I’ll have what she’s having

I think to be honest one of the main reasons I held off blogging for so long was that I did not want to come across as an over tired mum having a bit of a whinge.  I would also hate it when well meaning people would suggest that a good night’s sleep would make it all better and I would somehow miraculously wake up to a new version of reality.  My understanding of the exhaustion concept was stretched beyond any definition I would have previously ever been able to comprehend.  And to say I would fall into bed some nights completely and utterly mentally and physically exhausted would not be too much of an over statement.  Only for the first party time slot to kick in between 10 and 11 pm, just a few hours after spending an hour or so settling my dancing queen.  The next party would then start at 2 to 3am and if we were lucky the day would not start before 5.30am assuming we could somehow sneak in an extra hour of sleep somewhere.  Either way the nights (and days) passed by in some sluggish blur for much of the first seven years of my dancing queen’s life.

But to look at her now, you would not think she as once a sleep deprived child.  On a good day, she is one of those beautiful rays of sunshine.  She makes people smile and in this depressing and selfish world, that has to be one of the nicest gifts somebody could ever have.  Even as a small child, people would be drawn to her and it would always amaze me how people would go out of their way to give her something, whether it be a free cookie, baby cino etc or in more than one instance she was given a small toy by a complete elderly stranger.  And in return she would smile/make them smile.  She has the sort of smile that does more than just light up her face. She smiles with her whole body and I have found very few people immune to it.   She can even reach the gruffest old people, the type you think most small children would hide from.  Hang all your stereotypical assumptions that usually go with autism.  In my view, she is actually a great judge of character. 

I think one of the plus sides of autism is that she has created an alternative world in which she is safe, happy and secure, to use her words these days. This has to be a good thing to some degree.  I look at her with envy some days, thinking how wonderful it would be to have built such a secure cocoon with the ability to be impervious to all the other stuff out there.