I Cry In Public

And its starting to happen more and more.

Strangely, I am kinda okay with it.

I mean, if I could wave my magic wand it wouldn't happen. But knowing WHY its happening somehow makes me okay with myself in the midst of the spectacle. The hard part is putting other people at ease over it as they all rush to find out what's wrong, essentially trying to ebb the tide of my unsightly emotion.

What's wrong? Autism is.

As a single parent of a 4 year old with autism, I would give myself a grade of B+. (Not 'A' because I am bad at asking for help. If I was doing this perfectly I would have a support team constantly around my son and I).

A few times now, there have been extremely stressful situations involving my son and medical personnel, or somewhere we have to wait, or somewhere he doesn't want to be, or NOT somewhere he wants to be... where my son has thrown a giant fit of epic proportions and I have had to

• contain it
• deal with it
• survive it
• treat it
• outlast it
• help others recover from it,
• etc

The problem is my son has no ability to self regulate. It is soaring ecstasy or utter devastation. If he experiences either of these extremes, its hard for him to find the balance in between again.

How I think this differs from an average 4 year old fit is that he doesn't have the self ability to recover, and he is truly suffering. He doesn't understand, so I can't explain it to him. I can see the devastation and suffering in his eyes. Yet there is no other course of action I can take except to ride out the storm with him.

As a parent I think I might take the bigger brunt of the hit. Or maybe its because I don't live in the present, so I am still living in the trauma a couple of days after the fact. Maybe its because I am more acutely aware of the suffering, and am helpless to relieve him of it.

Maybe its because as a single parent, I don't usually get any recovery time. So when my child has recovered 2-12 hours later, I am still 'on' making sure he remains stable and doing everything in my power not to set him off again... not resting and recovering from the trauma I suffered, watching him suffer.

You may or may not be acquainted with grief. If you know it, you will know it will rear its ugly head at the most inopportune time, if you don't make appropriate time for it.

Well I don't have any opportunities to debrief my sons varied, sporadic, unpredictable trauma's, and subsequently the tears come out really inappropriately:

• at work when someone asks "how's it going?" (they are learning not to do that)
• at a salesperson who is trying to upsell me, and I don't have the energy left to protect our limited income, so they just get tears instead of intelligent refusal.
• at my poor mother who is just trying to make plans or help, but one more question is making my brain explode in the form of tears.
• at the news that I still have to stop at the pharmacy before we go home... tears.

I would be headed straight to my doctor for depression, but the thing is, this is purely situational. It IS trauma. But antidepressants aren't going to fix any of it.

Earlier this week I reposted an article on Facebook that cited that mothers of kids with autism (just moms in general, not expressly single moms) have stress levels the same as soldiers in combat. I don't think they put soldiers who are in active combat on antidepressants. I would imagine it could affect their ability to fight.

Same here.

So in the meantime my body's way of dealing with the trauma of the battles is by releasing the trauma through tears when it needs to cry. (Side note: tears of suffering are a completely different chemical composition that lubricating tears) And that's why I'm kinda okay with it. I trust and respect my body to know what it needs to do.

Its all the other people that are freaked out about it.

Sorry! Its just autism.