Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Still life with Ben

I've thought several times of letting this beast go. In many ways a beast is what it has become. It is a place where I have stored my joy and my fear and where I was able to express many moments of madness seen through eyes that knew silliness. But that resolve has been tested, and tested, and tested again. I keep hoping to find my place, to push through and allow this world that I have so much faith in to be my guide. The therapy, the schools, the friends and lack of friends, the work, good gracious it is a trying world we live in.
And then this.
Kiera didn't want to start school this year. She loved her teacher, liked some of the kids she was going back to, but didn't want to go back. It got worse after Christmas break and awful after spring break. Tears every morning begging me not to make her go, heartfelt pleas to not wake her up for school the next morning. Then several weeks ago my baby broke. She told me that she didn't have happy days any more, she didn't even have happy moments enough to string together into a happy day. She told me that most days she wished she could die and start her life over in heaven. She is seven years old.
Have you ever heard of special needs sibling survivor guilt. I hadn't. Not until five weeks ago and and our world change yet again to accommodate the extremely scary feelings of my sweet, scared little girl who doesn't know how to love and not like her brother who she shares a school with.
This is another thing that I don't know how to do. I do know that my little girl had a threshold and she crossed it and we are exceptionally lucky that we were talking so much and she told us how she was feeling. I do know that we can turn to others to learn how to cope with this new hurtle, because we are really freaking good at hurtles. I have no idea what the other side looks like and I am really tired of not knowing what the other side looks like. I am exhausted by searching for the good and the joyful in the challenge of it all. And so, so unbelievably sad that my little girl has such huge sad feelings at such a young age. The range of "what did we do wrong" that we could put ourselves through is unbelievable and entirely useless, we have done enough grieving to know this. So power on is what we will do, with all the support we can get.
This is the very short version of what we have been dealing with over the last several weeks and I considered not sharing it at all but then I thought, what if someone had prepared me for what Kiera is feeling? Could I have done some things differently? Could I have prepared her for what it is like to see your brother made fun of on the playground? Maybe not but could I have provided and outlet for those internalized feelings? Maybe.
It's all still life with Ben.

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