05/27/2026
Amen!!
Some days I can hold it all with both hands.
The appointments, the behaviours, the noise, the repetition, the constant scanning of the room before he even walks into it.
I can absorb another hard morning and still remember to thaw the chicken for dinner.
I can crouch beside him while he screams at me like I’m the fire itself and still stay soft enough to notice the tiny crack in it - the fear underneath, the overwhelm underneath, the nervous system begging for a world that hurts less than this one does.
And some days I can’t.
Some days every sound lands on my skin like a bruise.
The constant sound he uses to push me toward whatever his body cannot solve alone yet.
The demands. The always on. The signing.
The pacing.
The hypervigilance of loving someone who cannot safely move through the world alone.
Some days I am so tired I startle when someone says my name because I forgot I existed outside of being needed.
And I don't know if that’s talked about.
Not properly.
Not without trying to tidy it up into gratitude or resilience or some inspirational ending that makes everybody feel comfortable again.
But there are days this life feels so big and relentless that I understand why caregivers disappear inside themselves.
Why marriages go quiet.
Why bodies get sick.
Why we stop recognising our own laughter when we hear it.
Because surviving constant intensity changes the texture of a person.
Some days I miss who I was before my nervous system learned to live on alert.
Before every outing became risk assessment.
Before I could identify escalation from the way footsteps sound in the hallway.
Before I knew what it felt like to love somebody so much it rearranged my entire biology.
And still,
even inside all of that,
there are moments that undo me in the gentlest way.
Like his hand reaching for mine in the car.
The way calls out for me in the softest "mama" when he wakes.
The tiny flicker of pride on his face after doing something hard.
And the trust. God, the trust.
Some days are brutal.
Beautiful too, sometimes, but brutal first.
And I think maybe the truest thing I can say about this life is that both things exist together far more often than people know.
Christine x
