I Could Walk Away

"I could walk away now," I told someone in January. And until the words were out of my mouth, I had never even thought them. Not once considered them. But they echoed in my head for days into weeks, weeks into months. And with every passing day I took another step away.

I've been writing, blogging, admining, researching everything autism and special needs from the moment we got my son's diagnosis. Before that time I had already been writing, researching, etc. attachment parenting, and long before that studying child psychology. I'd say "It's just what I do," but really it's for the kids. It's always for the kids. Children aren't resilient (that's why so many grownups need therapy and are dx'd with personality disorders) and childhood can be a nightmare for some people, and if I can be that one little light in the dark for one person, then its worth it. But it starts with the parents, and parenting, because ultimately they hold the most influence.

Then I got thrown into my biggest challenge yet - parenting my own wonderfully stubborn (I'm serious, I dig that about him) child with a plethora of personal obstacles he had to overcome. Every moment meant something important and I wore myself out making sure it meant something important and all forward progress; to being the most confident, caring, self-reliant version of himself that he can be. It was hard work for both of us. I'd love to tell everyone how we did it, so I wrote more articles and counseled more people and, and, and... I'm tired. He's doing pretty good now. We continue to make forward progress, but on autopilot. Meaning, all the stuff is now second nature and we just do it.

So I went to school and got my English degree and made myself more tired but happy, and put up a website that I mentally gave myself a year to start making enough money to pay for itself. I was a single mom, I didn't have that much. Then I said the words and thought the thoughts. "We're doing really good. I could walk away now." From all of it. From a world I didn't volunteer for. Its a chance I know a lot of people don't have. I wasn't getting a lot of feedback. As far as I know, my voice is swallowed up in the wind of a million other voices and maybe doesn't make it past my face. I don't even know anymore. Was I helping anybody?

I didn't make a decision out of the blue. I just stopped. Rested. Thought. Stopped using Facebook. Stopped listening to the screaming fray. Stopped trying to yell over them. Just took a step back, and then another. Did a lot of thinking about what I wanted to write. About what I would have been doing if this parenting-special-needs gig hadn't swallowed me whole.

I decided to be selfish.

Then I got a text and drove 9 hours to Louisiana to help someone with a very difficult, stressful thing and did that for a month.

When I put the two together I said "God is laughing at me." Jaden said "It just proves you are who you are." Because he is wiser than I am, and less apt to jump to the conclusion that I'm the constant punchline of a cosmic joke. I'll still wonder.

So I guess the conclusion is that I did walk away, deciding to work on different types of projects. Still avoiding the world of online, preferring instead the company of bumblebees and the breeze blowing in the trees while I sit with a pen poised over paper. But I'm always on call.