Where are they now?

Originally posted in Prosebox on 01/26/18

I am an Open Diary transplant. That site has been down for 4 years, but today it supposedly made its return. Nothing has changed there. It’s still slow, buggy, and unreliable. How they plan to charge for that is beyond me. I was so excited to uncover my old entries and catch up. So much has changed in my life in the past couple of years. As expected, it’s a major hassle to get your diary back. I am going to give this a shot. I just need a place to get my thoughts out without the judgement of my friends and family.

I’ll start where I ended there.

Still married, going on 15 years now. We had our second son in 2014 when our oldest was 8. Things at home started hitting a rough patch when M, our youngest, turned 2. His precious voice turned into frustrated grunts. He was losing his words and not hitting milestones. I had been watching him for months with my own suspicions, but it wasn’t until my doctor asked how the boys were doing at one of my regular check-ups. I literally started to cry, which has become an odd reoccurring thing there. He’s probably got his finger hovering CPS on speed dial every time I go in there. My tears led to him writing us a referral to Children’s Hospital, and it’s been a whirlwind since.

We’ve spent a year in therapies trying to help what was labeled as a “global developmental delay”. For a few months, 2 different therapists came to our home weekly. When M turned 3, he transitioned into a special pre-school and started therapies at the hospital instead. As you might’ve guessed, the past 1.5 years has been mostly about M. S, our oldest, is 12 now. His body is changing and he’s at a crossroads. He’s convinced that all of our time/energy is devoted to helping M and we don’t care about him. Of course we love S to the moon and back, but he’s right about us being preoccupied with meeting M’s needs. That needs to change. He and I are constantly at each other’s throats. I am exhausted – emotionally, physically, mentally.

K, my husband, is a good guy. He works hard to provide for his family. We always come first to him. Our marriage used to be so much more than what it is now. We are both in full on survival mode. There’s been discussion of separating so that we can live in different places and get a scheduled break from the kids. That’s what our situation has become. We are trying our best, but after his long work day and my marathon here, we don’t have much left for each other at night. We have no outside support. We can’t very well ask some random teenager from down the street to come into our home and babysit. M repeats himself hundreds of times a day. He has OCD tendencies and speaks his own language. Until we get over that hump, this is what it is. Hopefully we have what it takes to hang on until it gets better. It will get better.

S is in 7th grade now and doing super well. He is a part of the Summit Program, so basically all of his work is done self-paced online. He’s completed the 7th grade curriculum and is moving on to next year’s work. Today he won the spelling bee in his grade. M is in pre-school. He’s starting to string words together, but it’s more of a mimic than useful language. He has a vast vocabulary, but processing is the problem. There really is good below all the sludge, I just need to remember to look for it when I am feeling lost.

My anti-depressants don’t seem to be doing their job these days. Every time I feel like I have my anxiety under wraps it rears its ugly head. Maybe writing my thoughts out again will help with that.