A well-known author once said the worst reason to write a book is to save yourself. Maybe she’s right. But in hindsight, that’s why I wrote mine. I was groping around blindly in the dark, vomiting, then deleting word after word, struggling to rephrase them in the most true way.
Somehow in the process, I managed to gather a few of my fragmented pieces, examine them, and reorder them in a way that made sense of my life. I thought getting everything out on paper might somehow release me. Perhaps, I foolishly hoped, if only I can expel enough bad memories, emotions, and body sensations, I will free up enough space to feel “normal.”
Yet, nearly one year after declaring my memoirs finished, I realize both the truth and folly of my desire. Writing changed me. Developed me for sure. It made me more complete…but not fully. And it’s those leftover, incomplete, jagged pieces that come calling in quiet moments, begging for their resolution.
After seventeen years of raising our Autistic son, Grayson, and struggling to survive my own life, chaos—like seeping oil—has penetrated layers upon layers of calcified bone, perhaps so deeply it’s co-mingled with even my marrow. It feels inseparable from me.
Is it me? I wonder. It must be. Certainly, I am nothing more than amassed chaos.
Some days, I think I’ve absorbed it into my system and repurposed it for good. Other days, I feel the ache of every little fissure the chaos created on its way in and feel certain I’m rupturing from the inside out. On these days, it seems improbable I will ever feel whole.
On February 28 of this year, we dropped Grayson off at a boarding school in Utah (perhaps I’ll write more on that later), and now, for the first time in seventeen years, I have the space to sit back in complete silence and solitude and perceive the whole of my life as his mother.
A major life chapter has closed, and another has begun. This new chapter is strangely but deliciously peaceful. We live on a beautiful mountain that offers all the space in the world for my chaos to dissipate. My husband and I are practically empty-nesters. Only sixteen-year-old Reagan remains, and I cherish every opportunity to make the memories I once failed to create. For two weeks of every month, my husband, Arin, is in Texas, working a second job to pay for Grayson’s tuition. And for half the month, I ward off loneliness and try to be constructive instead of internally destructive. But the days he’s home are heavenly. Morning coffee in a sun-drenched nook, afternoon walks through fields of wildflowers, long and uninterrupted conversations of the heart, and for the first time in many, many years, we are traveling. Together. And it’s so easy and stress-free—who ever knew?
In an almost out-of-body experience, I observe us jet-setting around the world. I’m still reeling from Grayson’s departure, but I’ve compartmentalized it enough to feel blissfully disconnected and unaware. One month after dropping Grayson off at his new school, I’m in Costa Rica for a health and wellness retreat. The following month, my husband, daughter, and I visit our son/sibling in Montana. In July, Arin rides a motorcycle through the wild frontier of Alaska, then all the way back to Colorado. In August, we’re fishing with our oldest son in Wyoming, then celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary a year early on Vancouver Island. We are gone from home for two full weeks—something once entirely unfathomable—and I remain satiated long after he returns to Texas, feasting on the exorbitant amounts of love, laughter, and intimacy we’ve just shared.
Shouldn’t this be enough? I question. Why doesn’t it feel like enough? Surely, I must be greedy, raking for more to fill this post-dated hole.
Deep down, I can recognize the previous chapter of my life ended abruptly as a ripped-off bandaid on February 28. It was, for me, the cauterization of an oozing wound by a white-hot flame, and now, I find my life severed into three distinct parts—pre-Grayson, post-Grayson, and no-Grayson.
It is this third part I find the most confusing of all.
Externally, my stress is gone. Vanished literally overnight. Dropped off at a boarding school in Utah. I should be feeling better, I tell myself. You must be so relieved, others inform me. But the chaos, my blistering, scarring cauterization, and my unshakeable deep-rooted weariness suggest otherwise.
Such feelings are the only strands that connect this trimester of my life to the last, and I frequently find myself wondering if there will ever come a day I don’t feel completely and inherently broken.
In Grayson’s stead, dreams flood to haunt me. They conjure up not historical events but the feelings that remain still beneath. In the wee hours of the morning, still restlessly slumbering, I am holding newborn Reagan to my engorged chest. I have forgotten to feed her yet again in the wake of Grayson’s chaos and am constantly turning, turning, turning in an attempt to shield her from him. To protect her. To keep her alive. I awake, not with the old acute panicky fear, but with a dull throbbing in my chest that crushingly reminds me I am infused with chaos, inescapably intertwined with my past. Forgotten feelings of complete overwhelmedness and incompetence re-consume and suffocate me.
Now fully awake, the memories re-emerge, seeking to connect with their lingering but severed emotions. Here come the angry screams, the visions of frenzied police restraints (he was just seven years old the first time, for God’s sake!). There he is, far off in the lake, way too far, dipping beneath the surface, bobbing back up, then disappearing for what felt like an eternity as I struggle through the viscous water fighting to hold me back. I recall his gurgling screeches as the bleach he ingested burns and claws at his throat. I remember the strain on our marriage and the way Grayson’s care led to our other children’s neglect.
The one thing I don’t let myself recall is the way my heart shattered into a million pieces on February 28. That, I keep cordoned off in part two of my life. I don’t even think I could access it if I tried.
I know I need to integrate these three parts, but they stubbornly refuse to meld. I can only handle existing in one part at a time, so I am only one-third of a whole at any given time.
Just as one hopes their aging parent will willingly surrender their driver’s license when the time comes, I had always hoped I’d recognize when it was time to relinquish my son. This line in the sand came in a single heated moment. Previously, in violent moments, I had always been able to catch Grayson’s neck in the crook of my arm, tripping him back over my foot to move into a restraint. But in that deciding moment, he leaned into my grip and—clenching my elbow beneath his chin—began carrying me on his back. Butcher knife in hand, he continued on in hot pursuit of my youngest daughter.
I knew at that moment we could no longer safely keep him in our home, and although I know with my whole brain that we did the right thing, I cannot seem to align my heart and my head.
The bare-boned, God-honest truth is that I feel like I’ve discarded my child. Handed him over to an institution where the diet I worked so hard to instill over his lifetime dissolves daily in soggy bowls of Lucky Charms. I have surrendered his care to a staff that turns over more quickly than even Grayson can disappear, and no matter how rational I believe our decision to be, still the sorrow prevails.
And now, feelings of comfort continuously evade me. When he is home, I want him to return to school; the stress that accompanies his visits feels like birthing contractions; they remind me of the ensuing pain, chaos, and situations that can quickly and drastically turn wrong. Then I drive him to the airport and watch him walk down the jetway with a lump in my throat. He vanishes from my sight, swallowed up by the giant metal bird that will carry him away, relieving me of my stress but depositing fresh guilt.
For seventeen years, I have been his advocate, caregiver, and world. And he has been my every waking thought, plan, anticipation, fear…and my world. But now, I can’t quite figure out what to do or who to be. There are so many positives, so much relief and freedom. There is also a huge blaring void. The positives and negatives swirl together like a soul-ravaging tornado, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or what to even do with my hands.
And so…I write. And my heart bleeds out through my fingers onto the page. Perhaps if I write enough, I will once again cry enough tears that my vision might again grow clear. Maybe patterns will emerge, and I will relax back into myself and feel more than one-third whole. Maybe my dreams will once again turn nonsensical and fancy-free, and maybe the weight in my chest will slowly evaporate.
But until it does, I’ll put on my boots and muck through the mud, then savor the sun when it shines. I will sit with my guilt and discomfort in silence, then soak up every last drop of joy when my husband returns.
Because in the words of L.R. Knost, “Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful, it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”
