He will get the help he needs. 

For two weeks I was on autopilot, doctors appointments, trips to the Emergency Room, medical residents who didn’t know what they were doing, diagnoses being thrown around and me questioning everything. All of it.  Social Anxiety, O.D.D., Zoloft, therapy, ADHD, pediatric bipolar disorder, hyperfocus, technology addiction. This was/is my reality. I didn’t want to belive that. Any of it. You’re not talking about my child. You don’t know him. You’re looking at a piece of paper and saying things about residential treatment. I know him. You’ve never met him. Don’t tell me what to believe about my own kid. I gave birth to him. I’ve watched him grow and from a tiny infant to a young man. And he’s trying. He has been handed a complicated set of genetics and a series of events that he couldn’t control. It’s like a campfire that was already blazing that someone threw gasoline on. He was treated poorly by the school system, misunderstood, stigmatized, told he was a poor listener, treated like he was a “bad kid.” Children aren’t bad, they are children. He is a sensitive, kind, scared little boy who is afraid to sleep by himself. He is almost 10 and he needs to be reassured that nothing bad is happening to him. He can’t understand the thoughts in his brain. When I ask him, he says “it’s complicated, I can’t explain it.” He probably doesn’t know what they are, what they mean.

The system is broken. The structure that is supposed to help him isn’t doing anything. He’s a number in a pool of other numbers. His case “isn’t that urgent” and he’s not a “high priority,” but yet, I keep being told that things will get better.

They’re not getting better. They just are. We have 10 appointments in the next month to understand what is happening to my son. I wish I could tell you that I had faith that we will get some answers, but I don’t know what to believe anymore. I’m exhausted, and I’m tired of asking other people for help. It’s not fair to them. They have their own lives, children, families and this is my life. My obligation is to my little boy who isn’t little anymore.

He will get the help he needs. 

I have heard this so many times over the past month. I want it to be true. I want to believe that this road leads to a place of peace. But I can’t know anything at all. None of us can. People have told me that it’s going to work out, but how do they know? They don’t. It’s something that people say when they want to be supportive, empathetic, but they don’t know what to do for you. There’s nothing that they can do. They can’t fix it.

For several days at night I lay there and looked at the white ceiling wanting to cry. It was so painful inside me but the tears never came. Though I wanted them to, they didn’t. I wasn’t ready to break yet. It wasn’t time.

Until today.

I felt weak. I have been fighting so hard from him and my body is tired. I have been asserting all the power I have and I’ve gotten nowhere.

Maybe it was the acupuncture, the naturopath who read me like a book, who inserted needles into the right spots in my body pushing the qi out of me. He allowed my emotions to flow out of me.

He will get the help he needs. 

I’m crying now. Sitting here writing here, tears rolling down my face, praying to God that my son gets the help that he needs. He deserves that. He deserves to be happy for more than one solitary moment. I know it’s possible because he once told me:

“Mommy, I feel happy for no reason.”

I know underneath this hopelessness I feel that he will come out of this. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of how.

I have relationship PTSD and I’m sad about it. I’ve been hurt, burned, dumped and had my insecurities strewn across the hardwood floors of my apartment. My buttons were on display for men to push and they hit them hard. I had to suffer the consequences of being triggered over and over again. Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing or maybe they did. What I know is that I internalized that trauma. I’m afraid that I will be hurt again, have my weaknesses used against me. At some point in romantic relationships, we hurt one another. It’s not ideal and sometimes it’s ugly, but when you’re in a long-term relationship, you will hurt the other person. It’s a matter of how bad the damage is and whether or not you can forgive one another. Forgiveness is hard for me, and as much I would like to say that I can easily forgive people, that’s not always the case. I try hard to let things go and move on from the past but sometimes those scars have a way of being aggravated. Maybe it’s that they don’t entirely heal and they are prone to be hurt again and again.

Forgiveness is the goal in relationships, and if it’s possible to forgive your partner, do it. I want to do this because it hurts me to hold a grudge. But no matter how hard I try there are certain things that I can’t seem to forgive. I try to let them go, but I re-live the time that the person hurt me. I’m convinced that they were malicious in their intent even if this isn’t the case. Words can hurt, they can cut like knives. I’ve never been in a fist fight but I’ve been in many fights where words were my weapon. I’ve said some horribly mean things to people that I didn’t mean. Anger is an awful twisted and scary emotion that I’d rather not feel. Anger is a part of life and I’m trying to work with my anger as opposed to running away from it or letting it explode out of me without being able to control it. It’s like a car that’s spinning out of control when I’m angry and I’m not sure who is driving the car; probably my emotions. It wasn’t always like this, but once I developed complex PTSD, I started having outbursts of rage. I’d never dealt with that before; I’d always internalized my anger and it transformed and morphed into depression. That didn’t make me feel great either, but it happened.

Because of what I’ve experienced in relationships past, I am often afraid to enter into new relationships. It’s scary to be vulnerable again after being hurt so many times. I am naturally a sensitive and vulnerable person and tend to put all of my emotions on the table. It’s hard because that’s a difficult way to live, but it’s who I am and I can’t fight my nature. Well, I could, but it would just hurt me more. Knowing that I’m naturally out there, it’s easy for me to love people but, when I am in love with someone I go head first without thinking. That is extremely scary and I feel conflicted about it. I want to experience being in love, but I’m also terrified of getting brutally hurt like I have in the past. In order to embrace those feelings of love, I need to let go of that fear. I need to take the risk that I could get hurt. Is it worth it? I don’t know and I can’t know.

I do know this: love is worth it. Feeling connected with someone who understands me is more important than the possibility of them destroying me emotionally. I will continue to love with all of myself no matter what happens because that is who I am and this is my life and I’m going to live it.