basis. (Yep, we are talking about you!)

I have been accused of not-so-lady-like behavior often.  I male bash, I am LOUD, I am Angry!!! –too angry!! I COMPLAIN TOO MUCH! I spend too much time on Facebook!!! GASP! I started to think that perhaps I should change myself… that perhaps my lack of social grace is the reason that I always finish in 2^nd place. (More than once in conversations with exes who seem to lament their current domestic bliss, I will joke and say, “Guess you married the wrong one” Only to hear, “Oh, no I married the right one.” Ouch. Thanks. –Lord, and so that I don’t sound like a total loser the most important one of the bunch did admit he married the wrong one. There… my self-esteem has been rescued this morning!)

Hmmmmmm….

First off, the exterior protects the interior.  Just remember that.

We do spend a lot of time online. I love my computer –all my friends are in it As much as our “normal” friends with their “normal” kids and “normal” lives think that they understand… and believe me, some of them are totally awesome, they just can’t get it 100%. Until you live it, you just don’t get it.

Over a decade ago we had email lists!! I met so many people out there JUST LIKE ME!! Moms of autistic kids who were trying to figure this all out –most of us are still friends. [And most of them who were married back then, are now divorced.  Even the ones who seemed to have these great, strong marriages, have joined the “I’ve been abandoned” club.] We have Facebook now. All my rowdy friends are there, and I love them. I don’t have anyone like them near me.  If we all lived together in the autism commune I would throw my computer in the trash.  If I had a million dollars I would be flying off to see them on a regular basis.  Until then I will continue to, unapologetically, spend too much time on Facebook.

Male bashing?

You know what you don’t see in my blog, or on facebook? Do you know what you don’t hear?? You don’t see and hear me bashing every man in my life because there are a few good ones. Same goes for the rest of my girls.  But just give us a reason!  We don’t HATE men. We love men.  We love cock, so I guess we have to love the men attached to them Oh, I joke! We love the rest of you too, especially when you take out the trash and do all the man things around the house.  We have the ability to hate as well.  When you walk away from your kids without so much as looking back… we can hate you.  When you make us feel like beggars for asking for the child support your child deserves, oh… we can really fucking hate you.  When you leave my friends homeless and only look out for yourself, darlin’ I will help them hide the body.  When you physically abuse my friends, I will help them KILL you AND hide the body.  So yeah… we bash sometimes.  And we don’t feel bad about it… we LAUGH our FUCKING asses off at your misfortunes –because you see, Karma is a wonderful thing. *insert “Caucasian Cancer with Brown Hair” joke here*
If men treat us right and treat their children right, we sing their praises.  If we are male bashing… well, for our kids’ sake, it sure beats sitting in a clock tower.

We are loud. We are angry. We complain. Maybe we are even jaded and bitter some times.

Yeah. I am not going to make apologies here either… remember my blog about trying to be nicer and calmer… from just a week or so ago?? Within a couple days of me suppressing my dark and twisty emotions in an effort to be bright and shiny, I was sick again, I had horrible neck pain, I had an RA flare up in my hands and I was seizing like crazy (all in one day).  I am certain that I internalized and suppressed my stress and it caused an inflammatory response worse than I normally experience.  So fuck that.

–You don’t REALLY know me.  The majority of you out there only know me from my blog, or Facebook, or the old days of the email lists.  I can’t be this angry in real life, I can’t be this loud and obnoxious in my everyday life.  I can only afford a slice of what I give off here… So I give it all off here.  Don’t think you really know us.  And when we do come off a little unpolished in the real world, well, fuck you if you don’t think we’ve earned it!

Look out Chicago, I’m a comin’

I AM going to Autism One this year I cannot mother fucking wait to see old friends, and to meet so many of you in real life… and to get sloppy drunk and sexually harass waiters at restaurants (speaking from past conference experience) and act like teenagers with you all! Again, unapologetically.

‘Tis the Season to be Bitchy, Fu-Fu-Fu-Fu-Fu… Fu-Fu-Fu-Fuck! or, “I’m an asshat”

Nothing is going my way… and I mean, worse than usual.  Holiday stress is not helping!
But it was just the kick in the ass that I needed.

Recently I was pondering the fact that I spend so much time worried about my son –what to do for my son, how to treat my son, how to deal with autism, how to kick it’s ass, etc… that I wasn’t really here, in the moment.  All this worry just drained me.  So not only was I too busy to really enjoy my kids and what I HAVE RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF ME, but NOW I am more stressed out than ever and NOW instead of merely neglecting them in THIS moment, I am being down right bitchy in THIS moment.

People plan, God* Laughs.  That’s what they say right?

I am one of those people who needs to know all the details… about everything… all the time. When you have a child with autism, that whole part of you gets obliterated.  There is no way to know.  I get anxious… lol Pat Benatar, anyone? I really do feel like a bee inside a jar when I don’t have a plan… when I am left with questions, when I am left with uncertainties.  (REALLY starting to fully appreciate how appropriate Apis was as the remedy from our Homeopath)… so now I am a bee inside a jar and I am trying to occupy my time.  I tend to throw myself into so many things at once that I can’t finish anything or give anything the proper focus.

I end up neglecting the family that I am trying to save.

How many of us are doing this?  How many of us are so caught up in trying to organize this autism chaos that we aren’t enjoying ANYTHING anymore?  I owe my kids a lot more of me than they are getting right now. I have had moments like this before, moments where I realized I was in this vicious cycle of things getting worse because things were getting worse –of crying myself to sleep every night because the thought, “tomorrow, tomorrow I will be a better mom, tomorrow I will get it right” had JUST ran through my head… AGAIN… for the 30th night in a row.

Something’s gotta give. –lol, I need a plan!! … to get out of my bad habit of needing a plan?? Oy!

I have decided to go with a “fake it til you make it” strategy.  I am going to start putting faith in things that I don’t necessarily believe in**.  I am not one who likes the concept of faith. It’s not a tangible… oh man, how I love me those tangible concepts!  But my life is kinda going to shit. All the tangible things are slipping through my hands –so I am throwing my hands up into the air and giving up.  I am going to stop it all –all the nonsense.  All the desire to control every little detail, all the instinct to micromanage every move my kids make (I caught myself actually giving them directions on how to go down the stairs the other day –yeah, I am THAT fucked up! “NO, No! Let your brother go down first, just walk right past the dog, stop… wait… ok go.” Jesus FUCK!) I’m going to start being nice to the Universe and tell it about all the happy and wonderful things that I want in my life.  I am going walk on egg shells or bend over backwards for this power or energy that is… b/c I think I have pissed it off. Maybe the Universe will throw me a bone, eh?

And in the meantime, I’m going to focus on being HERE and being a better mom for my kids in the present. Fuck the past, fuck the future. Our kids don’t care about that nonsense. (Well, ok, my autistic kid obsesses greatly about the future, but ignore that for now
–and if all else fails, back to drinking a bottle of.. er… glass of wine a day!

*The God of your choice.
** Sorry MG, that doesn’t mean I am going to start believing in a God

I came here to complain…

to bitch, to moan… to tell autism to fuck off again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to…

It’s just that I logged on and saw that damn flag.

–feels like the ship is pretty low today. We’re talking “that last 25 seconds on the titanic” low.

My son has been screaming and yelling at me all morning, it’s been a week of this –solid. I am fucking exhausted.
I am sitting here at the kitchen table trying not to lose it –well, frankly I have lost it… I guess I am trying to not go completely fruit loops. I keep lying to my 7 year old –telling him that I have a headache as an explanation as to why I am covering my face, hiding my eyes.

I look up at the tabs across my Firefox browser and something made me laugh that snarcastic evil ironic laugh –yes it is all those things in one. In one tab I see this: knee high leather boots that I am kinda drooling over. In the next tab I see this: Free 12 month Subscription to a GPS tracker. I mean seriously! Where do you think the money is going to go?? I’ll never own a pair of boots again. ever. in my whole fucking life. I know I am not saying much in this post –but those of you who GET IT, will get it.  Fuck autism for my lack of “fuck me boots”

I am working on a couple blogs that I hope to have up in the next day or two… one is about the state taking over your medical choices as demonstrated by California giving 12 year olds the right to consent to their own HPV vaccine without parents consent (can’t have an abortion without parental consent –category sexual health and freedom, but CAN get an HPV vaccine –category sexual health and freedom. DIFFERENCE?? follow the money). AND the story of Dr. Usman –who is under investigation for performing medically necessary treatments, backed by clinical results, approved by a parents –but then contested by another parent when he found out he would have to split the bill in the divorce. This doctor did not act outside her scope of practice –yet the state wants to step in and say just WHAT services we can seek from licensed doctors?? I call BULL SHIT.

Also, we seriously need to talk about adult services as our kids are coming of age –and all that is out there is SHIT.

I am pretty sure I just cheated you –this isn’t a blog… it’s just another one of those “ranty” check ins that attempt to excuse me for the fact I don’t post here daily –which is the intention.  I have moved twice since August. ‘Nuff said right? I’m trying. Life is chaos right now. I have thoughts… I have ideas… I just don’t have enough brain cells right now.

I’ll take “Depressing Shit”, for $1,000, Alex!

Let’s begin with some mood music:

I really have wanted to write a blog for… forever now.  But the mood comes and goes. I have spent the last three months dealing with abdominal pain, and more specifically the last two weeks SERIOUSLY dealing with a ginormous kidney stone. I am still not done “dealing” with it, but for a brief moment this evening I found myself incredibly bored, so I cracked open the WordPress and started nosing around at the unfinished blogs in my draft folder hoping to find the inspiration to finish one.  Instead something else caught my eye… Search Terms!! I get to see what people type into the search engine that brings them to my blog.  As you can guess, “autism wars” and “autism awareness” are at the top, but from there it gets dark… really fucking dark.  Sometimes amusing.  Mostly depressing.

my autistic son stresses me out
my autistic child is ruining my marriage
my sons autism is killing us
stress of looking after an autistic child is crushing me
i work with an autistic kid and my stress is killing me
i can’t wait until i can put my autistic son in an institution
i have thoughts of killing my autistic child
what to do when you can no longer care for an autistic child
fuck autism, I want my life back

The terms below help to explain the feelings of those above:

are people with autism considered human
should you call an autistic child stupid?
stupid fucking autistic people and their stupid fucking obsessions
autistic people are scum
autism diet doesn’t work

–you get the idea? (there’s lots more)

I have been pondering truly depressing shit for a couple weeks now, but my wheels really got turning when I read the story of the 911 call from when Jani Lane’s body was discovered in a California Hotel. The one detail that stuck in my head was the note in his pocket –not a suicide note per se, but one that certainly predicted his future.  The note said, “I’m Jani Lane” and had a friend’s phone number one it. How fucking depressing. I am guessing his friend felt that he did all that he could do and decided that shoving some identification in his friends pocket was the last thing he could do…

Recently, my 6 year old stunned me with this one, “I wish God didn’t make us”.  *EYES BULGE OUT OF MY HEAD* (First off, I am an atheist.  We recently moved back to Pennsylvania and I can see the Grandma/God influence is back in his life –and now my eyes *roll*). It seemed like quite a deep thought for my boy to be having.  When I asked him why, he told me “Because the Earth is stupid”. Indeed little buddy –indeed!!  Now, the life of an autism sibling is not an easy one, I am sure there was much more going on in his head –but he summed it up quite well with his ‘earth is stupid’ bit. In my head I tried to figure the best way to answer –I don’t want to mislead the child.  The Earth is stupid, but that’s not the point.  “I know Liam, but we can enjoy our time here by making fun of the stupid people and eating cake” then we both laughed.  ;)  And that is the point folks!

I felt incredibly bad for Jani Lane. I felt like all he needed was someone to slap him out of it, to say, “I know the Earth is stupid, but we can enjoy our time here by making fun of the stupid people and eating cake.  IT WILL BE OK.” I really never saw life as such a complicated thing.  I don’t understand what it’s like to be so “depressed” that I would kill myself and/or take a child with me (which happens too often in the autism community). I have never had that feeling, so I can’t pretend to know how easy it might be to snap someone out of it (but you know I am going to tell you if you do feel this way you need to dump the meds and clean up your diet, right?).

Ok, ok… I bitch and complain a lot and I go to the dark place a lot… but I still don’t lose perspective –not for long.  I figure I ought to bring that up because one of you will surely call me on it.  I am grumpy, I hate people… (the stupid ones who make the earth stupid).  But I never reach a point where I don’t want to exist anymore.  I like the sand between my toes. I like getting drunk with my friends.  I like first kisses.  I like driving around my shitty home town blasting gangster rap in front of the old people. OH!! I like screaming random names out to people on the side of the road (Jim!!! HI JIM!!!) and watching the puzzled looks on their faces (HOURS of entertainment). I like watching SouthLand (Season 4 coming Jan 2012 to TNT!!). I LOVE crawfish and beer and hot, humid, Louisiana summers. I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE. Why do YOU want to leave?

Sometimes I think this desire to understand the meaning of life –to find our purpose and place in this world, is a burden that some people just can’t handle. There is no reason why we are here, we just ARE.  (Bet you didn’t think I’d be telling you the secret of life today, did ya?) Instead of being miserable, make the best of it. Even if you believe in God and believe that there IS a reason and purpose, don’t you think God would just want you to be happy?  –if not you ought to flip through the catalog and pick out a new God!

Ok, so life with autism is fucking HARD. It’s stressful, we’ve covered that. But we need to focus on the things that bring us joy.  For some of us, that might mean stepping back from the endless crusade of autism awareness to focus on your own family.  For some it might mean stepping back from the 24/7 crusade of trying to save your family to really ENJOY your family (Hi trees, did you happen to see the forest?). FOR SOME finding JOY will mean picking up the autism awareness torch from those who had to take a break for a while (Join my Army!! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS.) For some of you, JOY is a BONG! FIND YOUR BLISS.

my autistic son stresses me out –yes, it will.  I’m sorry. Try Yoga, or wine.

my autistic child is ruining my marriage –you’re spouse is a dick.

my sons autism is killing us –try not letting it.

stress of looking after an autistic child is crushing me –Have you tried Merlot? Merlot and CALL ME! We’ll drink together.

i work with an autistic kid and my stress is killing me  –then go work at fucking McDonald’s b/c my child’s future depends on people like you being able to do your job.  You aren’t cut out for it. QUIT.

i can’t wait until i can put my autistic son in an institution –I am sorry to hear that. I wish you had more help. Please try the diet and other biomedical interventions, it might get better.

i have thoughts of killing my autistic child –please don’t. If you reach that point drop your child off some place safe and go directly to the hospital. Or call 911.

what to do when you can no longer care for an autistic child –call social services, call family and friends for help.

fuck autism, I want my life back –Amen sister!

are people with autism considered human –yes, but not sure you are.

should you call an autistic child stupid? –um..no… can I call you a cunt?

stupid fucking autistic people and their stupid fucking obsessions –It’s called OCD you stupid fucking moron, and it’s not under their control (diet helps

autistic people are scum –well, now, maybe you’ve met some of the ND crowd?

autism diet doesn’t work –fuck you. Yes it does.  Each child is different.  Start GFCFSY and tweak from there.

Please don’t kill yourselves. Please don’t kill your kids.  Please don’t be such a drunk that your friends put their contact info on a slip of paper in your pocket. You think nobody cares?? I care. email me. facebook me. We’ll talk. We’ll get drunk together on the beach while making out and watching SouthLand after a hot, humid day of crawfish feasting! IT WILL BE OK. Heaven isn’t too far away.

Indulge me.

My Mind. My “Give-a-Fuck”.

This is more of an exercise in getting back on the horse, than it is a real post.

I’m still here.  Kinda.  I doubt anyone has really missed my coffee and nicotine fueled profanity bombs. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. My brain is just kinda mush. It’s summer time… summer time with Autism.

First, there is Gavin.  Barely verbal, non-conversant… but a HUGE verbal STIMMER.  It’s never quiet.  Can you image that for a minute?  A house that is never quiet. It might help to understand that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and that I have my own sensory issues. There are times when I just can’t fucking take another sound –yet, I am stuck here… no where to run to baby. no where to hide.

His biggest melt downs are sensory related.  And the biggest assault to his senses… his younger brother, Liam.

Liam.

I understand where Liam’s actions come from… he has this 14 year old older brother, who should be doing all those big brother things and instead he has got nothing but the shaft. So Liam does what he has to do to get some sort of interaction from his brother… even if that is singing, doing, or saying things that cause Gavin to melt down.

Since May 20th when school got out, it has been one big scream fest in this house… Liam screaming, Gavin screaming, fighting, yelling, blasting TV’s, computers, yadda yadda. Gavin’s latest thing is biting his arm on top of the screaming, so now he has bruises too. We can’t play much outside, too hot.  Can’t go in the car during the day, a/c is broke.  No money to escape.

Summer vacation is NO FUCKING VACATION.

Welcome to Holland, my ass. This is autism.

And it is true, no one ever said that life was fair.  Life is this random string of fuck yous and fuck mes –and right now I have had quite a run of fuck mes. Somewhere in my head is a huge political rant about what is fair and just but I just can’t get it out through all the mush and noise.

I have about 15 started blogs sitting in my draft folder.  The kids are back to school in 4 weeks. If I can survive the fucking madness that long, I will take a whole fucking day of quiet to lay on the ground and stare at the ceiling, then the next day I will be back. The website will go up.  The ball will be rolling again.

It took me 1 whole flipping hour to type this because I have to keep stopping to play referee. You sure vaccines are safe?? Just saying… before you shoot up your kid I want you to understand that all this glamour could be yours!

I’m just a little broken right now.

Why Autism WARS??

A while back I saw an article that said the moms of autistic kids have the same stress as combat veterans.  My first thought was, “DAMN! And me without my camouflage and M16!”

I was in the Army during some easy breezy times.  I entered a couple years after the Gulf War, got out a couple years before Kosovo.  I do not personally know the trials and troubles and emotions of combat –and I am not pretending to.  The only action I saw was in x-raying the aftermath of murders, suicides and DUI deaths.  Before arriving at Fort Polk I was told that particular base had the highest rate of spousal and child abuse and homicide.  I never did verify that statistic, but I believe it as I saw plenty.  Still, I didn’t have a care in the world while stationed there.  I left work at work and spent my down time with good friends drinking cheap booze and having great times.  After the Army I worked midnight shifts doing X-ray and CT scan and again found myself more often than not doing trauma work.  I dealt with gruesome things in the decade that I did that work.  Yet again, the word stress –the idea of stress, never entered into my vocabulary or my head.

I believed that stress was something people with no coping skills made up –I was sure it was in their heads and they just needed to SUCK IT UP!

Shortly after my 23^rd Birthday my son was diagnosed with Autism.  I didn’t see this as a big deal. We would still drive on with the life that I had planned, take it day by day and kick down any walls in our way.  No big deal.

I NEVER SAW IT COMING.

I think I kinda hung in there for two years… but then it all went to shit.  The 4.0 I had at Penn State was gone –I barely hung onto a 3.0 at a much easier school. I was skipping all my classes because I couldn’t bear the drive and couldn’t fathom sitting through one more class.  I can remember skipping my math class to watch reruns of “ER” at the student complex.  Any thoughts I had of grad school went into the trash.  I used to be a CAT Scan wiz at work… and I found myself having to write down the procedures for a simple head CT line by line because I couldn’t keep it in my head.  I started gaining weight –and that is what pissed me off the most, I hadn’t changed my diet NOT ONE BIT, yet over one winter I put on 40 pounds and over the next couple years added another 40.  I quit my job. I tell people it was because I couldn’t stand x-ray anymore, while partly true, the bottom line was that I couldn’t cope with it anymore.  I bounced from job to job, not staying anywhere long.  I attempted a year of law school –which about put me in the fucking Looney bin.  (Someday I will tell you all about my 1^st semester.  I can laugh about it now, but you’ll agree with me that law school tried to kill me… it actively hunted and tried to kill me on many occasions).  I thought about going back into the Army or joining the police force just so I could shoot at things for a little relief… but I was too damn broken.  I have developed epilepsy, blood tests show chronic inflammation markers for the past 2 years (probably longer but I wasn’t looking before then), the beginnings of RA are rearing their ugly little faces as well.

I still never thought about stress –psychological or physiological.  I didn’t believe in it.  I didn’t understand it… ignorant to what stress REALLY is.

One day I was discussing the fact that my autistic son spends a great deal of his time in a “fight or flight” state –especially when something as tiny as a fly buzzes his ear, he has an exaggerated reaction and has run into streets in front of cars, buses, etc. to escape.  I pondered this, and what it must be doing to his body, for several days.  THEN it finally hit me –like a BIG OLE FUCKING BUS… that I, too, spend a lot of time in fight or flight just trying to care for him.

Chronic Stress.

It has left me a shadow of my former self. Most days I can barely function.
There was a time when a mass causality situation would bring out the best in me, the more pressure the better.  Nowadays… I could easily spend 30 minutes in the cat litter isle because I can’t decide if I need instant action, 24/7 action, multi-cat… odor block (I mean really, do we need this many choices?)

Parents like me need to live forever –at least, outlive our autistic children, but new studies are showing that being the parent of a special needs child is shortening our life spans by 9-15 years.  Like combat veterans we show biological markers for chronic stress that include the shortening of the telomeres found on the ends of our DNA –Hey, I don’t understand it completely yet, but basically these telomeres are indicators of aging, and the special I watched about it (Netflix, you can stream it, it’s a National Geographic Special on Stress) said that our telomeres are aging 6 years for every 1 year of our lives.

This is a war.  This is a war against death.  Inflammation/Stress play a bigger role in heart disease and resulting deaths than any cholesterol number.  WE parents need to figure a way to CHILL THE FUCK OUT before we drop dead. In future blogs here I will talk about how diet is the number one way to fix this.

This is a war because of the CAUSE of all this stress.  I figure that I might as well let the crime fit the punishment.  If I am going to age and die as if I am at war, I might as well declare war.  So I am. Here and NOW! I am declaring war on autism and all those factors that make OUR lives and the lives of our KIDS a living hell.

THIS IS WAR because the state WILL come after your kids with guns to forcefully medicate them, but toss your ass in jail if you aim back… While I have great respect for the police (the decent ones), I have often said that if anyone tried to take my kids to do anything to them against my will, I would go down shooting.

I AM NO WRITER.  I suck.  I have shitty grammar, bad spelling, a foul mouth and an ability to ramble and skip around in my thoughts like no other.  I apologize for that. I bought books on grammar and spelling to make me better, but who has time to read them? But I am tired… well fucking exhausted, of swimming in my own thoughts.  There was a time when my loud mouth was quite an asset  –my loud mouth, my fearless attitude, my “I don’t give a shit what you think about me” style, my desire to chain myself to something for a cause…   For too long I have kept  my head down, mostly out of exhaustion.  But I am dying here, my son is dying here… autism, toxins, stress –they are killing us faster than the average human and I am not going quietly.  My son deserves a world that truly accepts and understands autism.  My son deserves a world that is willing to rise up against the obstacles and get to the true cause, and thus the truly effective treatments, cures and preventative measures. (Translate: vaccines are THE major contributing factor to autism and detox and special diets help and parents should be able to opt out of vaccines and ineffective, harmful pharma drugs without fear of police action). My son deserves that mom who said she’d kick over walls for him.

Come along with me, and I promise before this is through I WILL CHAIN myself to something… maybe even to Paul Offit himself I would say that I am recruiting, but most of you have already been drafted –sorry about your luck, but since you’re already here let’s have a little fun with this and try to turn down the stress, OK?

http://www.abilitypath.org/love-laugh–live/stress-relationships/coping/articles/mothers-of-children-with-special-needs-and-combat-soldiers.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534658/ (read the related articles on the right as well)

The National Geographic Special, “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” (you can stream it on Netflix)