Finian attends a great respite service called the Maria Goretti Centre about once a month. I love and trust them with all my heart. When he turns 18 next June, this service ends. I'll miss the staff as much as the support they give us. They're like extended family.
Of course, the respite is more for us than for Finian. It's hard to make peace with the fact that I need a break from my beautiful boy so I can sleep, or make a phone call, or dial down my adrenals a few notches. I feel like a shit human being to look at my gorgeous son and know I need a rest from him.
It's a lot to bear that he has to navigate this world through an autistic lens, and that I'm not always enough to contain him. So even though I need respite and am deeply grateful for it, it comes at a price.
I drove him to school this morning and noticed he was a bit quiet. He was going to respite after school so I put it down to a change in routine.
I got a call from the school a few hours later to tell me he got really upset and regressed to behaviours we hadn't seen in a few years. It's heartbreaking to send your sobbing child away for a night because you need to sleep, no matter how much you try to rationalize it.
Finian will eventually go to live in a residential setting. The prospect of him not understanding why I'm not with him is almost too much to bear.
Autism is the guilty gift that keeps on giving.
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