The Never-ending Wait

As we prepare for our move, the wait is really getting to me. I want to get on the road, to start the next journey. Most of my trepidation centers around leaving family, but even in that I look forward to the distance from the drama. My mother is very hurt and upset that we are leaving the west coast yet again. My head knows that this is because she cannot visit us after we move, indeed to do financial and health related issues, she cannot visit us where we currently live, but I know in her heart she longs to be in the Bay area. She has always loved San Francisco and if she could not live here herself, she could live here through us. Rationally, she knows this move is the best for us. I doubt she realizes how perfect of a fit it possibly is. Now that she knows it is definite, her response to remind me of how alone I will be out there-with no friends or family. Three days ago, she was comforting me on how we would do well. Today, she wanted to fill me with fear of what is to come. Oh well, this is not the first time we've danced this dance together. For self-centered reasons, we've always done what we thought was best for our little family-first just Mr and I and now with Monster. We've always walked our own path. Rarely doing what is expected or traditional. Why should this next phase be any different?

I harbor no illusions that my new job will be a cake walk. Indeed, I don't want it to be. I relish the possibility to start fresh, in a place that I already feel is home doing what I know, in my more arrogant and conceited moments, I'm good at. That old feeling of ambition has reared its head again in my soul. Those feelings that were, as I refer to them, pre-autism. The desire to show others what I know, to push my mind and knowledge to the limit to expand it. To solve problems, to investigate the truth-to find out what really happened; how things really work and are made, and why the break. I wonder if I'm setting myself up again-the way I set myself up where I currently (for 4 more days) work. I find myself reflecting again, on what could have been, what may have been, had Monster turned out to "normal".

I find myself almost grateful that he has the challenges he has, though. Not that I wish these struggles, either his or Mr and mine, on anyone. I don't. But because I know that I would have become a person obsessed with my own fame and success-as much as happens in my line of work-or at least my delusion of it. I would have eagerly sacrificed the relationship with Monster to feed my career. I never got that chance, or rather I never felt like I had that chance. In retrospect, I could have buried my head into the sand, kept on my path with the thought it was "all for the best" and lost out on what has become the most important relationship I have ever, or will ever, have. Perhaps I did make a choice, unconscious though it was. I've resented it, resented giving up that other dream and blamed it on autism, on Monster on Mr. In the end, I guess it really was my decision. And one, though I regret much of what I did, I don't regret.

And that's the unknown reward, the silver lining on this journey of Autism. The fact that you, as a parent, are forced to accept your child for who they truly are so early on in their life. Not who you wish them to be, or who you dream them to be, but who they are. The dreams, the delusions, don't have the chance to root and grow. Challenges, quirks, difficulties, triumphs, love, anger, rage and pain-each is a gift that I would have never been given had he been "normal". I know my son in ways that I had never imagined. I can read his moods, his mind, his happiness and fears, in ways that I would never have been able to do had I not been "forced" to become the Sherlock Holmes I've become (though I feel more like Watson most days).

So with my new-found self-indulgent insights, my impatience grows. I want to be on the road. I want to escape the drama of prolonged good byes, hide away from the pain of losing that which I've built here. It's time to start fresh, to see if I truly have learned from my mistakes and grow into the person I hope I can become.

I look at Monster, playing loudly next me. Giggling at who can guess what, at Mr. who is devastated at the US loss to Brazil (or what we think is a loss, Monster switched on his computer game before we saw the end of the match) and I just want to get on with it already.

Patience has never been a virtue that I possessed!