Autism & Failure

I am asleep.

Finian charges into my bedroom, leans down til our noses are touching and yells "DON'T WAKEN DADDY ZEBRA!!!!!"

I am less than amused.

Going back to sleep is an impossibility.

I plan to turn Daddy Zebra into a handbag and a funky pair of shoes.

Fuck Daddy Zebra.

We have tried hard not to allow Finian become the epicentre of our family.

We have failed so completely that I almost admire the magnitude of our failure.

We failed big.

We failed so big, we could have bridges and libraries built in it's name.

Our failure is so mountainous it could be spotted by bemused astronauts as a hulking mass of denial and rocky justifications.  Coincidentally at our house.

Failure Mountain.  You can't miss it.

It's HUGE.  Like, Kim Kardashian arse-huge.

I love nothing more than a little bit of light crucifixion to get the weekend going (I can't quite kill the catholic in me), but this is not an exercise in self-blaming.

It's calling it what it is.

When Finian was diagnosed at the age of 3, his sister Ellen was 7 and his brother Jimmy was 10.

I was advised by seasoned autism veterans to do everything possible to prevent our lives being consumed by autism.

I set about, with great energy and enthusiasm, doing the exact opposite.

Autism invaded and underscored everything.  Trying to resist autism is like trying to hold back the tide with your bare hands.  You get cold and tired, and drowning is inevitable.  Cheery, huh?

I failed Jimmy and Ellen by neglecting them, and I knew I was doing it while I was doing it.

I was devoured by a screaming, bolting, smearing, climbing, self-harming, insomniac dervish. At the same time, I was acutely aware I had two other children who were abruptly, and permanently, dispatched into a very distant second place.  I watched all this happen, powerless to change it.  Keeping one child alive trumped meeting the emotional needs of two others.  Knowing this cognitively does not make me feel better about it.

Sucks to be Jimmy and Ellen.

We talk about it, acknowledge their losses, and name the neurodivergent elephant in the room.

But with everything I've learned about attachment and trauma in my counselling degree, I know that they have been wounded.  Finian's siblings are the collateral damage of his autism.

Sucks for me that they'll choose my nursing home.