America,
It's ten o'clock at night and the empty bed is screaming at me. The echo of the silence is pounding so loud in my head that it aches more powerfully than I can say. My brain is shouting How the hell are you going to do this in six weeks!?!?! And my heart is saying Calm down. You don't know yet... It's what's best for him. It is, what's "best" for him. I'm so mad about that I can barely see straight.
If only this camp was just that. If only it wasn't a trial or a glimpse of what's ahead. If only it wasn't an examination and a potential acceptance to this school that will build so many opportunities and options for him. If only all of these fantastic things that it offers didn't come at the cost of my whole heart ripping into five million pieces and then being blown across the south. If only...
It's easy to sit there and see how pathetic I am. Boarding school is not that serious. Blindness isn't as bad as other things. The blessings abound. That's true. It's so true that I hate every single second of it and I find immense comfort in the goodness of it all. But the "but" is so loud it's still screaming at me in the form of his empty bed, and the pounding echo of a him-shaped-hole in my house. And in this moment, this ten o'clock hour, I hate RP! I hate how much it's hurting me. I hate all that it's ripping away from me. I hate that my heart is so focused in this moment, on the cost to myself. I hate that I can't fix it. I can't medicate it, or research it, or therapy it, or health-food it. I hate that there is no cure and no solution and no option and I want to scream a thousand curse words, and run a billion miles, and eat nothing, and eat everything, and pray, and cry, and ache because that's all my heart feels at ten o'clock tonight. I hate that I had to laser focus my brain on any possible subject it could latch on to, while my nervous little boy hugged me a hundred times and said I love you mommy! repeatedly because he was afraid. I smiled, and laughed, and said positive words, by the grace of God, because he needed it. I hate that tonight I can't stop crying, when I hate crying.
How the hell am I going to do this in six weeks?
I don't know how to do this. I don't know what this looks like. I don't know what this looks like so much that I can't even imagine it. How do I go from begging to not home school, to loving home schooling, to boarding school? How do I comfort myself, let alone the two other human beings who have been as intricately connected to him as I have, from the beginning of their existence? What do you say to your daughters who ache because they want him here, because they feel the pounding and screaming and aching of the him-shaped-hole that you do?
There's nothing to say. That's the truth of it. There aren't words, and there aren't hugs, or laughs or anythings that can do anything at all. This disease just is. And tonight I hate it. Damn it, I wasn't supposed to have to do this so soon. And I hate RP for making me do it eight years early. I hate it for taking away the time I assumed I would have.
There's a him shaped hole, and his empty bed is screaming at me, and I'm sobbing at ten o'clock tonight.
