Imagine

This is a previous post that I revised today.  I still feel a lot of this pain.  I continue to move through it. A mama's got to do what a mama's got to do...

Imagine hearing your child say "pull the car over on the highway so I can get out and a car can hit me."
Imagine your child having a nose bleed and saying, "Just let me bleed.  I want to die."
Imagine the pain of hearing your child  say, "My life is horrible!" almost every day.
Imagine the pain of  rarely seeing your child smile.
Imagine the pain of hearing your child say,  "I don't have any friends at school."
Imagine the pain of hearing your child say, "No one cares about me."
Imagine the pain of hearing your child say, "I just want to laugh like all the other kids...but I can't."
Imagine the pain of hearing your child say, "I don't think I'm going to have a good life when I grow up.  I think I'm going to end up in jail, or living on the streets.  I don't think I'll ever have a wife or a girlfriend."
Imagine running all over town taking your child to therapists, doctors, counselors, camps, social skills programs, reading everything you can get your hands on about autism and Aspergers --advocating for him at school --only to hear him say, "You just want me to be miserable don't you."
Imagine hearing yourself say, "You have to love yourself before you can expect others to love you" yet feeling deep inside that he may never learn to love himself.
Imagine the sting of the words, "Below grade level" in reference to your child whom you know is highly intelligent, but unable to work to his full potential because of stress, and depression.
Imagine the pain of deciding between stigma and getting the your child the help he really needs.
Imagine talking to a school administrator, or school psychologist -hearing them say, "He may NEVER get it completely."
Imagine the pain of getting the phone call, "The school officer had to be called for your son today."

Imagine hearing a school psychologist or teacher say, "We want him to get this now, when he's still in high school, so that he doesn't end up dealing with the police when he's an adult and they don't care that he has a disability." 

Imagine cringing every time the phone rings and you see your child's school on the caller I.D.  What did he do now?
Imagine the pain of watching your little fish swim in the big ocean called a public high-school, where you know that he isn't equipped to protect himself, even from himself,  afraid he'll be eaten by the sharks or swallowed up in the tide.
Imagine the pain of being in high-school and not having one person you can say is your true friend.
Imagine the pain of watching groups of kids hanging out together, laughing and joking, enjoying their school experience, while you wonder aimlessly alone -every excruciating day.
Imagine that there are thousands of unwritten rules that you are supposed to follow -but it's like your in a foreign land and you don't know the language.
Imagine trying medication after medication, with ambivalence because you don'y want to medicate your child in the first place.  
Imagine dealing with the side effects of psychotropic drugs, having them make matters worse instead of better.  Then trying another and another having it work for a while and then having to start that cycle over again.
Imagine the pain of wondering every single day, if you're doing the right thing.  Are you making the right choices for your child?
Imagine wondering if you will EVER see your child truly happy.
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"All those crazy nights when I cried myself to sleep

Now melodrama never makes me weep anymore

'Cause I haven't got time for the pain

I haven't got room for the pain

I haven't the need for the pain"

-Carly Simon/Jacob Brackman