My Children Made me This Way

We got the official Diagnosis for F on Tuesday. Inattentive and Hyperactive ADHD as well as Aspergers Syndrome. We now start investigating learning disabilities as well. No, it not as if it’s cancer, or life threatening. Some people have far worse to handle. But it’s still my Monster, and it still kills me. This is what I wrote in the hour car ride home while my husband drove and F sang along with Lori Berkner in the backseat:

I can feel myself sinking. It’s been slow to finally get here. 4 years. But it’s been quick, so fast too. Or maybe I have always been sat on the brink,  holding my breath, waiting for this. Right there on the edge of it, hovering. Waiting to slip into it. It seems like a slow drift down. Quiet when the words first make your ears. Silent. At least in those first few moments. Before the whispers begin to edge in and fill your hear with their soft white noise when you should be listening to the Doctor. Doubts. What ifs. Would have, could have, should have.

There are so many unknowns and so many possibilities unvisited. They sit there, echoing in back of my mind. Shadows that press like velvet against me and smother rather than soothe. They always tell you that it’s nothing you did. Or didn’t do. Genetics. Biology. Generations of combination’s breeding true. Chemistry. It happens. But that does’t mean I don’t think;

• I smoked. Was that it?
• All I managed to keep down was Pepsi and Chocolate ice cream. Could that have done it?
• I lost weight. Would that do it?
• I worked for the Vet still then. I know I jabbed myself with a Feluek vaccination. Would that do it?
• What about the fall down the stairs that fractured my ankle? The X-ray?
• She had RSV at 3 months. She stopped breathing, and we had to call 911. Was it that?

They say no, it’s not external. It’s something she came with. It’s who F is. The year she was born I had other concerns for her and her siblings. I had my hand on my pregnant belly, on her, on the morning of 9/11 2001. There was a tiny kick, a gentle roll when my heart stopped in the moments as the second tower fell. I stood under an airplane less sky, for the first time in my life, in Upstate NY and I watched the wide and cloudless blue and I wanted to keep her safe give her that peace. Protect her form the world. that was the big scary world. This. This is the real, close to home world. This is what can really hurt her. So how do I protect her from this. How do I help her on this path, when it’s all new to me as well.

I am still finding my way. I will get there, but sometimes I don’t find the easiest or shortest or even the best way and I don’t want to do that to her. I am so clumsy sometimes, just don’t let me trip now.

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