No gives back

This world is just bursting at the seams with horrific news. Black lives extinguished and threatened. COVID deaths. I would try to muster up the strength to continue this list but I just don't have it. My empty shell of a soul hurts too much.

This week lifestyle blogger Myka Stauffer's disgusting act came to surface. After financially profiting from adopting an autistic child from China she and her husband and their perfect blond, white family gave him up. I use the word "lifestyle blogger" as my body threatens to retch.

I know how difficult an autistic child who is prone to violence can be. I know how we struggle as a family with a teenager who has autism and bipolar. I get it. But as many times as I think that I can put him in residential or give up the fight, my heart knows I could never allow that. I scream and complain. There are times when I want to just go to sleep and never wake up. The stress, the exhaustion, the fear is all-consuming. But giving up on your child whether it is biological or adopted is not an option. She has the means to hire help to keep Huxley from hurting their other children. She has the means to get therapy. 

We are a middle-class family. We've paid tens of thousands of dollars on therapy, medication, and care. In the last seven years, we have two nights when our friend Jon has taken Andrew overnight to give us some respite. We know the struggle. We are the poster family for the struggle. 

I admit to sometimes feeling hatred toward my son. The things he says and does, the punches, the threats -- it hardens something in me. Deep down I love him more than anything and would never completely give up on him. There are times when I feel like surrendering but I know I could never do that. 

The Stauffers should be disgusted and ashamed. They went headfirst into adopting a child with special needs, profited from the adoption, and then decided it wasn't working. Life is hard. Life is a pile of steaming shit sometimes but if a mother or a father gives up on their child what does that child have left? The kindness of strangers. I hope Huxley benefits from the kindness of strangers.

The pain's gonna make everything alright

It has been what? Several decades since COVID dropped. We all thought we were stressed before, hello Xanax, my friend, let me introduce you to tequila.

It's been sixteen years and several days since we've been sheltering in place. Every couple of days I am overcome by suffocating despair. I feel like there is no possible way that I will survive this and by this, I mean living. Each day I struggle to wake up. How will the hours play out? Will there be screaming? Punching? Crying? Or will there just be quiet while he is left to play his video games and not be a member of this family?

People are dealing with this pandemic differently. For the longest time, I was consumed by worry for the world and truthfully I still am. Now I am worried about my husband's mental well-being. He now sees what days are like buried in the same four walls with Andrew. Negotiating every single thing. School. Showers. Dinner. When we have the strength we fight Andrew to do what is expected of him. When we don't - we don't. They argue and taunt each other like schoolyard bullies. I am not blaming my husband it is hard to remember you are an adult when gut-wrenching agony meets every breath.

We all have our rows to hoe. I try hard to not complain - you may laugh - but I do. I have to express my disdain for those whining and complaining about "missing their friends" "missing going out" "sad that their kids are missing their friends." Missing friends? I haven't had friends for sixteen years. Yesterday, I was supposed to zoom to sing happy birthday to two little girls I adore. I did make them cookies and they were picked up. After a few hours of fighting, the time was 6:15 - and I failed again. I missed the call.

Someone complaining about a leaky sink sends me into a rage. I wish I had a leaky sink as my biggest problem. I realize that I am sounding like life is a pissing contest - it isn't. It just seems unfair that my worry is if I will be punched in the face because I told him he shouldn't have eaten the cookies for breakfast and someone else has a drippy faucet. To be fair, Jim takes the brunt of the violence - because he demands that Andrew follow some semblance of real life. We are at the end of the line here and will have to make some hard decisions once this pandemic has stopped its course or a vaccine is available.

Until then I try to breathe.