Twelve Angry Men? No, Just Me

Hey everyone…

I know it’s been a long time.  Forever it seems.

I’m still around.  Still living life.  Sean is still Sean.

But something about me has changed….

I’ve been published a few times in a parent magazine and I had a chance to submit another article for consideration earlier this month.

I completely blew the deadline.

 I failed.  I utterly and fantastically…failed.

I tried.  Oh gosh how I tried.

After I wrote each piece I would ask my husband to look it over. 

“Tell me, honey…does it have the magic?”

But they never did.

“Too negative.” he’d say.

I know.  They were.  Even when I tried to put a good spin on them they still came out as if every morning I got out of the bed on the wrong side.

“But honey, I didn’t say I flew across the table and smacked her upside her head.  I only thought that….”

That particular line was in reference to a piece I wrote about a special education teacher adamantly proclaiming that Sean was “wrong” for not looking at people’s faces.

Wrong?

Seriously???

I really did at that moment want to smack her upside her head and it took everything in me to take some breaths and try to turn into a teaching moment.

There…. that was the positive spin I was looking for!

No… not according to my husband.  The piece was still too dark.

And it was.  They all were.

Finally I came to realize that I…this joking, laughing, smiling person…had become angry.

I am one angry chick.  I can smile and laugh through anything.  But beneath it all, it’s just one big fake out.

Internally – and externally – it seems as if I am fighting the world.

And it’s just not autism that I’m angry with or fighting against.  Sure, it ticks me off that you have the same issues all the time or that you’re dealing with truly ignorant, intolerant people…but that’s just Life.

It’s everything else.

It’s the mandatory rehearsals/Life be damned for my daughter’s chorus class… the calendar that fills up as quickly as you turn the page…the temp job that has gone on too long and sucks the life out of you…. the hip injury that just won’t heal.

It’s the no longer being able to look up and make a wish upon a star and naively believe it will come true.

It’s everything…. absolutely everything.

And it sucks.

I wonder if this is merely a phase like Sean lining up all his Matchbox cars in a row or turning in circles or is it a product of turning 45, cutting off my long hair and wondering what’s left in Life?

What is it that has changed me so drastically?

And if it is just a phase, then how long will it last?

How long before the anger subsides?

How long before the smile is genuine?

And how long, my friend, before I can write again?