I used to be an extremely sociable person, and this was by far the time of year I loved the most. You get together with family and friends and sit around and talk about life; yours, mine and things in general. Its a little different now. Well let me start over; I had a bad day, well actually I had a bad couple of days. I have a four year old autistic child, love her to death, she is my joy, for the most part. But just like most of you here, we have good days; were I am so optimistic about life, and I find myself thinking that things are going to work out fine, she'll get older have friends, walk, talk and be "normal". And then there are the days that I have been having lately, those days that I just want to curl up under the covers and cry myself into a new reality. Those days where not only will she not eat but she knocks all the food on the floor, or those days where she cry's countinuously non-stop for hours to the point where, Myself and her father have to step outside to argue and place the blame(because when things go bad as they often do, the faultline has to lie somewhere....if only for a moment). And on the bad days things seem like they cant get any worse...until they do. Right around Thanksgiving, my daughter had a breakthru, see she doesnt walk , or use normal speech (she does some signing, but mostly we use pictures, and do a llot of guessing). But her teachers had been calling and telling us how well she was doing at school; standing all day, and walking long distances in her gait trainer, even doing some spoon feeding on her own at home, just making a lot of progress in general. Then saturday and we couldnt get her to eat, she's fighting, and exibiting a lot of SIB's. Then the nonstop crying. now usually at this point we put her in the tub because bathtime calms her down tremendously, but not today. She fought and cried for hours until finally she let us put some clothes on her and we all went for a drive to salvage the sanity. Sunday a lot more of the same. And then after 2 years being seizure free, I saw what looked like the beginning of a seizure, that fixed gaze, but her father snapped her out of it. Angry, and crying I excused my self to a friends house to just get away from the madness for a while. After sitting there for about 20 minutes of hearing her complain about how her 4 year old son is so bad because he runs so loudly around the house, and acts out in school, i had a slight breakthru/breakdown. Which is simply this.....no one can really relate to my situation....unless they are going thru something similar or the exact same thing. My friends who I used to go to in solice, pre-child, really dont understand...the best they can offer is a "dont worry".... dont you understand thats all I do at this point is work on the problem and worry about her future....work and worry, often times stepping inside the shower to do two things...cry and get a second away...and then its back to my reality. My relationship with her father is suffering because when things are going good we spend most of our time preparing for when its bad, and when its bad we argue...who gets the faultline today...when truthfully its nobody's fault. And i know sometimes the best thing to do is just to get away and have a normal day...you know time to yourself...time to ourselves...but logistically, how is that possible. Who will watch our child? Nobody really wants to deal with her, nobody says it, its always when are we going to see her, or bring her by....but when I ask for a sitter.... its something different, everyone is too busy. And believe me I understand, she is a lot to deal with. On a good day we may have an hour to just relax and get ready for the next day if that. And we used to go to church, but they dont understand the outbursts or why sometime we just have to get up and leave. I still thank God for the good days or when things start to look promising. But how can you be religious after seeing your child have 10-20 seizures a day for about a year. Ok now i"m getting off topic but i started this blog because I had a bad couple of days and I saw a relative of mine that asked me, would i be over for Christmas, and when i told her no the only explanation i could give her was that I just wasnt up for it, when truthfully I dont come over because of my daughter. I'll have something at my house, something small, maybe breakfast (because she is well behaved that time of the day) and when she gets to be too much...you can leave, and go about your normal routine, and I will go back to my reality. Sorry for venting but it does feel good.