Month: March 2018

“Speak when you are angry & you will make the best speech you will ever regret!”

I know anger means there’s a whole lot of pain underneath. The anniversary of my son’s death is coming up in another month & my anxiety has been slowly building. It’s around this time last year his health started to decline & all those painful memories are starting to flood my mind again.

I think I’ve done a pretty decent job this past year keeping my anger, anxiety & depression in check. I’ve kept myself extremely busy & I’ve stayed active. I speak to my husband regularly when something is on my mind & I cry a couple of times a week when I’m alone. I’m on a waiting list to see a therapist but my appointment isn’t until January 2019. Good thing I’m not suicidal 🙄

I have tons of anger issues with people who I feel made an already horrible situation 10x worse. My husband & I did 99% of all the leg work with my son’s treatment & care…and we would do it all over again. On top of that we were caring for our youngest son, who is severely autistic. We never asked anyone for help nor did we expect anyone to lend a helping hand although we would’ve appreciated an offer with help babysitting and/or transportation, but it was never offered.

What STILL angers me to this day is how, at the very end, after my son passed, people who were never there for his entire year of hellish treatment suddenly appeared out of nowhere to take credit like they were all Mr & Mrs Super Heroes?! People, who didn’t even bother to reach out to my son or us are now gonna judge me on what kind of a service I was having. Now that my son was dead everyone wanted to turn this into a big social event. Everyone was too busy worried about pleasing his social media fan base, people who were virtual strangers to us.

Yeah, I was pretty angry! There were a lot of fighting that went on amongst family members at the end. Everyone was too busy dictating to me what kind of service they wanted but not one person stopped to ask me what I wanted and I’m the mother! Till this day it still doesn’t sit well with me how the whole thing went down.

Basically at the end there were two separate services. I had the quiet church service and “the other side” had their big social gathering somewhere else. My son’s body stayed with me. The second service wasn’t the problem. It was the family members who hosted it portraying themselves as martyrs…that was a problem for me. They put on this big show like they were all there for him throughout his treatment and not one of them….NOT ONE did a damn thing for him! It was all so phony! My son did not speak to the other side of the family. There was bad blood between him & my ex-husband which caused him not to stay in touch with everyone else.

I also got pushed to the side, like yesterday’s trash, while my son’s ex-girlfriend was put on the grieving widow pedestal. Can we place an emphasis on the “ex” part please but on social media she’ll have you believe they were ready to walk down the aisle 😣. They were broken up for 5 months prior to his passing. She was capitalizing on his Cancer (I felt for fame & self serving pity) ever since he was diagnosed because he was a famous gaming personality on social media & everyone knew her as his “on again off again girlfriend” 🙄. I’m not saying she didn’t love him but there were issues. Meanwhile I found out she moved in with some other guy about four months after he died so I think she bounced back pretty nicely. I could write a whole other blog on all the issues I had with her & their relationship because she lived under our roof for an entire three months before he broke up with her & threw her out. Come to think of it., I will!

So yeah, I have a lot of unresolved anger issues and his one year anniversary is coming up and I’m doing the best I can to continue to keep myself in check.

“Sometimes pretending you’re okay is easier than having to explain to everyone why you’re not.”

I hide behind my pranks, jokes, laughter and big smile. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all completely authentic but sometimes I’m minutes or seconds away from feeling anger, sadness or even crying.

The anger I still feel is from my oldest sons untimely death from Cancer. Just remembering painful moments only him & I shared still haunt me because I know he was scared and I couldn’t help him. I’m angry cause I watched him wake up every morning & die a little more again every single day. It was torturous to watch and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I relive it every day in my memories.

The sadness I feel is trying to help my youngest son live a somewhat normal life despite his severe autism. It’s like watching someone trapped in their own body fighting to communicate on a daily basis. My fourteen year old son lives an extremely structured lifestyle and anything outside of it turns his world upside down. He needs 24 hour supervision and could never be left alone therefore my husband & I take turns running independent errands. We know no one will ever be able to give our son the special care & attention we give him which is why we chose not to ever hire a sitter.

Additionally, our son has severe sensory processing disorder. His hearing is extremely sensitive so we can’t have any televisions on in the house while he’s home. We can’t run the vacuum cleaner or microwave in his presence. The local emergency response vehicles who run their sirens on our road will trigger a violent meltdown from him. The latest trigger has been the birds chirping outside (yeah you read that right) so now we turn on the fan in the house to drown out the noise. We don’t throw parties, don’t have company & we’re usually in bed by 8pm cause we’re up every morning between 5:30am-6am (even on weekends).

I’m not complaining. This is our life & we’ve adjusted to this way of living. My husband & I laugh a lot, crack jokes & make fun of ourselves. Time is very precious to us and we do the best we can with what little private time we have each day. So when people invite us to go here & there (ie. wedding, parties etc) and we say we can’t go, it’s cause we really can’t. We never attend a function “together” for obvious reasons & if we say “yes” to something then only one of us will go.

The only time I will get annoyed is if someone becomes pushy about us “not attending” a function & that only happened once. I will explain “why not” only one time and after that I’m done. My patience level after my son passed has decreased tremendously.

I choose to make the best of what I have. Laughter helps me get through my pain & tough days. Laughter is my best mental escape.