witness

.....and back comes my breath, my stillness. my calm. the current is fast and i've learnt not to fight it. i cant breathe under water. if i listen carefully i can always hear why. the new rain falls and washes everything away eventually. even the dirtiest coldest stone. i don't have to stay here. 

it's been well over a year now since i wrote. enough time to create a new life, to move into a home, to allow feelings to emerge and resurface, to finalize in gut what has come out in text. certain sordid details have come to mind that have been left out intentionally, discarded, buried, or my own personal favourite...warped through the most magnificent forms of self denial. some things belong only to me. all these events and the feelings and lessons that have followed, have made me who i am right this very moment. the things i thought had destroyed me actually created me. the dark held me right up until i was ready to step into the light. i will forever be grateful for darkness. writing this has brought me in, through and back again to myself. i am proud of this blog so far and i wont let it become something it isn't. i wont try too hard. like that part of the meal where you take a big breathe and you know your done. and maybe your disappointed...but i didn't write it for you anyway. i'm not sorry. 

i began writing to stabilize the floating pieces and to nail down my own truths. but what a wicked thing a few word can be. writing my story reminded others how angry they still were at their own untruths. at themselves. today i respect anger and where it comes from, the difference now is that i know what is mine and what is yours. so maybe L will be able to heal herself somehow, in someway. my truth sparked her fuel. a lot burnt. but really, ashes of someone else's bullshit...whats more irrelevant than that? imagine all your thoughts filtering out and the one that remains being a lie. a lie is is a hard place to begin anything. 

in parting, i will pick up briefly where i left off, the acceptance of ricky's outer line. the one i thought enclosed him. the one i finally realized didn't define him or limit him unless i let it. the one that held the most beautiful boy safely within it. when i accepted that boundary, the world suddenly had colour again. we walked back and forth on grey winter sidewalk lines, turned warm lights on and then softly off again, creaked our bare feet back and forth on scuffed wooden floors, listened for deep cold echo's, counted and touched patterns, focussed intently on dust particles riding late afternoon sun beams. we rode escalators, spinning at the bottom and starting again. we opened and closed things...many things...many times. we waited for people to come who never did. people who didn't know how to help. people who still don't know how to help. we counted what was important and rocked when life hurt. we held hands but not gazes. we watched each other. witnessed each other. we existed as mother and child. we waited for breakthroughs and were held hostage by silences. we never gave up. we never ever gave up. i will search my whole lifetime for glimpses of him. 

truthfully i don't want to write about each detail of the countless hours and years and dollars spent on every autism therapy known to mankind. i don't want to drag you through the dank stark realization and monumental shame that is early sobriety either. yes i've read that book. i saw that show. mhmm i've tried that diet. yup we've done that test, taken that pill...that one too. we've been to that conference.  apart from walking the moons surface...i've done it. maybe like the healing process of alcoholism it's the action of just doing the next best thing that saves you. the thing that saved me was the spiritual shift i acquired by taking twelve simple steps. s shift that brought me to the brutal and beautiful realization that i was in control of NONE of it. that i had to first discover and then rely on a energy that was larger and more powerful than myself. i had to connect to something greater. and hardest of all, and still an ongoing struggle...having to trust this 'something' to care for the things i love more than anything else in the world. my children. whoever said 'we will not regret the past' did not have the heart of a mother.

my son still has autism. i still have alcoholism, contingent daily upon my spiritual condition. and the
most beautiful thing in all of this is that i know these perspectives on life he and i were given are incredible gifts. my son is not autism, my son is Ricky. and i am not alcoholism, i am Heather. all the love in the world can be ours my friend, but only when we're willing to surrender do we stay above water.