Anger

The invisible hand grenade being tossed into a room – anger – whether it explodes or is a slow simmer, it is something I feel when I think of my daughter, Emma’s diagnosis.  To admit this, by the way, is something I rarely do.  It is unseemly, impolite, not what we do and certainly not what we admit to feeling.

But I do feel it.

I wish it weren’t so.  I’d like to think I could think it away.  However the fact remains – I am angry.  I would take away her autism, all the things that make up that word, all the behaviors, the neurological blips, the tangled mess that make her both hyper and hypo sensitive to pain, to noise, her internal inflammations, ulcerations, her rigidity, the obsessive compulsive tendency, all those things when added up that equal autism, I would prefer it was all gone, in an instant.

I went hiking with a friend yesterday who was telling me jokes.  One, about a guy who is allowed three wishes, which a genie promises to fulfill, made me think about my one wish.  Just one, I don’t need three, thank you very much.  My one wish is for Emma to have a neuro-typical brain.  That’s it.  Just the one wish.  I’m like everyone else, I can always add a couple other wishes if pressed, but that has always been and remains my one wish, the wish that blows all the others out of the water.  Please.  Let her brain repair itself.

I know my anger, the slow simmering rage I feel covers a whole ocean of sadness.  But honestly I prefer not to feel any of it.  And I usually don’t.  I either am too busy or I make the conscious decision to turn it off.  Yesterday though, while hiking, it all came surging back.  Like the flood gates had been pried open and try as I might, they were unwilling to be shut, until they’d had their say.  It is in this state that I reject God.  The God so many turn to is one I turn my back on.  I reject, actively reject, angrily reject.  I know this.  And yet, Emma’s autism, perhaps like nothing else, has created such a feeling of need for something beyond myself.  It is beyond a desire, it is beyond a craving, it feels larger than all of that.  It is a need for something, something I can lean on.  I have no sense of it beyond these words.  Perhaps one day I will.

For more on Emma’s journey and ours through her childhood of autism, go to:  www.EmmasHopeBook.com