Giving special needs a new meaning...

Sometimes reality comes in the mail, coated in plastic, blue and white with numbers on it…

And the universal symbol for a disabled person.

It really hit home that I am the mother of a “special needs” child now.

I have been the mother of a “special needs” child now for over 4 years, from the moment he was conceived.

And then I got to thinking. What does special needs really mean?

To people outside of my life, it is a label used to describe the fact that my son will need certain accommodations to make his journey in the “outside world” easier and to allow others a better understanding of what they can expect from him in a broad sense of the word expect.

To my children, special needs means something else.

To my son, his special need is to be able to run his hands through my hair every time he reaches for me. It is something special to him and he needs it to be happy.

To his brother, his special need is to know that when he asks me for his blue bunny rabbit, I will be able to find it and make for sure he is tucked in specially each night with his favorite bunny.

To my daughter, her special need is to be cuddled before she goes to bed, even if it is only for a few minutes. She needs that time with just me so she can maintain that special connection we share.

To me, “special needs” means something totally different.

All three of my children are special needs. I need them in my life to make me complete. I need them to be safe, healthy, happy, and know they are loved wholly and without fail by me. I need to see them smile and feel my arms wrapped around them.

My children are the most special need I’ve ever had and for them I’ll redefine every word in the dictionary if I have to.

I leave things out...

I leave out things.

The broken pieces. The parts that don’t fit. The things I see in the mirror that I wish I was blind to.

I leave out the parts of me that are forever broken.

The way my heart races if I’m walking at night and I hear footsteps. The way my hands shake uncontrollably sometimes. The way I sometimes can’t feel my fingers.

I leave out the horrible pains I get sometimes just trying to go to the bathroom. Labor didn’t even hurt that bad.

I leave out the parts where I’m afraid I won’t be here long enough for my kids. God, who will take care of them if not me?

I leave out the parts that others don’t see. Sometimes I can’t hide them because they are there, as plain as the tears in my eyes and the quake of my lip. Sometimes I hide them so well, I don’t even see the brokenness myself until it completely snaps and takes me down with it.

I cry sometimes. I look for a good reason to get it out because sometimes it’s just not fucking fair.

I laugh and wave the hurt away other times because I am pretty sure I am the only one who recognizes it. Maybe the only one who even thinks it hurts.

I get tired of feeling so helpless sometimes. I want to be stronger than…everything. I want invincibility to guarantee I’ll never have to worry if I’ll be here tomorrow. No one gets this guarantee. It doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

I hide the broken parts, brushing them under the covers and then throwing another one on top just to hide the lump. They can’t be here. Not here. It’s not acceptable. We all seek perfection.

I sway to the music, sometimes it’s soft and easy, sometimes it’s hard and angry. When it’s angry, it’s less of a sway and more of a tight motion to catch me from breaking myself against something else. It’s times like these that I understand my son’s need for fast and hard contact with someone else. Get it over quickly and move on. Maybe it is genetic.

Today I feel the broken parts sticking out like the brittle edges of a smashed window. To pass through you have to endure pain, get cut, bleed. No one passes through to me when I’m like this. Everyone bristles and backs away slowly, the hair on the back of their necks raised like they can sense a presence. Direct stares and challenging eye contact, practically begging for a fight so I have a reason to get it out.

Will you take it away? Let me throw words at you like daggers? Stand against the barrage of fury and frustration and hurt and pain and everything that makes the nights so long?

Then let me wrap my arms around you and cry? Fold me into a tiny space, press me hard against the beating of your heart until I can hear more than the sounds of my own heart pounding in my ears?

Then still not let me go?

Existential questions and the mommy in me...

I sit here and I press my words out into the internet. Do they matter? I don’t know.

I may be just one more person who is born, breathes for a while on this Earth, then dies unbeknownst to many.

But I matter to some people.

I am a child created out of two people’s love for each other at a time in their lives when their love was strong enough to move mountains and create life.

I am a woman who created life of my own at a time when I was so violently in love with a boy that I thought loved the idea of raising these beautiful little people we were creating together. It appears that I was only being appeased.

Was it simply baby lust? The need to have children of my own so strong that I was willing to create life with the most convenient source of sperm that I could obtain?

Did I truly and naively believe that it was true love and that I would live a fairy tale life forever after? Or did I know somewhere deep down that it wouldn’t last but that I would still have these angels that I created in a fit of need for life to care for?

Did I feel like I needed someone to lavish love upon that would truly be worthy of it? No one is more worthy of the full, empowering, overwhelming love that I have in my heart than my children. I swear I love them so much that sometimes it hurts.

I don’t know the true cosmic reasons behind why I have done any of the things in this life that I’ve done. I just know that I am here. I’m sending these thoughts out for others to read. I’m creating a memory for someone sitting behind a computer screen who connects to me. You. I’m pressing my words into your brain right now.

Am I worthy of your time? As we all know, time is one of many things we can’t get back. Am I making a memory for you that is worth keeping? I hope so.

I hope I’m creating memories for my children that are worth keeping. I know my mom has made thousands of memories for me that are worth keeping, worth sharing, with the little people I created. Do we live on in the memories of others or do we simply become a story to be shared about a memory worth keeping?

Looking for the words...

Blank page.

Cursor blinking.

What do I say? How do I word it? How do you tell people how you’re feeling when you can’t explain it yourself?

I’m hurting for the way things are. Not the way they should be. Not the way I think they should have been. The way they are.

At this moment in time, I’m single. I’m raising 3 kids by myself. I have some help from my mom. I have moral support from my boss (as much as he can understand being much older than me and not having ever had children).

I have a man in my life that I haven’t seen in 2 months or more because he’s out of town working and won’t be back for several more weeks. He doesn’t want anything serious. Keep it light, enjoy the moments, then let him walk out the door with my heart in his back pocket. Don’t see or hear from him much in between the times that he’s home. I’m a booty call. Damn.

I’ve tried moving on by trying to go out on some dates. Trying being the key word. I set up the date time and place, I get ready, I show up, I wait. And I wait. No one fucking shows up. I go home pissed and angry that I wasted my time and my mom’s time (since she’s the only one that will babysit for me). Or I set up everything again for a different date. He texts to ask to move the date to the next night because he has to work late. I beg for a change of days, get all that worked out, then he cancels the next day, too. Sick. Or at least that’s the excuse. I’m so sick of this.

I can’t decide if I want to keep trying to date or just give the hell up and settle for being an occasional piece of ass for someone who is good to me when he’s around but he’s not around much.

Then there’s the other thing that’s weighing on my mind. I feel like an asshole for even thinking it though. I’m not so sure that it’s even fair to ask a man to share my life with me. I don’t make much money. I have 3 children already and your average guy wants to have children of his own. I have a child who is considered disabled and who may end up living with me for rest of my life. There really isn’t much about my life that is easy. I just don’t know that it’s fair to ask someone to take all that on.

I’m afraid I may end up needing someone more than they’ll ever need me. That puts another person in a position of power over me if I come to depend on them. And then there’s the entirely fucked-upedness of that entire statement.

I would ask why it is so wrong to depend on someone but I can answer my own question. Because it always costs you something and the question is if you’re willing to pay the price if they screw you over. I’m not sure I can right now.

So, yeah. I’m just feeling sorta messed up right now and I don’t know when I’ll get myself straighten out. I’m trying to get back to writing but I’m having trouble finding the words. Just bear with me.

My son...

My son is beautiful. He has the most brilliant blue eyes you've ever seen.



His smile makes everyone's day brighter.



He brings everyone around him so much joy. He never hesitates to tell someone how much he likes their shirt, their shoes, or their hair.



He is so sweet to anyone he meets. He loves unconditionally.



My sweet, sweet boy is Autistic.



I plan to spend the rest of my life seeing just how much happier my little angel makes my world and the world of all those around him. He has so much to teach me about happiness. :)

Where my future lies...

Tomorrow I head out of town to take my son see a Pediatric Behavioral-Developmental Specialist. He is being tested to see if he is on the Autism Spectrum.

I don't know what lies ahead for either one of us.

I will never know what lies ahead for either one of us.

As much as I like to imagine what the future will be like, I have no way of knowing.

When I saw that little pink line pop up on that pregnancy test, I started imagining my baby. Chubby cheeks, healthy, wonderful sleeper, ate like a champ, head full of hair and perfect.

My very first visit to the doctor to confirm my pregnancy confirmed something else. I was getting so sick already because I was carrying twins.

That was the first time a dream for my child died. My easy pregnancy full of the usual milestones ceased to exist right there because as anyone who has multiples knows, nothing about a multiple pregnancy is easy or normal. *shoulder shrug* It was a dream I could let go.

Instead I replaced that dream with 2 healthy babies because the important thing is getting healthy babies that arrive as late as possible when you're gestating twins and you're waiting to see them get here. They stress how important it is that they stay in there long enough for their lungs to develop.

Well, they got here 10 weeks early. Their lungs weren't ready. So, that dream died, too. In it's place I started a new dream. To get them home from the NICU without too many complications.

Well, my little twin A, Noggin, had a Grade 3 brain hemorrhage which resulted in hydrocephalus (water on the brain in layman terms). The fluid in his head stopped draining because the clot from the brain bleed stopped up it's drainage point (called a ventricle). He had to have surgery to have a shunt placed at barely a month and a half old to drain the fluid from his head. He will have it the rest of his life.

Are you seeing a pattern here? I have had to continually let go of the dreams I've had for my children. I don't give up though. I just alter my vision and keep going.

Now I am at a point where I will be altering my vision for my child again. You know what? That's ok though. I'll mourn the idea I had in my head of what I thought was going to happen and then as a line from the movie "The Robinsons" says, I'll "keep moving forward".

It is my job as his parent to be able to adapt to changes in our lives in order to provide the best I can for my child. I will continue to do this. I will keep moving forward because I refuse to turn around.

If I turn around, I'll miss the adventures we will be embarking on together and I wouldn't miss those for anything I can possibly think up on my own.

Consider this another Fairy Tale Forgotten because I'm replacing it with a much better story of my own...

I am...

A mother
A daughter
A sister
A friend
An enemy
A lover
A coworker
An employee
A terrible singer
A poet
A writer
A suck up
Different
The same
Tattooed
Short
Curvy
Alive
Indifferent
Concerned
Amazed
Disturbed
Lost
Beautiful
Interested
Interesting
Lustful
Argumentative
Smart
OCD
Literal
Figurative
Fictional
Kind
Stingy
Bored
Boring
Empowered
Empowering
Insightful
Vapid
Careful
Wreckless
Dangerous
Loyal
Missing
Missed
Confused
Distraught
Annoying
Persuasive
Unique

Just like you. And nothing like you. And unforgettable.

In my dreams...

I see you in my dreams.

You’re handsome. Everything I want in a man.

You’re tall but not so tall that I can’t reach up and easily lay my hand on your cheek.

You’re smiling but your eyes hold a seriousness that speaks of deep convictions and hard-earned truths.

You’ve been through the ringer…beside me. You wrap your arms around my waist and kiss my neck while I’m cooking dinner, whispering in my ear how bad you want bend me over the table.

I speak in this place of forgetting my fairy tale. Perhaps it’s not that I’ve forgotten it, I’ve just set it aside to live in a forced situation. I still want you. Where ever it is that you may be, I’d love to find you. I just gave up holding out hope that you’re even out there.

I’m trying to figure out how much of you I absolutely require in a man and how much of you I can live without. I want a love like I’ve seen in the movies but I’m not relying on it.

I don’t mind being comfortable with someone. I like the routine of knowing what comes next. How you will touch me. Where you will touch me. What you’ll say when you find your words.

Then I like to punctuate things with a few surprises of my own. I like to see the way your eyebrow raises when I don’t say what you expected. It amuses me to no extent.

So for now I’ll keep searching, going on dates, testing the waters to see if I can settle for most of you or if all of you is what I have to have.

I want to be loved passionately and without regard to possibly broken hearts. Hearts get broken all the time. They mend themselves eventually. Throw your heart out there for me to find it. I will be as careful with it as I know how to be.

But do stay in my dreams because damn, the sex is great in my sleep…

You lied to me...

Last night I looked at pictures of us.

I looked at pictures of what was our family. I looked at pictures of my children. I looked at pictures of you and I.

I see it now. The strain. The forced smiles. The fake.

You could put on quite a show for everyone else, but rarely for me. Only when you thought I was leaving for good. Only when reality hit you that you couldn't pay the bills by yourself and your beer money was disappearing. Then and only then did you feign distress. The tears, were they only for the fear of having to handle things yourself?

You can't be alone. You've never done anything on your own for very long. You move from one person to the next, leeching every ounce of anything you can get from them before you move on to the next. You're fucking pathetic.

I once thought you were wonderful. I thought you were going to be a great parent. What a joke. You've never been perfect. You will never be perfect. And you better believe I'm telling every person who will listen what an absolute terror of a person you are.

Your manipulation. Your lies. Your pretending to give a damn if it made someone else think you were great. The screaming. The throwing things. The breaking things. The drinking. The time you shoved the glass-topped table into me and left huge bruises on my legs that I had to cover with a long dress at my cousin's wedding. The time you shoved me down when I was pregnant with my daughter. The time you stood and yelled at me during the middle of the night and stomped our dvd stand to splinters. The night I drove myself to the hospital in labor because I didn't really want you at the hospital anyways. The argument after you drank all day long and then didn't want to take the kids to see the fireworks on the 4th of July. The one that ended with me dropping you on the side of the road, taking the kids to my mom, driving myself to the ER with a fractured wrist and gravels in my hair and my elbows, and then driving myself to the magistrates office to swear out a protective order.

The sheriff that came to see me at the hospital never left my side because he was afraid you would show up. He actually begged me to press charges against you. I only wanted to get away. I got that protective order, I moved out what I could, I stayed gone for a month. You begged me to bring the kids to see you, to have dinner with you where you cried with your head in my lap as I refused to touch you. You begged me to come back. Swore you would get anger management classes and stop drinking. It didn't last 10 days before I called it quits and moved back out. You were staying up half the night to talk on the phone to her. The stupid cunt you were planning on moving on to as soon as you could get a little more out of me. The poor dumb hussy is still putting up with your shit. I'm sure you're still blaming it all on me. Keep dreaming, asshole.

I went to the courthouse and filed the papers myself for child support and you readily agreed with whatever I decided to set up for visitation. You didn't care. You still don't.

You would skip visitation with them so you could move in with the next host organism. She is such a damn fool. You were so pissed at me when I told her everything that you did to me. EVERYTHING. She refused to believe me. I hope when you break her arm or whatever else it is that you do to her, I hope she remembers that I warned her and gets out. I hope in one of your drunken rages one night, some other drunken asshole shoots you. I hate you that much now.

You haven't seen my babies but once since before Christmas. You missed their birthdays. You have no clue what is going on with the boys. You didn't come to the hospital when Screech was sick. You haven't asked once how they are doing. You don't call to talk to them or check on them. You haven't paid child support since you moved this last time in January. I finally got the DCSE to catch up to you and they received the first garnishment from your paycheck yesterday. I know you've been working for 3 months now but you sure as hell weren't going to make a single payment to help your kids, were you?

At least now I can buy them some sandles for the summer and I can get my sweet girl a new pair of tennis shoes that fit. Everything I've done has been for them. I take care of them in ways that you never could and never will. My heart bleeds for my children and I'll be damned if I will ever let you hurt them.

So, all I wanted to say here was for you to go to hell and take your dumb bitch with you. I hate you.

Oh, and I'm a better parent alone than you'll ever pretend to be.

My kids are happy. So am I.