Waiting To Exhale

I keep waiting.

When you've lived in chaos for years and years, you learn to expect the moment when the proverbial 'other shoe will drop'. I hold my breath, wondering when it will fall, when the ease will shift and gusts of harsh winds will blow back into our lives... yet, the atmosphere remains calm.

It's amazing to me how humans can adjust to incredibly overwhelming circumstances; surviving through trauma and danger and stress that you'd expect to level a person. I've written recently about how I found myself submerged in depression last fall, and the heaviness and dark shadows that wouldn't lift. The sun has found its way back into my eyes and when I ruminate on what took me so deeply into the bleak desert, I recognize that while Samuel was away, there was space for me to fall apart. I'd held my breath for 14 years- bracing against all manner of aggression, wildly swinging moods, his sensory overload, the effort to keep everyone safe, and the ongoing fight for the services he needed. When he wasn't there, my brain was able to shut down at some level, preserving itself and refusing to operate at the intensity it had been forced to endure for so long. I'd had high hopes of all I would change and accomplish in his absence; creating the structure and routine in our lives that had been lacking due to the ever changing emotional atmosphere, spending more time being present with my other three kids who have lived under the cloud of mental illness and autism their entire lives, finding space for myself- with yoga and prayer and time in nature. I did some of these things, and we certainly made progress, but by the end of the summer I hit a wall and I couldn't have cared less about much of anything. I had nothing left. I'm an intensely feeling person, and found myself numb to most everything. It was foreign, and only increased the hopelessness.

Bringing him home was scary. He'd done so well in the highly structured environment of the treatment facility and I knew that after 9 months away, there would be many adjustments he'd have to make on a daily basis. His therapist had warned both of us that there was usually a honeymoon period of a couple of weeks and often times her patients would wind up back in the hospital for an acute stay within the first 6 weeks. When she'd said that, my stomach dropped. He's had 5 hospital stays since the age of three, and my naive hope had been that the residential treatment would have vaccinated us against the need to return to acute treatment; yet, I was grateful for the warning. I brought him home with the knowledge that he could completely fall apart in the reintegrating of his life.

Earlier this week he hit the 6 week mark.

The air I'd been hoarding inside my body has found its way out, and the exhale is intoxicating. I've realized that when I've been asked how he's doing, my response is beautiful. He's doing incredible. The work he put in while he was away; educating himself about his illness and autism, learning some of his triggers and how to cope with them or eliminate them, his ability to be self aware of his emotions and the response his body is having to stimuli, his powerfully articulate communication when he's felt hurt, or angry, or confused... it's nothing short of miraculous. Before he left he had been a wreck. He had never had the proper diagnoses- at least, not at the same time- and he wasn't getting the support and services he so desperately needed. He'd unraveled to the place of destruction, and our lives were spent barely surviving the daily trauma of improperly treated mental illness. I'd had the police at our home, he'd been admitted into the hospital after an ER visit that we'd made under police escort, he was failing the 9th grade despite his incredible brilliance, he'd been suspended three times in 5 short months of high school, and he was defiant and mean. I was desperate. Terrified for my child and the road we were headed down.
Residential treatment saved our lives.

I left a broken, angry, ill equipped, improperly treated child with a devastating disease and 9 months later was given a young man who does what I ask him to, serves me even when not asked, is excelling in his new school even in honors classes, and whose laughter that had once died now echoes off of the walls. We've had minor bumps. He's a 16 year old boy after all! But we've navigated them in a way that still takes me by surprise. A couple of weeks after he'd gotten home I'd unknowingly said something one evening that hurt him. I hadn't been aware of it, and had gone to bed as usual. He woke me up before 6 the next morning and said he'd had a hard time sleeping and had to talk. He told me that I'd hurt his feelings, that he knew I hadn't meant to, but he needed me to know. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes in wonder... who is this young man?! We talked it through and had a normal day- free from violence, rage, anger, depression or cursing- old responses he'd had when upset or offended.
Life with him home feels so... normal. Average. Safe. We still work hard, and he has a therapist who comes to the house three times a week for three hours each time. Our lives are still vastly filled with work and school and the management of his illness and autism, but they're also so good. Watching him with his siblings and seeing the anxiety of not knowing what the day would hold for them in regard to his mood begin to fade is beautiful. I'm not living in a fantasy world where I believe that we'll never have another crisis or trauma related to his illness.. Bipolar 1 and Autism cohabiting inside of his brain is a bitch. There's no other way to say it. They work in tandem to exacerbate the symptoms of each disorder; But. I have hope now. I can see the potential for a life for him that isn't driven by chaos and being defined by his illness. I can see the weight lifting off of all of us as we learn to live and love as a family outside of continual trauma and drama. I can see peace in his eyes and his body- peace that has settled deep into his marrow, stilling him and grounding him and allowing him to receive our love. He helped create his own miracle. His incredible effort and positive attitude about getting better fueled the change in him and has been a gift to himself and his family.
I realize I may have a painful post in the future about some possible crisis we may experience- and that's ok, as I know that's how life unfolds for all of us, but for today, for now, the waiting is over, and I can finally breathe in the beauty, and then deliciously.... exhale.