I Wonder About the End

I wonder about the end.

The end of autism.

And I don’t like that thing (of me) that creeps up through the night as I think.

Staring into that corner by the closet where it sits. No matter how I try the thought it crawls on me.

“When are you going to stop hiding? To stop running from me?” It whispers.

“You know the truth: that Autism will only ever end when you accept it.

When you invite it in.”

At the beginning I’d always end up in front of her bedroom door sobbing.

My husband would come home from work put away his things and then walk me to bed. It was routine.

The Social Worker who did the evaluation looked at me searching for something. Maybe it was because I said nothing after they read their report to me.

“You see, your daughter she scored very low. Her cognitive functioning…no imaginary play…repetitive…Do you understand?

It’s very low…if we help her now…do you understand…low… low…low…low…She needs a lot of help…she’s going to…Do you understand?

Do you understand?”

I’d look over my shoulders in the milk isle frozen frantic waiting for someone to catch my collapsing body. To see that it was crumbling over and on itself. Like this broken left behind shell of a cicada and that the me I knew had gone and left.

All there was now was autism. And what was left of me could only be swept up by a broom.

“You can buy chew tubes on Amazon, they have cheap prices. She can’t process temperature. You can push her chin up and push her tongue into her mouth a little bit. Please don’t send a bib to school with her we don’t like to single her out…She will drink from it when she’s thirsty.”

Before autism there was just my girl.

Giggling. Smiling. Running. Her soft hair. A baby. 

Therapy makes time fly and you find yourself on your patio in a different season wondering how it got there. Your coffee cold and your toe nails long and cracked. I should cut those.

The baby fat wears away like on a caterpillar and the legs begin to grow and the meltdowns are less and there is so much progress and success.  But autism is still there and you want to stop time because if she just got a little more help and a little more time maybe she will outgrow it before the fall. 

Before her baby age no longer masks her disability.

Before it becomes a part of who she is before it becomes a part of who she always was.

“How old are you?” I’d find myself shamefully asking kids who looked her size at the playground when they were running past.

“Four!” They would yell. How quiet their bodies were.

How easily they were able to direct their speech. They must be a few months older than her. Yes, that’s it.

I respect parents of special needs children more than anyone. I see them bring their school aged and adult children to my daughter’s swim OT.

I imagine the battles they’ve fought. The painful things they have been through and I see the love and patience they have for their child. They were me once and one day I will be them.

But I distance myself and smile wearily as I thankfully run away after my child. They’ve already absorbed that thought. The only option really given to us after-all.

All we can do is accept and I think that’s unfair and it makes me angry. But I know that they are the better for it and their children are better for it too.

I stare a little longer there in that corner of the room and turn away on my side and sigh.

Tomorrow she will respond to her name more. She will make more eye contact. She will learn. She will learn. She will learn.

They probably just ran the program wrong. They’ve got it all wrong.

But maybe autism is like summer and it will eventually end when I allow for it to bloom and wilt and turn into something else.

Another season. When I accept.

Written by, Wendy Wyler

Wendy has a MFA in Creative Writing, a Bachelor in Psychology and has a girl and boy on the spectrum. She works for Birth to Three and as a paraprofessional in the school system.

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