Her Anxiety and Fourteen Steps

There are fourteen steps leading to the second story bedroom. Fourteen. That doesn’t seem like a huge number, but in our world, it is.

My daughter Samantha is a brilliant, happy, loving, and beautiful 13 year old girl who was born with CHARGE Syndrome, and later diagnosed with Autism. She doesn’t speak much, and not many people can understand the words that she uses, but I can. 

She is not a typical teenage girl, she doesn’t understand make-up, Snap Chat, or why it’s important to have so many friends. She has never been on a sleep over, gone to the mall to hang out with friends, and she has never attended public school. 

She has her world though, and it is amazing. She plays video games better than most men, and she is an excellent sniper when playing with her brother. She absolutely adores YouTube, and stick figures.

Right now she is watching Tangled, but in German because she doesn’t enjoy movies in English.

We spend all day at home together, and when we aren’t working together, or eating meals, we are almost always separated by those 14 steps.

See, she likes her bubble to be quiet except for her. I am not a quiet person. I enjoy music, and TV, and audio books.

I am her favorite person on the planet, and also the greatest cause of her anxiety. I am too much for her, and she gets easily overwhelmed when I am upstairs in her world. That’s when her behavior changes, she shuts down, and blocks me out.

When I go down stairs again, I can feel her anxiety lifting, like the whole room is letting out a sigh. It breaks my heart every time. But I go.

I go because she needs to be her. She needs to have her space. She needs those 14 steps.

It’s only 14 steps, but it seems like miles. And I will continue every single day to try and find a way into her amazing world.

Written by, Trish Gray

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