{"id":420,"date":"2008-09-06T17:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T17:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2008\/09\/guilty\/"},"modified":"2008-09-06T17:14:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-06T17:14:00","slug":"guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sad about Natty. I can’t help it. I am so afraid our bond will grow weaker without daily contact. I miss him so much, even if we don’t talk or do anything of substance together. Even if he just sits on the couch and seems not to notice me. The point is, I<\/span> notice him! And I feel our connection, even if he is quiet.<\/p>\n

But I feel it less with him not being here. That breaks my heart. Talking on the phone and visiting there is unsatisfying. It is artificial. It is not what we’ve always done. I keep seeing him, imagining him, and then realizing he is not here and what does that mean? How did that happen, that now this is the thing we do? Just like when I first sent him to school. <\/p>\n

When he was little and he first had to go to school, I felt kind of the same way. I felt like I was betraying him by sending him off to school, rather than just keeping him here with me. I felt like because I was sending him to a special needs program, it was making it more true that he had a disability, and that made me so sad. I felt so sorry for him, having a disability. I felt guilty. I felt responsible, because I brought him into this world, and shouldn’t I have seen to it that he had all he needed to live in it safely and happily? <\/p>\n

Gradually I got over it. I got used to it. He grew into being a student. I got used to not having him here in the mornings. I could spend time with my baby Max. I didn’t have to think about what I should have been doing about the autism. I am so sorry to offend people with autism when I say things like that, but speaking as a mother who really wants everything for her kid, I needed to mitigate the autism, or the things that went along with it, like language impairment and sensory defensiveness and aggressive behavior.<\/p>\n

So now he has to go and live apart from us to be with specialists around the clock, to help him make up for some of his deficits. It feels a little like he is being punished for being autistic. He doesn’t get to live here because he has to overcome and compensate just to survive out there.
And the thing is, he has that disability because of something physiological that didn’t connect quite right while I was carrying him around inside. <\/span> That is why I am feeling responsible.<\/p>\n

I’m so sorry to bum you all out, you other parents who are trying so hard to find hope and get beyond grief and guilt. I feel like I’m supposed to be some kind of role model or something, because I have been there, or been through it. But I’m really not. I’m not finished yet with him in this way. I want him back. I don’t want him to get used to it, because then there will be less to our connection together. Today on the phone he called the House “home.” That made me want to cry, yet when I told people I tried to be happy because I knew they thought it was a good thing.<\/p>\n

I’m trying so hard not to be so ugly and wallow-ish, but the suffocating humid, gray day just got to me. Don’t tell me to snap out of it. Don’t tell me I’m being selfish. I’ll just delete you. I’ve got to say this. I’ve been carrying around this lump of disgusting emotion in my throat and belly, and I’ve just got to vomit it out onto this screen.<\/p>\n

I want him back. It is too soon to let him go. It feels like another betrayal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sad about Natty. I can’t help it. I am so afraid our bond will grow weaker without daily contact. I miss him so much, even if we don’t talk or do anything of substance together. Even if he just sits on the couch and seems not to notice me. The point is, I notice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sSTth-guilty","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}