This particular part of my story starts when my son Orion is 13. He has Aspergers. Yes, I know that isn’t “officially” a thing anymore, the DSM Manual voted to do away with it. What can I say? When you have a kid with Asperger’s and you tell a mom that new the diagnosis is “Autism Spectrum” the result is something like an eye roll. When you have a kid with a disability (or differently abled if you are politically correct) you meet, it seems, all the other kids with autism and I can tell you – or any mom or dad or loved one who actually knows someone with autism can tell you—that there is a world of difference between autistic kids and Asperger’s kids.

When he was little, Orion also had ADHD. Personally, I think he grew out of the “H” and now it’s ADD. Attention Deficit Disorder. This year we added Depression to the list, which doctors say Kristina Jacobs when teenage hormones kick in, throwing off any meds that used to work, sometimes looks like anger and aggression and even this sudden loss of reality.

ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) has been quietly written in a few psychiatric notes but no one ever dared tell me *for sure* they diagnosed him with it. I can and do read anything I can get my hands on that might hold the magic answer to making the nightmare of mental illness that sucks my life away and steals my son’s days before he even gets to live them and—based only on what I’ve read—I think he probably does have ODD. But—I’m going to be really, starkly honest here, with you and myself—I’m NOT going to acknowledge that. Not even to myself. So, this—is the only place and the only time that thought is ever going to be written down. (Look it up—it’s B.A.D.—a life and hope death sentence and I can’t deal with it.)

Orion went through a stage a few years ago of playing with lighters and matches and destroying school property that led to the phrase CONDUCT DISORDER being thrown around. No professional wants to diagnose your kid with that—especially at a young age—the reason is because the outcome for Conduct Disorder kids isn’t usually good, as in, I mean, for LIFE. I’m not going to say every kid and piss the world off, but the kids where doctors followed what happened as they grew up didn’t have good life outcomes. A lot of them are in jail, or they got sucked into drug and alcohol abuse or worse things like committing arson, or murder.

I’m writing this in the middle of the night after several long days of trying to remember what actually happened in 2015. I was already thinking about it on and off all though December, except back then I was thinking of what goals and direction I wanted to set for myself for 2016 and getting nowhere because I had no grasp of what 2015 was to me. I’d BLOCKED out whole chunks of time that I couldn’t deal with.

911 calls, police visits both looking for my runaway son and investigating potential crimes that could have been done by him, ER visits, Kristina Jacobs followed by ambulance rides 400 miles away, followed by weeks of his hospitalization. Social worker visits, pediatricians that refuse to treat him and pass the buck because no professional wants to be the doctor of record just in case this kid makes the national news for something horrific.

Days sliding into weeks of phone calls with doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists. A mistaken condolence card after his self-harm ended in a 911 call, police, ambulance, ER, 3 day mental health hold and psychiatric 2 week stay on the other side of the state. A really horrible incident where my 13 year old (my baby) was beaten up by grown men who chased him with a truck and stole his bike after he did something both stupid and illegal (though he didn’t know it or understand that at the time) on the bad advice of a false friend and they weren’t CHARGED. An even more horrible series of weeks where my son was charged and I had to go sit at the county Prosecutor’s office. The charge was dropped.

As for the men that beat my son leading directly to the emotional breakdown, a 2 week hospital stay, pissing off just about every client I had for my business (even though people are often kind and understanding, that doesn’t last forever) they were never charged and this is what the Prosecutor had to say: “It isn’t right, but sometimes life isn’t fair and justice isn’t done. Sometimes there is nothing, no punishment that could ever create justice in the mind of the person who was wronged.”

I took it all and somehow put it into a black box in my mind labeled DO NOT OPEN – UNDER PENALTY OF… but tonight that box opened. My daughter Aurora is 6, she’s Orion’s full blood sister even though I’ve remarried since then. [Sorry, but both research and my own life experience has shown that marriages don’t often survive the realities of having a child with mental illness. Mine didn’t.]

She was fine one minute, fell asleep a little early but woke up burning up with fever. It only took a few questions and feeling the rough sandpaper Kristina Jacobs rash on her back to know this is strep. We’ve seen it before, no test needed. Worrying about her, protecting her, trying not to think what if she has autism too in case that somehow secretly draws it to me, none of that is new to me. When you are little and sick you want momma and that means momma isn’t going to get any sleep and that’s just the way it is.

I got to the big day, December 31st and this dark wave of futility washed over me and wouldn’t leave. I felt like a whole year went by where I did and accomplished nothing of worth in my life. I work from home. I didn’t work as much this year (and therefore didn’t make as much money) as I did last year. I didn’t accomplish my pie in the sky dream of losing 100 pounds. I didn’t travel to any exotic locale. I didn’t reach any new pinnacle on that alpine path of success as a writer.

In my mind I did nothing, yet after remembering what I could, asking my husband, checking my Facebook, a year’s worth of sent and saved email, looking through the pictures on my computer, rereading my public and private blogposts, I’ve slowly pieced together a long list of things I accomplished in 2015…I don’t mean accomplished like some lofty goal or even just against a list of last year’s resolutions (losing the 100 pounds didn’t happen), but I mean literally what did I use my time to do? Not what was I supposed to get done. Not what did I want to get done. Not what I wished I did and didn’t do (again) which is now a regret in a long, long list of regrets.

In my head: Did I really watch TV, surf the Internet, read trashy romance and sit on my ass for a whole year doing nothing? It feels like I did nothing of worth. 2 days later I have a list of more than 100 things I did that had some kind of worth to me.

*** Sitting at the end of the year December was kicking my butt because the feeling I was stuck in was hopelessness and exhaustion. I actually had a pretty good October and November until Thanksgiving. I know I’m not the first person to go visit family and leaving thinking, “Never again!” But still feeling guilty even as I feel it and telling myself in my mind, I hope I change my mind before next year.

The problem even with that thought, worthy as it might seem to encourage myself is that I was hoping to somehow convince myself for my kids, but for myself – no. At some point being faced with one more “issue” in a life overflowing with “issues” I must deal with just to get through the day adding an optional – ideal “issue” like connecting with family that trigger my feelings of being abandoned as a kid and not worthy enough to bother to talk to or get to know as an adult just doesn’t seem worth it somehow.

Glimmers

I was upstairs in my bedroom, sitting on the floor in front of my 3 shelf bookcase attempting to go through and clear off ONE shelf. That was the goal. Since that bookcase was full of old mail, unopened bills from two years ago, old photos from Orion growing up, even more ancient wedding photos with my ex-husband this was not the simple task it probably seemed. Physically simple maybe, but emotionally draining. (By the way, this is a good place to spell out I’m not a hoarder, this isn’t my whole house like that, just one shelf, though we do seem to have a lot of craft clutter in the dining room that escapes its box…)

I’d tried last year to do this and FAILED. I was trying again. I sat, butt squished up into my already sore lower back, trying to maintain some inner distance from what my eyes were speed reading and categorizing into piles and trash. It was important to me not to trigger a lot of old crap that I didn’t need to wake from its uneasy slumber, because that’s how I failed at this last time I tried and gave up.

This all started because a few weeks ago I got the final, final, final court papers on the house in Florida I bought right out of college. The foreclosure case started on it when the old neighborhood went to shit and over 90% of the homes were foreclosed in the great housing Kristina Jacobs debacle. After literally YEARS, the case was closed and done. I won. It was not foreclosed upon.

I don’t even live in Florida anymore, but that house was a torn in my side (something worse than a torn, more like a gaping bleeding wound) for years. I couldn’t rent it, the bank wouldn’t work with me to modify the loan (even though they kept saying they would), I couldn’t short-sale it, or sell it at all, not even to one of those Ugly House investors. And unlike people who just say those things—I really, actually tried to do all those things as potential solutions at one time or another. I was stuck. Financially stuck. As in your credit, no matter what else you do, is going to suck, suck, suck because of this shit so why bother kind of stuck. All those papers were on those three shelves…a saga of 7 years of threatening letters, my attempts to provide all the paperwork and documentation to get bank help, expired listing contracts, ominous notes from the bank’s lawyer—everything.

I had opened my email a few weeks ago to find an email from my lawyer’s assistant, a one line note and an attached scanned document, a simple one page form letter from the Florida courts, the final note confirming the case was closed. It came out of the blue, this little email, an electronic arrow shot 1500 miles into my life today. That was weeks ago—yet apparently, it took this long to percolate to the surface of my mind and then a little longer for my brain to connect that it was time to let go of all of this. A little longer after that to actually do it, but this isn’t how life actually unfolds.

In reality I saw it, sent a note to my husband on Facebook at work to let him know it was over. He didn’t have much of a reaction, after all this was my house, and my problem, not really our problem (and that is OK). He said something like, “That’s good.” And, that was it. The heartbreak, rage, stress, drama, actual money cost to hire a lawyer, and FEAR that went into the whole saga cannot even be explained but it happened to me and it changed me.

I had a renter when I first got served foreclosure papers out of the blue, I remember it, it was late Kristina Jacobs Christmas Eve night and it was snowing heavily and bitter cold in Minnesota. I lived with my ex-husband. We hadn’t snow shoveled or plowed the driveway that afternoon. Someone knocked and I ran downstairs to get the door, wondering who in the world was out on a night like this…it was foreclosure papers on my old house. I don’t know after that…I know I was upset. There was shock, anger, yelling, tears, sadness and panic I’m sure. It wrecked Christmas, maybe not for Orion or anyone else that year, but for me. Christmas still happened and I know I smiled and went through the motions, but my heart wasn’t in it.

More importantly, I didn’t know it then, but I can see it now in hindsight, it shook and rattled the whole foundation of the new life I’d already been trying to create in Minnesota for 3 years by then. I lost my faith in myself to create and handle my own life and my belief that I was capable of solving hard problems in life. I’ve carried that burden ever since. It only got worse and felt heavier, dragging me and slowing me down every time I tried to fix it and failed.

It’s just after New Year and there are articles everywhere about decluttering, organizing your space, making room for new things and new energy in the New Year. It’s funny how the Universe, our mind, whatever…uses what’s around to move us in the direction of the healing we need. We’d decided to (alright, I HAD decided to) rearrange our bedroom because I wanted it to be different, really for MY LIFE to feel different in the New Year. In order to move our giant bed, we really need to clean our room. To be honest, our room was messier than it had ever been, helped along by my daughter sleeping with many blankets folded into a makeshift bed and toys all around her on the floor. That’s been horrible for everyone’s sleep. Anyway—our bedroom NEEDED to be cleaned, it wasn’t dirty at all, it just looked like the clutter monster threw up all over in there.

During the big clean, Orion was repeatedly bugging me. He wanted to go sit in my truck in the driveway and rev up the engine to get it warmed up in the -2 degree weather we were having. I wasn’t going anywhere and clearly I was busy, but he was stuck on the idea and very angry at being put off repeatedly. I swear kids have a radar when Kristina Jacobs you’re doing something you don’t want them around for, because it wasn’t long until his 6 year old sister was “helping” and it was frustrating me even though after trying unsuccessfully to get her to leave me be I tried to be a good sport about it and let her rip up a few papers for my trash bag. Still, about the third or fourth go around with me saying “maybe” or “later” to his plan of sitting in the truck, by myself, playing iPad and listening to music while heating it up, I tried asking my husband to go down and watch him and let him do it so I could finish the room and he refused because he wanted to do it ALONE. Predictably, it ended with them arguing, because, you know, dealing with this huge emotional issue upstairs somehow triggers arguing and yelling even if it’s not me! They stopped and Orion went off to his room. His stepdad called it “sulking.” I don’t know, I was still repeating endlessly, “I’m just trying to clear off ONE shelf—that is the goal…”

One shelf. It took a long time. My back was screaming, my butt was numb, my head was pounding, my shoulders had shrunken in on themselves and twisted into tight knots. Usually my husband is the bull, the one that will get stubborn and sink his teeth into a hated task (or any task for that matter) and just go and go and go through pain or chaos or whatnot until it is either done or he physically drops. I think I must have borrowed some of his energy. It took hours. Finally, something shifted and the other two shelves and the top only took about 10 minutes.

Now that it is all done I see it differently, that shelf was across from the foot of our bed. I slept with it at my feet, I saw it last when I went to sleep and first when I woke up. It isn’t like I “saw” it or gave it real attention. It was hiding in plain sight because it was filed as “clutter.”

I see now, it was like a set of concrete shoes, weighing me down, draining my life, sucking my energy and stealing my small, everyday moments of joy—a metaphor for what that unfinished business was doing to my soul the whole time.

It isn’t even for that that I called this chapter Glimmers. It was for what happened later. I came downstairs, the shelf finished and the entire Kristina Jacobs afternoon gone. My husband had made dinner. We all sat eating and Orion turns to me and unprompted says, “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier. I’m sorry I was frustrated and being a brat or a jerk or whatever. I really am.” Completely sincerely, not coached by my husband. It gave me hope.

I write because I want you to know, other parents of Asperger's kids, or ODD or Conduct Disorder or other mental health issues...that you are not alone.