Gavin, on the other hand, is only going to require more and more from me, and I’m already exhausted. I love him completely, but he drives me absolutely fucking crazy.

There aren’t a great many options for him. Every time we seem close to figuring out some kind of solution to help Gavin spend more time away from home and socializing with peers, something always derails it.

Sometimes it’s a health crisis with him, or maybe it’s something that comes up with someone else in the house. Either way, getting Gavin into adult day services gets placed on the back burner. Even if everything was ideal; he’s still fucking psychotic every single day of his life. It’s really hard to be comfortable placing him in someone else’s care when he can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t.

What many people fail to understand about people in my situation is often there is no solution. Humans like to think that every problem has a solution that ties everything up all nice and pretty, but that’s fiction. That’s not how it works for many families like mine.

Majority of the time, addressing one problem ends up causing two more problems. It’s literally one step forward and three steps back.

Any workable solutions require extreme creativity, ideal conditions, and often, resources we simply don’t have.

There was a time when I had a successful career as a fire/medic. I was very good at my job, and I made a difference. The money was good; we had insurance. I was able to pay the bills and even save a little for the future.

Over time, things got so bad at home that the only solution was for me to work from home. Lizze’s health was failing, and Gavin was entirely out of control.

From that point on, things just continued to become more difficult.

Today I find myself struggling with depression, even though it is properly managed. No amount of therapy, exercise, or medication can counter the constant, unending levels of immeasurable stress that I’m trying to cope with each day.

Our house is literally falling apart, and so is our only car for that matter. We live in a neighborhood where I’ve heard several gunshots while I’m laying in bed writing this. The kids can’t play outside because it’s not safe. They hate it and desperately want to move, but that’s not something I can pull off.

My earning potential with everything I’ve built over the years is pretty significant. Unfortunately, I’m spread so thin, as well as being physically and mentally exhausted; I can barely write most of the time. The idea of writing just pushes me closer to the brink of insanity because the act of articulating my thoughts coherently is so overwhelming. I just can’t do it.