{"id":2810,"date":"2015-01-05T11:43:58","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T16:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=2810"},"modified":"2015-01-05T12:52:21","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T17:52:21","slug":"free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/01\/free\/","title":{"rendered":"Free"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"XMAS<\/a><\/p>\n

This past summer my family and I spent a day at Great Adventure. It\u2019s the only place Justin, my severely autistic son, willingly stays for more than an hour (I have often joked with my husband that wherever we live has to be within a thirty minute radius of a Six Flags parks.) It\u2019s usually a very fun excursion for us, mostly free of angst, and something I truly enjoy doing as a family.<\/p>\n

On our last trip there however, things got a little bit interesting.<\/p>\n

We were all safely ensconced on the Runaway Train roller coaster, rushing precariously along to our first hill, when I looked ahead and saw a man in the front row waving his camera. I heard one of the employees scream \u201cYou can\u2019t have that on the ride!\u201d and immediately had the feeling all of us were going to pay for that jerk\u2019s need to have a selfie.<\/p>\n

Was I ever right.<\/p>\n

Halfway up the first hill we came to a jerking halt. I was seated next to Justin, and I immediately took his hand and squeezed it, reassuring him we\u2019d be okay. Within a minute one of the employees was climbing up the side stairs, and I turned to grab her sleeve as she passed by so I could get some information. I told her my boy was severely autistic and that our unscheduled stop would be hard for him, and asked her how long we\u2019d have to sit there.<\/p>\n

She told me even when they took the camera from Mr. Important that we\u2019d have to wait for a supervisor to come restart the ride, which would take up to fifteen minutes. I thanked her, and as she recommenced walking, I heard the slow whine of my son\u2019s discontent begin.<\/p>\n

I knew this was going to be a very long fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re a writer metaphors seem to fall into your lap, and as my son fumed next to me (and trust me, so did the rest of the people on the train) I had time to think about being stuck, both literally and figuratively. I looked at my son who was agitated, but not pinching me, crying, or trying to get off the ride as he would have done only a few years before. I was so proud of him as he went with the flow, hopefully reassured by my constant flow of \u201cit will start soon.\u201d I praised him and squeezed his hand and made a mental note of how much progress he\u2019d made.<\/p>\n

Then I realized he wasn\u2019t the only one on the ride who\u2019d made progress too.<\/p>\n

We all have our demons. Mine involve over-consumption of chocolate (a fun one!), and anxiety. I\u2019m not going to blame autism for this, as even before my kids were born I could be a worrier (I\u2019m fourth generation, as my mom says I come by it honestly.) Before the kids were diagnosed I could talk myself down from any anxiety ledge, and I can truly say it was just a part of my life I didn\u2019t like but had learned to work around.<\/p>\n

Then not one but two of my kids were diagnosed on the spectrum, and anxiety became my new best friend.<\/p>\n

To be fair, when my kids were in their early years they were plagued by sleeplessness, gastrointestinal disorders, and a general unhappiness that was both exhausting and depressing. I worried they\u2019d never sleep (hell, I worried I\u2019d never sleep again either.) I worried they\u2019d never eat. I mostly worried they\u2019d never experience more than a few fleeting moments of happiness, which is all I ever got in those dark days. My worries became a mantra of \u201cwhat if this is permanent\u201d which I carried around with me everywhere. I couldn\u2019t shed my fear for more than a few hours at a time. I was literally stuck.<\/p>\n

And now, and I realized this on that damn roller coaster, I\u2019m not. Most of the time, I\u2019m free.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not free of everything. My fears of what will happen to my boys when their dad and I are no longer around are permanent. I\u2019ve accepted this, and learned to live with it (somewhat.) To me it\u2019s the great divide between me and parents who have kids who will safely live independently one day. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a bridge I\u2019ll ever cross, although I\u2019ll wave longingly to the other side from time to time.<\/p>\n

But ten years after my first son was diagnosed with autism, I realized I am free of these things.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of worrying about what other people think if my son\u2019s loud in a movie theater (it happened over break, it was three minutes, I figure the rest of the audience will live.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of what other people think period.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of worrying over whether I\u2019ll ever hear my severely autistic son\u2019s voice (I did, and did so at great length when he read his first book to me at age eleven.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of trying to do everything right, because nobody can whether they have kids on the spectrum or not.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of trying to maintain friendships where people don\u2019t understand my life and logistics are usually more challenging than theirs, and I need their flexibility and understanding.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of worrying every single day about my boys\u2019 futures. The time for that will come- it\u2019s not here yet. I\u2019ve learned to live more in the present.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of guilt over what caused their autism, and what I have and have not been able to do for them since their diagnoses.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m free of worrying whether or not they\u2019d ever be happy, because sometimes my boys are by far the happiest people in our house.<\/p>\n

And even on that roller coaster, as small a thing as it seems, that day I was free of panic over how Justin would handle our interruption. He was fine. So was his mama. It was huge, monumental progress for us both.<\/p>\n

And as a new year begins, and resolutions fade with that first of many bites of chocolate, I resolve that remaining free is the one I will carry with me.<\/p>\n

For more on my family visit my blog at autismmommytherapist.wordpress.com\/<\/i><\/p>\n

Follow me on Facebook at Autism Mommy-Therapist<\/i><\/p>\n

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This past summer my family and I spent a day at Great Adventure. It\u2019s the only place Justin, my severely autistic son, willingly stays for more than an hour (I have often joked with my husband that wherever we live has to be within a thirty minute radius of a Six Flags parks.) It\u2019s usually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":2811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[798,293,295,294,797,799],"class_list":["post-2810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-in-brick","category-ocean-county","tag-anxiety","tag-autism","tag-autism-acceptance","tag-autism-awareness","tag-great-adventure","tag-six-flags"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/XMAS-2014-019.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sgt2Ft-free","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}