Autism & Howling

 It's 5.30 on a Friday evening and I'm cuddled up in bed with my howling boy.

At least, I think he's howling.

He's scripting Bob the Builder in Albanian and maybe they speak in howls.  Who knows?  I don't know any Albanians to check this out with.

It's been an emotional week.

(stretchy metaphor incoming.  Brace yourselves)

He (and by extension, we) have raked together all the happily drifting leaves of emotion into a single (worryingly large) bonfire.  We doused them with miracle-gro for shits and giggles.  We mixed them together with altogether unnecessary violence, using agricultural machinery we borrowed from a farmer who may be Hannibal Lecter.  

Because I like overcooked analogies so much, Finian set the overfed confusion of leaves aflame this evening.

It would have been a thing of beauty, if it wasn't quite so loud.  And howly.

Let me explain.  

Today, Finian left the school that was his safe, loving, ambitious haven for the last decade.  It feels like we just deposited our parachute, lifejacket and flare in the bin and took a foolishly optimistic leap over a cliff.  

It's an awfully long way down, and I don't like heights.

In the last week he had a moving graduation ceremony, an 18th birthday party ( 2 of them, actually) and goodbye parties at school.  There have been birthday cards, rituals and bouncy castles.  It's all very healthy, moving-on stuff, but there's no doubt that a good howl was required to process all of this.

It's kinda unfair that as an adult I'm not really allowed a lusty scream into the void, so I have to settle for a headache instead.  A headache isn't nearly as sexy as an exuberant purging of the soul, but it's all I have to work with.

I'm trying to embrace the fall through the void in a grown-up, philosophical sorta way.  Which is a shame as I'm not very grown-up or philosophical.

I'm just glad God created the comfort blankets of chocolate, rioja and Schitt's Creek.