Birthdays Were The Worst Days

I was angry with my child on his birthday. The night before I waxed poetic about his three beautiful years of life, although the past three months have been punctuated with extreme tantrums and violent outbursts often aimed at me. My consolation is that it could be worse. This is the meditation that I internally harmonize on as I’m getting the shit slapped out of me by my baby boy. And he’s ruthless with it, too. But, nevertheless, it could be worse. Olu’s brand of autism smiles and laughs and makes eye contact and runs in circles with his siblings. The stimming behaviors make a rare appearance and most of his frustration seems to be the result of not being able to communicate his needs.

Each morning I wake up with new hope and passion, and meet defeats of some sort throughout the day. I’ve learned to cook and shoo away his little body when he bites me on the back of the thigh. I’ve learned to silence his cries when he’s overwhelmed by his sister and brother’s noisy routine. I split myself in three parts, though never equal at any time, I damn sure try. We are a family and this is our journey and I am incorporating my older babes while still trying to honor their autonomy as babies in their own right. They need Mommy. Yet, they’ve learned to set aside their needs when Olu has an emergent circumstance. Unless they have completely had it, for the most part, they’re little soldiers. I hate it. I want to have time for each of them, I don’t want to tell Djimon to wait to talk about his homework because Olu is having a meltdown. But here we are.

Yesterday, I wanted to celebrate. I opened my eyes and within seconds I was met with a slap to my nose. Flat hand, limp, yet strong. Even still I smiled and sang, “Happy Birthday” to my baby boy. Olu didn’t acknowledge the gesture. The day continued as a tug and pull of myself and my family wanting to honor Olu’s special day and Olu’s unawareness and disinterest in anything pleasurable. Maybe he wanted to feel joy but didn’t know how to achieve it. I can relate. In deep, dark moments of depression I can be staring at the sun with no awareness of light. But, I tried anyways. Because that’s what we do. We celebrate life, all of our lives and I refused to make adjustments because of autism. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know. It’s all so new.

We went to dinner. I decided that we would get out of the house and ride in the car to a restaurant because car rides are Olu’s favorite things. He’s a “Go-Go Baby” as my grandma calls him. So, as expected he was happy to get out and ride with his family, but the joy and exuberance that I sought just. Wasn’t. There. He had no awareness of the occasion and so he didn’t realize that by having a bad day he was shitting all over Mommy’s plans. My plans to celebrate him, to rejoice in his birth.

That is what he has done at every turn. He has challenged my thoughts and ideas about occasions and celebrations. He has taught me how to be flexible, how to be selfless, how to truly let my needs go and find joy in the definition of another. I’m still fighting. Cussing. Fussing, learning and growing, but we’re getting there. Through many years, nervous breakdowns, and meltdowns; we are getting there.

Waves

I am dealing with so many emotions, and shuffling them around this body of mine. They move from my heart to my stomach, to my head, to the balls of my feet, and finally take residence in my blank stare. I am here. I am here. I am still a me, aren’t I? Depression in motherhood looks like women rushing from place to place and never taking up any space. Depression in motherhood is a shrinking woman and a well oiled machine. Most women believe that they can run it on empty. Even more than that actually do.

I am a woman. An Asahi. A woman who loves life, right? I am an Asahi who sometimes writes and needs to be held by her lover and checked on by her friends and nurtured by her mother. I am silly and fly and I love music and all of the things, right?

Today I made space for myself in a blender. I put beets, ginger, spinach, and oranges and spun a love song to myself. The notes played on my tongue as my babies played on the floor in front of me.

I’ve been moving so slowly, feeling so empty and heavy as if I could implode any second. Fall all the way into this shell of a self with this heart that beats only for them. Some days love is showing up and meeting the obligation. On days like this, the passion is not there.

Words have been eluding me. Words that usually tap dance across my brain funky, like a young Gregory Hines, soulful too…they’ve been skipping away from me.

And when they come, I haven’t the time to catch the rhythm and jump in.

I’m loving myself right now. Sitting here, thumbs moving across this keyboard, eyes darting between my phone and the babies. I am here for them, and here for me. Maybe I will make time to cry tonight.

#motherhood

Egun

 

We have lost so many loved ones, and so many dreams that sometimes it is hard to celebrate life and to sustain faith. We have adopted ways to cope through it all. There has been a lot of avoidance. Even me, with all of my empathy and deep emotions, I’ve been avoiding some mourning. Blocking some things out. It’s hard to mourn a life that you don’t understand the magnitude of. When you’re young and life seems limitless and endlessly forgiving, you don’t believe that death of loss can truly happen to you. I don’t know. So, even when it happens, it’s like it’s not entirely real. It isn’t fossilized in your being yet. Or it’s too real, and coursing through your veins with fire, so you play Jedi mind tricks with yourself, and drink and fuck, and run from the feelings.

When I started this project with my mother, I was so excited to be the narrator of our family story.  I felt like we were on the verge of something so big and there were so many discoveries and it was fun and deeply spiritual to learn my mother as a woman. A full woman outside of her identity as Mommy. And I was just writing and somehow keeping myself separate from all of the tragedy. And she needed to take a lot of breaks. I could have been a lot more sensitive with her but I was so hungry for the story and the sense of accomplishment. Ego was driving me forward, and I was gassed up by the possibility of taking all of this pain and turning it into poetic genius. And then we came to the part about my father, and my own profound sense of loss overwhelmed me and froze me in the project. Severe writer’s block. Panic. Pressure. Depression. Anxiety. Stress. Whispers of Ego; Fuck, I’m gonna be a failure. I can’t do this shit. More wine. Avoidance. Meltdowns. Anything but dive into the love story of the people that created me and the heartache from the father who wouldn’t keep me. Who didn’t protect me. I danced around it. Jumped to the decade before my father, five years after. Anything, anything but him.

Yesterday, as I was flying across the Lombok Strait on my way to the island of Gili Trawangan, the mourning hit me. I stared into glittering Indian Ocean and the tears flooded my eyes. I found myself mourning for all of the loved ones that I told myself I didn’t miss, and I was just fine without. I thought about all of the loss that my mother has lived through ; her father at 12, her Irish twin and best friend, my Uncle Carey at 50. Her innocence as a young girl, best friends, lovers, surrogate fathers, and a lifetime of dreams….and I just felt it. I understood the dam that she’s been keeping and protecting and why it’s been imperative that she let it out in small doses.

I am grieving. I am on a beautiful island off the coast of Bali and I am taking walks and singing to Yemoja across the ocean waves. I am scrubbing my skin with wet sand, coarse with broken coral. I am breaking open with my mother’s pain and raising her verse to the clouds. I am laughing at memories, and crying  and breathing and shouting down the wind…Look! Look! You guys! We made it! And I’m praying that the breeze will send my love to the souls of everyone that we loved. I am here. I am learning. And I will honor your stories.