report on intensity.

On Thursday morning, I went to the hospital to meet with our family social worker. I expected that we would talk about E-Niner’s behavior plan and transition plan back to
school at that meeting. We had also had a very hard night with E-Niner
the night before. Joe and I ended up restraining him/managing some
extraordinarily aggressive behavior for an hour and a half. The thought
crossed my mind about residential placement that night, and I wanted to
talk about it with the social worker in the morning.

What we talked about instead — what came from left field for me — was my marriage with Joe. Our family worker called in her supervisor, who has been familiar with our case since E-Niner’s first
hospitalization. Several statements stood out to me, as though they
were illuminated in flashing neon:

• “We can tell you’re not on the same page.”
• “You need to do a better job supporting each other and trusting each other.”
• “You need to trust in yourself and believe in yourself. You know what to do for your son.”
• “We rarely see Joe around here. We think that Joe is very angry about having a child with special needs, and hasn’t come to accept it.”
• “I wish we could tell you E-Niner’s future, but we can’t. We can’t tell you whether or not he will be able to live in your home or not.”
• “It’s normal for parents of children with special needs to have this kind of conflict, where one parent accepts the situation more than the other. It’s normal, but you need to work on it. The divorce rate of
  parents with children who have special needs is very high.”

The they went into the whole business of the Holland story. I wanted to say, “Save it, lady,” I could recite that thing to you verbatim if I weren’t such an emotional mess right now. And she said
that it’s important to find other parents raising children with special
needs. (I’m going to give them my Hopeful Parents business card before
he gets discharged.) She was off-base on those two comments, but the
rest of it — the meaningful things about my relationship with Joe —
were all on the money. Dead center. Accurate.

It was as though they talked about — to my face — the issues in my marriage with Joe that we haven’t wanted to confront or felt as though we had time to confront.

The highly coincidental piece of all this was that I had my weekly meeting with my psychologist immediately following the one at the hospital. At this particular meeting, I had asked Joe to come so that
we could talk with him about the medication regimen that the hospital
was proposing to us. Joe and I were at odds about what exactly to do,
and we thought having a third-party who is knowledgeable on the topic
would be helpful.

The thing is, prior to the appointment, Joe and I had come to a conclusion on the meds. We decided to keep the meeting together because this hospitalization, as all of them, was tough on the two of us. We
wanted a place to come together and talk, no kids bothering us and not
exhausted from the day.

So I walk into the appointment and they both get an earful from me. I downloaded what I was told at the hospital, and Joe’s response was, “Of course they could see we’re not on the same page! It’s obvious.
It’s clearly obvious.” He had issue with their accusation that he
wasn’t involved in the partial program — he was very involved in the
inpatient treatment, but because partial happens during the workday, he
is not as available.

At that session Joe and I decided to go to therapy together regularly. I’m not sure exactly what that schedule will look like since the only appointments we have available are my personal ones. I get a
lot out of those sessions, so I know I will miss them. Maybe we could
do every other week. I’m not sure. But what I do know is that we’re
going to start working on this together. It’s not easy raising E-Niner,
and the more together we are, the better it will be for him and for all
of us.

What will be hard for me about this process is that I use writing to sort out my feelings and my understanding of a situation. Somehow translating the conversations and thoughts into p’s and q’s gives me
the ability to organize and manage a highly volatile, emotional,
unpredictable and often times uncontrollable lifestyle. When I started
blogging several years ago, Joe made it clear to me that he would like
to make cameos and not become a main character in my life online. He is
a private person, and I respect his desire for privacy.

I am going to have to figure out how to process what comes of therapy with him in a place that isn’t public. This will be a shift for me because I do draw so much from the positive communication I get from
so many of you — on the blog, in my e-mail, on the phone, and totally
off-line. I’m sure, too, that many of you can relate to the ups and
downs of marriage — and much of what we’re going through is probably
not reinventing the wheel.

If it’s true that the divorce rate among parents of children with special needs is so high, then it’s likely also true that many of them are in marriages that are highly volitile. There is comfort and
perspective and a sense of “new normalcy” that we can share with each
other on our journeys. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do that here
or maybe even at all. I wish I could, but I just need to get over that.

In the meantime, I’m behind on my blog posts due to lots of processing around lots of intense experiences this week. Next up, a report on the Kicking Down the Stairs Incident and also a realization I
had after an ex-boyfriend got in touch.