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This post is one of those that comes into my heart and has to be published. It’s messy and raw and real. I have these moments where I just need to write. I am having a moment now so please indulge me by not caring about the way it comes out.
Would Someone Please Stop the Merry-Go-Round?
Really. I am tired. and dizzy. and I just don’t know how many turns I can take at this.
The ups and downs and the constant round and round. Never really getting anywhere. No finish line to reach.
When your kids are little and they have a special challenge like spina bifida you have so many people there cheering you on. Cheerleaders do it out of love for you, your child, and a tiny hope that they are right. They say, “keep going” “you are in the hard years” “it will get better”. Theoretically, they are lying. I don’t think it is even a lie they are aware of. I have told it so many times myself.
Somethings DO get better, but mostly you just get stronger. You transform from the crumbled mess you were on the day you heard your child’s horrific diagnoses. You become harder to beat down. You readjust your vision of ‘normal’. It’s who we are as humans, as mothers and fathers. We adapt.
The capacity to adapt as a special needs parent is nothing less than a miracle.
People see you on the outside and the just rave about how ‘inspirational’ you are, they ‘don’t know how you do it’, you are such an ‘angel’. You know it isn’t true. You do what you have to do. You don’t have a choice. You love your child more than yourself. Every parent does, and whether they believe it or not, you know that if their child, God forbid, had something terrible happen to them, they too would do it. They just don’t know it yet because they haven’t had to find that strength.
But there comes a time when if you bend anymore to fit in this odd shaped container you know as normal you will simply break in half.
Today that is my reality.
My body is tired. My body is warning me that I won’t be able to lift my son anymore. I won’t be able to keep doing the things he needs because he is getting older and bigger. It is telling me that muscle relaxers and pain pills are my consequence of loving someone more than myself. Of doing things I know my body isn’t strong enough to do. Of ignoring the signs that I am taking on too much.
and that makes my heart break into a million pieces. And it makes me realize that no matter how many of these damn horses I try and ride, none of them are ever going to break off this merry-go-round.
And so we march on, up and down, round and round and pray that simply enjoying the ride is the point.
But writing this all out made me realize I really don’t want off the ride. I am enjoying the ride most days.
I guess in the end I know that is the point. Some days I just need to remind myself that while I go round and round and up and down, I love the people on this ride with me. I love that we never see a finish line in sight.
Finish lines aren’t all that they are cracked up to be.