Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
My phone vibrates next to me.
“Have you heard anything yet?” my husband inquires.
This is our daily 3 o’clock conversation, because at that time school lets out for the day and my eldest heads to the After School Program.
“Nothing yet,” I start to text and I’m instantly {like clockwork} interrupted by a phone call from “the number”.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
On the other line a frantic teacher informs me that I need to pick up my son as soon as possible, and I hear crying in the background.
It’s my job to get him. To leave my work, and drive only five minutes there and back, but still I’m leaving work, AGAIN!
I’m tired, so sick and tired.
Inside I’m a swirling whirling mass of emotions.
Anger.
Sadness
Guilt.
Frustration
Don’t forget apathy, because it’s happened so many times, sometimes I just don’t give a shit.
On days like these I hate everyone.
I hate the cute pictures of your smiling kids on FB, and how awesome they are. How you can take them places without having to worry about rage induced fits. Or how they actually WANT to do things with you and spend time with you. How you don’t need to bribe them to go outside and play, and how they will eat their dinner, because they aren’t hopped up on so many appetite-suppressing drugs.
Yep, I’m bitter, and angry.
We’ve been dropped into the proverbial waiting room. Waiting for the next phone call, the next medication assessment, the next therapy session, the next good day…WAITING FOR AN ANSWER.
When I ask the therapist about a timeline she says there is no timeline, that every child is different, and E … well … in not so blunt terms she told me he will most likely be a lifer.
That we may constantly be living in this in-between, the uncertain…the one day up and one day down. I’m not sure I’m strong enough for that.
The walls of this prison weigh down on me everyday {and him}. After these outbursts he refuses to talk to me about them, and when he does he gets upset, and depressed. Then my heart breaks again.
I keep waiting and hoping that one day E will just “snap out of it”. That he will finally be that smiling, gregarious child that I know is.
But today we are sit waiting.
Today I may sit in this waiting room of uncertainty, but there will come a time when I will break down this door, so we can be both be free. It’s time to stop waiting and start living.
**
This post was inspired by today’s Creative Soul Back to School Back to Writing Prompt.
You don’t have to accept that he might be a “lifer” a child is still developing and that label doesn’t help your situation right now. What might help is a piece of advice the social worker and therapist gave me about Anthony. Phases. Every single child goes in and out of phases. Without phases we don’t develop. Now, of course, children with special needs (like Anthony and his anxiety) will always deal with problems differently, but all children go through growing pains. It is a fact. Another phase will come and it may be more pleasing. Stay strong, mama.
Phases. Growing pains. … No waiting rooms, indeed.
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