Oh God — Ben is being attacked.
It’s dinner time this past Saturday, and the blows to his head are coming fast and hard.
SmashSmashSmashSmashSmash!!!!!
He is screaming. More blows strike his face, and the sides of his head. Over and over.
I am trying to protect him, but I am too slow. And the attacker keeps pulling my hands away just as another onslaught finds its target.
Ben’s face is beet red. He is trembling. His eyes are squeezed shut.
Blood mixes with saliva on his lips.
Ben’s wet and swollen eyes meet mine. His are bloodshot. Mine are filled with tears held back.
His head whips back and more screaming and more blows land. Now his shaking hands cover his face.
For fifteen minutes, I try to fend off this monstrous beast, this thug from hell, the brutal bully who appears suddenly, and retreats only gradually.
It offers no explanation, not even a hint, as to why it is doing this to our beloved son.
In its wake, Ben is now laying on the couch, exhausted, his breathing shallow and sharp, quivering in post-sobbing gasps.
Severe Autism is the name of this monstrous beast, this thug from hell, this brutal bully – Ben’s attacker. Its weapons of choice this time are Ben’s own hands and his own fists.
If I could exorcise Severe Autism from Ben’s body, separate this evil force from Ben’s sweet and innocent soul, and find it standing before me, I would not hesitate for an instant.
To paraphrase both the bible and Jules from Pulp Fiction: I would strike down upon Severe Autism with great vengeance and furious anger for everything it has done to Ben.
I would kill it. Strangle it. Destroy it. Crush it into nothingness, and welcome with deep satisfaction its final screams of agony. Severe Autism, may you rot in hell.
Before he could walk, Ben’s life was destroyed by Severe Autism. As if hacking through Ben’s future with a giant sword, one thing after another disappeared from his future. Countless events and activities most of us take for granted – romantic relationships, careers, driving, partying, conversing, on and on and on – the scourge of Severe Autism severed it all from Ben’s life.
When Ben is sitting on the couch, watching a favorite video, content and happy, we can, if not forget, at least not be thinking about autism.
Then in one second, it is all we can think about, as it explodes inside of him, and the behavioral shrapnel blasts in all directions, and most horribly, at himself.
Ben pulls my hands away when I try to put them between his hands and his head. The blows are meant for his head, not my hands. Severe Autism is eliminating his self-defense. Its cruelty is limitless.
But this is only the most visible of Severe Autism’s weapons of mass emotional, psychological, intellectual, and physical destruction. It torments Ben from inside, with anxiety, with pain, with unexpressed and inexpressible emotions and desires and fears and sorrows all locked up, with only a few drops seeping out for us to try to interpret.
And we try. Always and over and over, we try. But the foe is bigger than us. We have no effective weaponry.
But even if we can’t win the war, at least we try to win some battles.
Too often, we can’t even do that.
