At the point in my life when I had to trust my 16 year old daughter to 'The System' (strangers and staff alike) I realized I would always live with a huge level of anxiety and fears and worry. No matter where she is, or what she's doing, because she is out of my reach and sight, my brain and my heart will always feel strangled.
Having her home for long weekends is just enough time spent together. The phone calls during the week are just enough talk time. She and I have carved our spaces out and are learning to live with the homesickness that still exists even after all these years.
I certainly didn't feel any separation anxiety sending my sons off to college. There was a level of excitement and anticipation and a huge sense of pride. I knew they'd be coming home for long weekends or holiday vacations. It could only get better for them. With my daughter separation of any kind means extreme anxiety but there exists simultaneously a level of sheer relief.
In my mind I also was keenly aware of the kind of relief my sons must be experiencing as well. Relief of having a break from the stress of their sister. They love her dearly I know, but life with her in those early years was incredibly difficult. Sending them to college was in my mind tantamount to giving them space and time the very things they had been cheated of for years at a time.
Years ago I read a response to an article by a woman who was bitterly complaining about an story she had recently read by a woman whose son had Down Syndrome but who was having incredible success in a mainstream school setting.
The article went on to show all the enrichment programs, speech and language therapists, behavior specialists, pet therapy, art therapy she had been using to improve her son's world. None of what she was so diligently doing was having much effect. Her son's speech was barely intelligible, his behavior remained difficult, his attention span was limited, and his coordination was awkward and poor.
I fall into a category squarely between these two.
My brain damaged daughter with autistic tendencies has had some amazing successes such as learning to speak after a rare seizure disorder which began at age four and in a short time managed to destroy her personality, her memory, speech, comprehension, abstract ability, and her coordination.
My daughter's years of seizures, doctors, toxic combinations of medications, a myriad of therapists, years of extreme aggression, a total of six schools in ten years finally brought me to my knees. I realized I could no longer teach her what she needed to learn and understand about this world and that it was time to move her away from home.
I found a place for her at a school in upstate New York with campus living. My rationale was to put her in touch with her peers, expose her to other people who had skills above hers and skills below hers. This campus has 100 students all living in dorm settings with 24 hour supervision and specialized schooling.
For the first time in eleven plus years I was free to move around my home. Come and go as I needed without major strategic effort. Sleep undisturbed, and best of all, not have to speak.
Her maturity comes at a snails pace but it does happen. Her understanding of the world is a mix of reality and fiction but it gives her roots of a kind. Her group home life is well managed and full of routines that she has managed to thrive in.
The mistake I made was in thinking that because I had made the right decision for her; found the right place at the right time, that I would be at peace. No matter how well thought out my process was, how well researched and executed, my heart has, to this day, never caught up, and never fully healed.
Right thinking does not cure a broken heart. And I remain brokenhearted over a very right decision made years ago.