While we go through some crazy shit with Noah, we could have it much worse. So much worse! I had to be careful actually, as I listened to everyone's story, that I didn't project their reality onto Noah's future. Believe me, some of the tears I cried last weekend were because of my fear for his future.
The truth is we just don't know what it is going to be like for Noah, or us with Noah, five years or ten years or twenty years from now. It doesn't stop me from worrying and fretting over it, but when it comes down to it I just don't know. I hope that everything we are doing for him now will make his future easier. Shit, pretty much everything we do is in some way trying to help him. But when you are dealing with a childhood mental illness, you just can't know. You hope, and if you are of the praying sort, you pray I guess.
Still, right now we don't have it as hard as many of the moms that I met last weekend. In the moment that doesn't necessarily make it any easier, but when I can take a step back later and look at what is going on with more perspective it helps. Sometimes anyway.
Some of the women are going through serious shit with their kids. I think I'm feeling a bit of survivors guilt right now. Kind of ironic in a way. It's not like Noah doesn't have one seriously difficult road in front of him. A road that we will try to help him navigate as much as we can.
I read the "Peace in Puzzles" post you linked. I don't have special needs children but what I do know is that I will bite my tongue when one of my kids is acting out (acting out for THEM). What you so many other families endure is horrific at times. You have opened my eyes.
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