Upstream

Do you ever find yourself laughing at people?  I don’t mean to their face and I don’t even mean outloud, I just mean an internal laugh.  You know? The kind where your spirit sighs, your heart rolls its eyes and your gut says “bless their heart?” And then you move on.

I get this certain internal laugh when others make comments based on my lifestyle.  “I don’t know how you do it” they say, while nodding their head back and  forth, back and forth, back and forth. The laughter inside starts to die down, but they are still shaking their head, back and forth.  “You just do so much” they continue.  They start to open their mouths again and I cringe because I know they are about to stop and repeat.  Yep.  Here it comes…. “I  just don’t know how you do it.”  At this point they’ve made themselves dizzy by shaking their head back and forth so much that the fluid in their ears  is off.

I outwardly mimic their behavior and shrug my shoulders and then yes—shake my head back and forth, back and forth, before saying, “You just gotta do, what you gotta do.”  That’s the polite answer of course.  Inside I’m thinking to  myself “I’m a freakin triathlete!”  “That’s how I do it.”  “I’ve been training for years!”  “Do you think I just woke up one day and had challenges and difficulties?”  Like out of the blue stuff started to be difficult?”  Uh…that would be a big fat NO.  You don’t swim upstream this long and this hard without the muscles to prove it.  Without the dexterity and drive to succeed.  I am the epitome of survival of the fittest.  “You open me up and I bleed nothing.  Why? Because I have learned to not need trivial things like blood.  Suddenly as I begin to think I’ve gone overboard with the thoughts I don’t need blood and that my internal  analogy is even too extreme for me….the polite acquaintance that thinks she has been complimenting me this whole time says something like, “Well I better go, it sure was great to see you.”  After an awkward hug and a look that said, “You go get 'em.” She turned and walked away.

I then take a long deep breath.  That’s what endurance athletes like myself do after a few 500 meter laps in the pool.  I’m warming up the muscles for the next boxing round I must endure.

Who will it be this time? The sweet elderly lady in the grocery store that gives me THE LOOK? You’ve seen it. The look that says I’m a horrible mom because I let my child misbehave in a public place. Or will it be the principal of the school? Pal might help you remember how to spell principal, but they are anything but my pal.

What about the family member that gets annoyed at you for missing yet another holiday?  Everyone else in the family can make it, why can’t you? Oooh and my favorite of all…the ones that give a look and then with the best smile they can muster they say through their clenched jaw, “we are praying for you.”  I’m sure you can add several more to this list.

But the worst, the worst of all time is the nagging, unrelenting, belittling, unquenchable voice inside my own head that I’m continually having to battle.

Raising a neurodivergent child is no joke (and it’s no one’s business either), but crippling ourselves with our own negative talk is more disruptive than all the other outward people I fight. My biggest enemy is myself. My child not being quiet in the store is not the problem. The elderly lady giving me “the look” is not the problem, the principal who can’t see my kid for who he is, is not the problem (well..a little).  The family member who has no idea what it’s like to raise a neurodivergent child is not the problem and the sometimes well meaning onlookers half heartedly offering to pray are not the problem. I am. 

Until I can reach a place where I decide to stop the exhausting work of swimming upstream I will continue in a cycle of polite smiles on the outside and vicious self-talk on the inside, and you will too. 

It’s time to get out of the mainstream where my hopes and dreams used to lie. That is no longer my place and is slowing me down. It’s time to thrive. And yes that looks much different than anyone else’s definition of thriving.

The sprint I told myself I was on, turned into a marathon. All those that came out to cheer for me when I said it was a track and field event, started leaving and waving goodbye when it turned cross country. But that’s okay, because I realized I’m trying to keep up with the lifestyle of a neurotypical home. I’m trying to look, act and survive as  if my life looked like someone else’s. It’s okay for me to tell the voices in my head that I'm not failing, I'm not missing the mark, I'm a wonderful mother, and we are okay with doing things differently. Do you think you could tell yourself the same?

The leap to the stream of acceptance was a hard one. But it feels so nice to float for a while. I’m in my own stream now.  Won’t you join me?  The water feels fine.

You’re a gift!