There comes a point in my life, over and over again, where everything is either just too much or everything is not enough. And sometimes...it's both.
I am at that point now. As are my children. We've all had enough. But we've also not had enough for a long, long time. And now? It's time for a change.
We've been at this point many times. But it never sticks. We try to change and then we go right back to the same shit as before. But this time, it's different. This time, it's life or death.
My son has come to me several times lately to talk about his suicidal ideation. And now, we have no choice but to change. And now I feel like I have the motivation to create this change. But why did it take so long to get here?
Granted, part of it is that I feel I have no right to tell someone else what to do with their life as an adult, so I felt stuck. I can't march into my son's room and demand he applies for jobs or demand he does anything at all. I know many of you may feel that you can do that to your child, and you do do it, and I have to say, I don't agree with you. But that's your life. My life is different. I don't make demands.
"Well Shay, maybe if you did, your son wouldn't feel so bad?" Maybe. But I also know what happens when you take an autistic PDA person and make demands on them. They will go so hard in the opposite direction that their situation will get way worse. There's a delicate balance you have to strike with a PDA person, as I have it myself.
The issue is here, I don't know what else could have happened to force change in our family, other than this. And that's awful. Granted, maybe there are many things that could have forced change, like a new girlfriend or boyfriend. Or some opportunity. Though that last one, my son would have been excited and then at the last second cancelled because he just couldn't do it, as that's how things have been going for him lately. Anxiety is a beast of a thing to try to wade through. So short of someone coming in and fixing us, I really don't know what else could have happened.
But it's happened, and now we have to push HARD to make the changes we need to make to make things better. We're doing it, but we need to STAY doing it. And that's the hard part. But I can't go back this time. I have to make this be the big PUSH we needed to actually change our lives and do things differently. And nobody else is control of this but me. And that's a lot of pressure. But I have to, for the mental health of my children and for the sake of their lives. I have to grow the fuck up and be the mom I need to be in order to fix this. I always feel so...inadequate in this department. I am bossy, but not like that. But now I have to be. I will be fifty in a couple years and I thought I'd be relaxing back and just doing what I like. Turns out, I am still a parent and I need to still be parenting. My oldest is like 10 years behind due to his autism. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just wasn't thinking of this as a parent of autistic kids. I was thinking of my life as a parent of kids. Turns out, I was wrong. So, very, very wrong. And I messed up.
And now it's time to fix it.