SPECIALNEEDS
righteous. Show me some respect, I’ve had tragedy. I can’t feel anymore pain, and if I feel like you are hurting me. It feels like all the joy and happiness has been sucked out of life and has been replaced by worry, stress and grief. Every minute of every day it’s there, in the back of my head, never leaving, a tiny hamster wheel in the back of my brain spinning and spinning saying “What about Owen? What about Owen? What about Owen? ? ? ?” “Everything happens for a reason.” Fuck you.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 It feels like I have poison running through my blood. I know it’s really my genes, on my X chromosome - my broken insides. But in my body, I feel like there is a poison running through my veins, a poison that hurts, breaks, kills. I’m infected and have inadvertently infected those most precious to me. And because of this, I’m angry at those who poisoned me - my father, his mother. Now they are both dead, so I guess it makes it easy to be mad at them. I hear talk of family trees - and I see my tree, my branch, others’ branches, marked with an X, a
passing through from generation to generation, branch to branch, unknowingly connected by blood and X’s, connections that are primal, physical, emotional, psychological. My grandmother’s recent death has stunned me stunned by realizing that her blood runs through me and has poisoned me. She in now gone and I survive her, moving on to contaminate the next generation.
Friday, April 8, 2011 Owen is almost 2.9 years old. He is over 40 lbs, nearly as tall as his almost 6-year-old sister, loves big trucks and spending time in the kitchen. He is into everything! He is talking, but it is tough to understand, and he uses lots of signs. Owen also loves going to daycare two days a week and runs into the class without a second glance at me. He is in a “typical” daycare with all “typical” kids, and he does really well.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 Feels like I can exhale. Both kids are back to school, including Owen who is attending four full days of public preschool. The transition was terrifying to me. How would he handle it? Would they offer us enough services? What if I had to fight them? But after seven months of tests, evaluations, meetings and site visits, it was time for his first day of Pre-K. The worst part was his first “bus” (van) ride to school. He ran to the van happily, we installed his car seat, buckled him in and kissed him goodbye. He suddenly looked around the van and realized that we weren’t in it, and as the door closes, he started to flail and cry. We watched the van drive away, Owen flailing and his little face in the window, terrified. We turned to walk back up the stairs, and I burst into tears. My baby! He can’t even talk! He doesn’t understand where he is going!!! What is he going through? Maybe I’ll drive to the school and go see? Bridget grabbed my hand and said, “It’s OK mommy; he’ll be fine.” An hour later I was laying on my bed, depressed, imagining my poor son despondent that we have abandoned him and sent
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