Riding the Wave

I got out of bed at 5:45am today. Not to take a shower or prepare lunch and pull out clothes for another school day. Nope. I got up to bake a cake.

On a Wonderful Wednesday.

No…it isn’t for a birthday or a special occasion and this Wednesday isn’t extraordinarily wonderful for any particular reason. I baked this cake because it was either that or have a good old fashioned nervous breakdown.

It has been hard to sleep. I toss and turn for hours thinking about how the day went with Nico and dreading another day just like it. This social distancing that the coronavirus pandemic has ushered into our lives has really thrown my kid for a loop and we’ve only been doing it for about a week and a half. Nico thrives on routine. He feels his most at ease and regulated with a series of routines because they are predictable. Nico doesn’t do well with the unpredictable. So, not being able to get up everyday, traverse through his morning routine to get ready for school, and then be shipped off to his classroom filled with all of his friends and people who make his day brighter has been so difficult for him. And me.

In this last week and a half, Nico has shown basically every human emotion one could have… in a single day. He can go from being deliriously happy, laughing incessantly (at God knows what) at a stadium level volume, to abysmally sad, crying the biggest crocodile tears I have ever seen for some unknown reason. He will seem totally content and then you ask him to do one thing or even look at him a second too long and he wants to rage. He has been doing a lot of yelling and shrieking and wanting to hit us way more frequently. But, his stimming has been so incessant. Not even my tight squeezes can regulate him. It’s truly like he is going through school/daily routine withdrawal and I fear he is going to regress. The only behavior that I am actually not minding or worrying about as much is his scripting. Normally, I would be trying feverishly to figure out why it’s increasing, but I know why it is at this point and it’s actually quite endearing, if I dare say so myself .

I have been trying to find some Social Distancing Silver Linings amongst all of this chaos and one silver lining has been the amount of reading Nico has been doing. He absolutely loves the Froggy series by Jonathan London so he has been reading and memorizing every one of this man’s books! Now, because he has memorized all of these books he is doing a lot of scripting and walking around our house fluently speaking in “Froggy.” It does get unnerving at times when he chooses to script at an insanely high volume, but I have to keep telling myself that he is struggling and his brain is totally overworking. Plus, with every word that Nico vocalizes I feel a bit more hopeful that he will eventually be able to string all of his words into functional conversation.

This is one of the few ways I’m trying to stay positive and keep things in perspective. I also remind myself daily that, yes, my family is safe and healthy, we have food and toiletries (for now), and still have a steady income to count on. We have been able to spend quality time together and share in special moments with each other that might have otherwise been missed if we hadn’t been forced to stay at home. I am beyond thankful for these silver linings, for sure. But, when I see the complete and utter frustration and desperation on my son’s face when he can’t get a certain word out or is having trouble focusing on a virtual school assignment because the scripting is just too overpowering, I want to just breakdown. No parent wants to ever see their child struggle. It’s heartbreaking. And, yet, I’m seeing it everyday in one way, shape, or form with Nico and it’s unbearable.

Last night, Nico kept trying to tell me the name of a book he wanted me to find for him on YouTube. Nico loves to listen to others read books aloud. It has helped his communication and reading comprehension skills tenfold. He kept trying to pronounce this one word, pausing and working his brain so hard to vocalize it. Through his eyes, I could actually see the mental gymnastics his brain was experiencing. However, I could not figure out what he was trying to tell me, nor could my husband. After a good five minutes of this back and forth struggle, Nico looked at me with such disappointment in his eyes that it nearly stopped my heart from beating right then and there. He walked away from me feeling defeated, disappointed, and saddened and I knew it because he looked back at me as he walked upstairs with such a distraught face. Talk about an emotional punch to the gut.

I was already a wreck that day from trying to manage his meltdowns, refusals to work with me on class assignments, and the fact that I had barely been able to play with my five month old due to balancing my workload, Nico’s classroom workload, and his mood swings. And if that wasn’t enough, I couldn’t help but watch my husband kill himself in ridding our pool of thousands of fallen leaves and beautify our backyard so that Nico could get some output in the pool, on his trampoline, and on his new swing to help regulate himself. This yard work my husband was attempting to complete would normally take a full day, if not two, but he was frantically trying to finish it in a matter of three hours…all for the health and well being of his son.

So, when Nico stormed upstairs I willed myself to not burst out crying for the umpteenth time and, instead, jumped on a web chat with my family to dull the heartache and try to salvage what was left of my train wreck of a day.

Ups and downs like these have become way too familiar for me during this darn pandemic. We are all riding a wave of emotions everyday, trying to navigate around each other (and our ever-changing emotions) so that we can survive. Fear is becoming more and more of an everyday feeling for many of us due to the increasing number of virus cases and deaths across the nation. Feelings of frustration and desperation are creeping in every time we cannot find an essential item at the grocery store. I know, for many Autism parents, full blown panic is setting in because when your child only eats one kind of chicken nugget or only drinks one type of V8 Fusion juice and it’s nowhere to be found a major meltdown is going to follow and extremely necessary calories are going to be lost. But, I have even been able to find a Social Distancing Silver Lining hidden amongst all of this panic as well. Because we, in the Autism community, are so fiercely protective of each other, when we see a family reaching out on social media desperately in search of a certain food or beverage for their child, we spread that news to every corner of the world until the family is inundated with that invaluable item for which they were on the hunt.

Talk about an emotional roller coaster! Desperation one minute and the next…celebration and utter relief. Instances like those definitely have me reeling emotionally and mentally lately. And physically… don’t even get me started on the stress/boredom eating…hence why subconsciously I woke up at 5:45am to bake a cake (even though I told myself it would be for my father who has been dying for something sweet and having to go without because our grocery stores are barren).

But, whatever the reason may be, as I prepped and baked my cake this morning I found myself basking in the glow of my mental tranquility. Although I had had another restless night, I didn’t feel tired. I wasn’t anxious or feeling any dread about the impending day. I was calm and present in the moment. And, I think that that was because I know this, too, shall pass and I know that we’re all in this together. I also decided to recite my mother’s favorite prayer, The Serenity Prayer to myself a few times, which seemed to pull her closer to me in that moment.

So even though I woke up way too early to quell, yet, another pandemic-induced emotional breakdown, I realized it was just what I needed—a blessing in disguise— and I got a scrumptious yellow cake with chocolate frosting as a bonus. God bless Duncan Hines!

Now, onto Thriving Thursday and Fabulous Friday!