I Belong to a Boy with Anxiety

Let's Zoom about Anxiety in Autistic Children and Teens

Today, I watched my fourteen-year-old son slip away.

Slow at first. Then all at once.

It happened bit by bit, piece by piece.

The elephant in the room got him. The one that steals him from me now and again.

The one I refuse to lose him too completely.

Anxiety.

He has it. Not me.

I am just the mother.

I am anxiety adjacent. I belong to a boy with anxiety.

I see it coming. I feel it and hear it. Other people have no idea. But I do.

At 4 am when he held his hand to my cheek, I knew.

When I saw him again at 5 am, all but one thing was erased from the family calendar.

Dozens of blankets move with him throughout the house. Providing comfort I imagine.

Hands clenched. Picking at toes. At fingernails.

Moving from room to room. Rarely stopping.

Buttons on his speech device. Over and over again. The same words yelling at me.

Nonspeaking no more.

Pieces of paper everywhere. Fragments of words written on them. Shreds of paper, the words he no longer wants, strewn about the house. Piles everywhere.

This is his anxiety.

Hundreds of times he looks to me, holding up three fingers, pointing to the sky.

Needing me to reassure him.

‘Yes, three more days of school. Yes, we can go to a waterpark for your birthday. Yes, Michigan City, Indiana is 6 hours and 30 minutes away. Yes, we can go.’

I’ve said those sentences so many times I could repeat them in my sleep.

Sometimes every 30 seconds. Other times he gives me minutes before he asks again.

Anxiety. People outside our world have no idea.

No idea how it steals him away from me. From us. From this world.

Or how when it has control over him…he would tear our house apart brick by brick.

He is still my boy. I can touch him. Kiss him. Smell him.

But he is different. His eyes dull. His sense heightened. He is him, but consumed.

Most of me is thankful that he has me to be his support person. Because I know that most of the world couldn’t handle it.

Being anxiety adjacent.

The baby books never told me that I would have to protect my son from an invisible beast. From himself.

He is following me throughout the house. Looking for something. Maybe my cellphone. Maybe something else.

I don’t know what he understands. I don’t know how to help him. I just have to stand with him until it passes.

I have to love him through this.

I belong to a boy with anxiety. And I refuse to lose him to it.

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Zoom with Me on Anxiety
Thursday at 12 pm central time

If this post resonates with you, then you most likely live alongside anxiety as well. It’s a lonely, confusing place sometimes.

Join me this Thursday at 12 pm central for a zoom on anxiety. Let’s talk about what it looks like in a child as well as tools we have utilized to help Cooper.

These conversations are intentionally kept small and personal, open to paid subscribers so we can hold space for one another with safety and care.