So Here We Are

Please tell me I'm not the only parent who (at times) dislikes their own child.

I love Elias.

But I don't really like him right now.

Not when he has our family on high alert for a possible explosion. Over a Leggo piece on the floor that his sister Olive dares to pick up for him.

Or a new thermometer that Olive attempts to open and he wants the torn pieces of cardboard from the package back on RIGHT NOW!

Man hands swinging, claws out.

"Mom," Olive says to me after an especially aggressive episode, "I wish we had a different brother who wasn't born so early."

They refer to kids like Olive, without special needs or disabilities, as typical-- but how normal is it to live with an older brother who is part invalid, part charmer, part terrorist, part companion, part stalker, part audience, part mystery, part grenade, part comedian, part Jekyll, part Hyde, and part of our hearts.

Olive's life is anything but typical.

"It's always going to be hard," Nick told Olive tonight, after she fled from the kitchen and her brother's rage, and sat scrunched on the blankets stuffed between her bed and the wall, with tears in her eyes, trying to explain that she was just trying to show Elias how to fix his Leggo plane when he grabbed her arm and pulled it really hard.

Its always going to be hard.

This we know.

I live in my own heart of hardness, my bricks of worry, my stones of what might have been; I get so lost within my own walls that I forget to see my daughters view, from her own barricade, of this family we call home.

And then what about Elias?

How is it for him to have his little sister, six years younger, half his age, telling him he's doing it wrong--that's not how the piece goes, here let me show you, let me do it-- see how easily my hands and eyes follow my brain's commands.

No wonder he sometimes just wants to squeeze and yell and hit and kick and hurt the people he loves the most.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to be unable to control my own body, and to fully understand that I can't, but be unable to express how that makes me feel.

Trapped.

A lion in a cage.

No wonder he roars.

Believe me, if I could have kept him in my womb for that third trimester, I would have bargained with the devil to do so. I would have laid on my left side for another sixteen weeks and given up my freedom of movement for the health of my boy.

No soccer, no running, no stretching, no dancing, no foreplay, no sex, no movement.

A mattress my only arena, like the lion, my space limited to a box for days on end-- but I can't go back.

This is it.

My life.

Olive can't have another brother.

Elias can't have a body that listens to his brain.

So here we are.

Un-likeable-- and in love.

"I don't know," Elias's stock answer these days, like an eye-roll, a turning away from conversation, from connection, from childhood, my boy whose hands have finally outgrown mine.

"I love you Bud," I say every night, with my hand on the doorknob as I reach for the lights.

Comments

[Dave]

Love you. All I can say.

[Danielle]

Oh Christy.
Rough ride lately.
If you were here (but the State Department has issued a warning for travel to Europe!) I'd pour you a glass of wine and tell you about all the times I have whispered to my husband "I can't stand that kid!"
It's not the same, really, I know: Elias has so many more legitimate reasons to be pissed at the world than most kids. So I am not making any comparisons. Just hugging you across a continent and an ocean.

[Christy]

Danielle, I'd take that glass of wine and thank you for letting me know you sometimes whisper those words too. It helps and I'll take that hug too:)

Love you back Dave.

[Abby]

We all whisper those words - typical development or not! You are not alone and super brave for sharing.

[Kate]

Not alone for sure. Hugs. Keep sharing. We are all in this together.