*Fair warning, I'm uploading in this post. I've needed to do this forever but couldn't find a way to get all this shit out. It's a bit raw and intense. Please understand that I'm treating this as therapy for me. It's like a journal entry. I'm purging and not looking for anyone to critique my thoughts. Right now I'm just grateful to be getting them out.*
I spent the evening hanging out with my Mom tonight. She just had knee replacement surgery, and I was helping out while my Dad was working. She's doing pretty good moving around, but someone needs to be there just in case.
We watched a movie, and at one point, she asked me if I was okay. I said what many special needs parents say when asked that question. I said *I'm fine*.
She could, of course, could see right through that and pressed me for the truth.
What followed was me just unloading a ton of shit I'm feeling. As it turns out, I'm not okay. I'm struggling with a great many things, and all the therapy, exercise and medication can't help that.
I was overwhelmed before both my grandparents died this year. I was overwhelmed before Lizze's grandmother died last fall. I was overwhelmed before life threw more shit at me than I can deal with.
A good day for me as an Autism and Special Needs parent is spent desperately trying to hold our lives together, as everything is tearing at the seams. I often fail because I'm exhausted beyond measure, I'm facing challenges that sometimes have no solution and meet even some of everyone's unique needs is physically impossible.
Every day I go to bed, assuming I can fall asleep, knowing that the very best I could do wasn't good enough. It wasn't good enough by a mile. Of course, no one tells me that I put that on myself. If you asked my wife and kids, they would say I'm a hero to them. Frankly, that makes me feel even worse.
I'm stretched beyond my breaking point, and there is no way to get off the ride.
Our lives never slow down and what I fail to accomplish today, just snowballs into everything I need to do tomorrow. It's never-ending, and I will be doing this for the rest of my natural life. That's pretty fucking depressing.
I think Elliott and Emmett will eventually do well on their own. Maybe they'll need extra help or guidance, but they'll do it.
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.
In so many ways, I'm on my own because Lizze is very limited by her physical and emotional health. There's not always the ability to offload anything. Most of the time, if I can't get it done, it doesn't happen. It's certainly not her fault, and it's not the kid's faults for all they have going on either.
I spend a great deal of time simply triaging everything that's flying at me. I have to decide what I can drop and what I have to figure out how to juggle.
Even on my absolute best day, I'm dropping the ball in multiple areas of our life, and that often means I'm not meeting someone's needs. It's a fucking awful feeling, and nothing anyone can say will change that. It just is.
So the truth is *I'm not okay*. I'm struggling to keep my family above water, and I'm trying desperately not to drown.
I'm doing what I can for myself, but there's only so much that can be done when my stress is situational, and there's no changing the situation, at least not right now.
I need to win the fucking lottery. OMG, that would be amazing. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would help me build the necessary resources to begin the task of un-burying ourselves from almost twenty years of shit that's piled up.
I'm not okay right now, and I don't think I'll be okay tomorrow either, or the next day for that matter. I will relentlessly take on each day and continue to do the best I can. I'm not a quitter, and when I fail, it's not for lack of trying.
We so desperately need to catch a break, but those are few and far between.
I'm really sorry to unload this on you folks. I know that many of you are struggling yourself and come here for inspiration or comfort. There's not a lot of that going around tonight, and I apologize for that.
Right now, I'm completely drained and need to sleep. I've not been sleeping, and that certainly isn't helping. I'm exhausted, and with any luck, I'll crash and wake up in a better.
