Susan Senator

It’s different.  Of course it’s different.  And here’s how:  because I don’t know what he knows.  I don’t know how he understands things, and that is a very unfair thing.  And that is why I think I will always be a hovermother.

We tried another House weekend this time.  It was bad timing because the House staff did not have him call for several nights last week and I was out other times.  I did not get to connect.  I hate that.  What does he think of that?  Does he care?  How far in does it go?  Or is it like Max or something, he notices but he’s okay, because he’s Whole?

No, I’m not feeling sorry for myself, and if I am, why the hell should that matter?  Why are we all so set on being Strong?  What is disgusting about being weak, or sad?  Goddammit, I am so sad.  I am supposed to be letting him get used to the Adult World (sorry for all the upper case, but that is how the words seem to me).  This is not something I am being forced to do, so please don’t tell me that I don’t have to.  If you do I will not print your comment.  Do not tell me, because you don’t know.  Ned and I are doing this.  We are doing this.  And I hate it.

And just because it makes me sad doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.  But I am not like others who can tell themselves truths and then move on.  I don’t know how they do that, how they convince their feelings to behave, to go away.  I can’t.  Mine just hang around, clinging to me, telling me what is real anyway.

My sadness is real, and Nat’s adulthood is real.  He is at the House, he doesn’t always get to call, and I don’t always get to call.  My other sons live their own lives and sometimes it feels like Ned really does, too.  And then it feels like I’m the only one living and thinking about Nat.

In some ways, I wish I’d never let him go.  Anywhere.  Back when he was first diagnosed — “diagnosed” makes it sound like they determined that he was sick, but he was not, he was still Our Nat, but he now Had Something.  Something he’d had along, but we didn’t know, and why did that have to matter?

Sometimes I wonder, stupidly of course, why does a person have to go away?  If he’s just not ready?  What the fuck is Tough Love?  That is an oxymoron.

Back then, I was told, like I am today, that he had to go.  He needed school, not his home all the time.  It was home that was not doing for him what he needed.

But home was me.  And Nat at home was our reality.  If I sent him to school, then didn’t it mean that reality had shifted, and he was what they were all saying he was?  I still can’t help it, a part of me feels that They changed him, with their stupid diagnosis and their special education.  They made it real by calling it a name.

Shit, I’m sitting here writing and crying.  Really, really quietly, pretending I have a sniffle.  Max is right next to me, working on something on his laptop.  Does he know I’m crying?  Is it just “Oh, there goes Mom again with a mood swing.”  Or what?  I don’t even know what his reality is, but you know, I really do know enough what it is, because there is feedback I can understand.

Why do Nat and I have to speak a different language?  Why is mine so word-heavy and his so much movement and silence?

So we all decide it is time for him to start dealing with change because 22 looms large and ugly.  There is no clawing it back to what it was, no matter how much I pull at it.  Just like school, it is just ripped away from me.  But I don’t heal.

I’m going there today to take him out for ice cream.