Monday 17 August 2015

How it goes

Nothing to fear when the dynamic duo are here to keep Ginny safe!! I love my girls. There is absolutely no doubt that they are amazing and after often hearing me call Ginny's autism our elephant and watching inside out, Melody has deemed that her and Isa will protect Ginny against the elephant in Ginny's head that makes her do things she shouldn't and does not let her speak or play with them!


I should be happy. This should make me happy. It sure does make me proud, and I look at them and smile, but happy? ...As much as everyone always tell me I do a great job with Ginny, every time something happens it's hard not to feel low. Then on days like today when her sisters do something as sweet and special as this I feel worse for feeling depressed despite their efforts.

Yesterday Ginny took urban climbing to new lengths and scaled our building. She noticed her little sister, 6,  had left her room open while I sorted laundry and abuelita plated dinner, and squeezed through their small top window, stretched to the neighbor's satellite and pulled herself over the drain pipe and on to the roof of our terraced houses where she proceeded to pace from one side of building to the next.

With the help of our lovely neighbors and the fire brigade who arrived 20minutes after I phoned them, though it felt like forever, Ginny was brought down safely. I felt no relief from this act. It didn't return the air to my lungs or drag my heart from my mouth and reset it in my chest. The empty pit in my stomach didn't heal over. It's still there now.  Thankful but not relieved. Her sister's small top window will now also have to remain locked at all times. A new mental list was immediately triggered, new measures that would have be taken always another step needed. How could I ever get ahead?

In less than a week Ginny will be 9. She's not asked for a thing, she's not invited friends for a party, chosen a theme or demanded her venue. She won't blow out her candles. It'll be just like any other day to her in our very confusing world.

I've spent weeks trying to decide where to take her on our day out. Theme Park? Pool? Show? Beach? Snowzone?... She'd probably prefer to stay in her room on her iPad all day for a change but I can't bare the thought. Am I selfish? Am I wrong for trying to subject her to my own concept of special? Three days after Ginny's birthday it will be my own and it feels like it will likely be the same, forgotten by everyone but me. 


James is away and will be away for the next couple of weeks. After a lovely holiday in Cornwall, which J managed to join a couple of days of, everything just seems a bit pants if I'm honest and I can't make it better. I don't know how. Two weeks of school holidays left and while I'm actually not looking forward to the girls going back I know it's just what Ginny needs. I know the relief it will bring her and I wonder if it will do the same for me. I wonder if I'll finally be able to breath afterwards but don't get my hopes up. I can't remember the last time I managed to breath easy at home, it seems to be limited to time away and wonder how I could replicate it. I wonder if James feels it when he's abroad for work. I miss him, or maybe I miss feeling like I’m not a single parent with a mammoth undertaking. I know I am dreadful to live with, he tells me it often enough, so I don't know how he manages it when his expectations on how the how should be kept, and how much I weigh, look, dress or act always falls short. The stress just builds and builds while he is gone and by the time he gets home it's like that's all that's left of me. Like I no longer exist.

It would be wrong of me to say this we're all a cause to our elephant named autism. I've lived with my own named depression for far longer it's just easier to treat but on days like to say I can't quiet it. I just go round and round in my head and I feel my ears burn. I feel my eyes ache and my chest tighten. I go on about the day like any other but it feels like a lie. Like these beautiful, kind and thoughtful children couldn't be my own, like we're not the ones who rent this lovely terraced property in my favorite town, like the gorgeous preemie fighter that smiles up from her cot at me has been imagined. 

I hate these days. Days where the sun shines and I have everything to be happy for but the happiness is just not there. Days when I'm empty. They say people with depression are more likely to have a child on the spectrum and on days like today I'm sure it's my fault. I'm sure that if she'd been born to anyone else she wouldn't be subjected to her condition. I'm sure that along the way I did something wrong bringing her up and made that condition worse. 

On days like today I shouldn't write. I could go on and on and on, and end up no where as the rounds in my head overlap on repeat and I can't add any uplifting lilt. I go through the motions of normalcy for my kids, make all the right gestures and say just what they expect but it's not me and wonder if it's the same but reversed for Ginny. If while I send out all the right signals for the benefit of others she sends out the wrong, most likely not specifically for others but just because that's how it goes. How it goes. Each of us our separate program portraying the person we are seen as while it's possible no one may never know the person we really are.