I hate what Halloween does to my head. I wish for the lighter brighter constumes of a Twlevt Night Masque, those of Spring, and Space, and Ocean, or Sun...how about a little LIGHTness of being to replace the darkness of seeing.

The kid dressed like Garfield was really cute, and the one like Eeeeeyore. But that first awful face sends me back to places I no longer wish to go.

Their tiny faces float in front of me, their eyes empty and my heart as cold as what I see in them. And I feel the emptiness in the bed beside me, the fear of a small child bereft of her history, denied winter warmth squeezed between two others in the night. What of the light - and so I gave my lonely nights to the stars, where a part of me will always be, in day or night for fright of letting them float free and into insanity's quest. There is no rest.

And then the blue grey faces rise from the swollen river's fingers what catch the child at play when burgeoning star moss holds the flood no more. Two masks she spit, the river as she churned, vomited she did the lifeless hunks and chunks bereft of souls. At my door again...the nightmares sent me to the sky and I was only for the night - by day to sleep under a bush or desk or in the hay.

In the cactus garden...

There are a lot of pricks!!!

I wanted so badly to say that and fill in the blank as Nate and I were planting half a dozen needle studded plants. Yeow!

"Prickly day," he sighed.

I mocked a grin and nodded.

I'm not much for wishing other people dead. It's too bad that the one of two that I feel this nasty sentiment toward is my son's dad. Nice, huh? He's one of very few people who can pull the chains, push my buttons, that send me into silent screaming that just doesn't stop. It's as if he owns a chunk of my mind. My head fills with images, images that stream and swirl into the nether reaches so quickly that grasping any one frame is impossible. All that's left is that silence so loud and encompassing that I cannot hear anything else above it's scream. I wonder which it really is. I'd welcome the departure of either.

Tonight I ponder what Nate is telling me-not just the derogatory remarks made by his dad to him, but the result. "I'm not sure of my own memory anymore, Mom. He tells me that he never said the things that I'm upset over him saying."

"Such as?"

"He said that he never told me not to tell anyone about what happens."

"Hmmm. That's called gaslighting, Nate. Not easy, I know, I have a great deal of difficulty with it, but try to not doubt yourself."

"He said that he really didn't want me to go to school, just that you were trying to get money out of him for homeschooling. But he told the school, too. I heard it, didn't I?"

"Yes." Is validation enough?

"And he lied about what you said I said in the letter you sent him."

"You know that is true."

I try to hold my own brain together in regard to this stuff. How do I help him hold his own? Where is the line between tolerance and being a doormat? I'm told this is 'normal' divorce stuff, to be expected. Really. More difficult is the fact that that day's tirade was likely precipitated by my having stood up for myself, my son sacrificed, leveraged. So, my heart sank...and stayed low...and my brain went into overload again. My intention was to get me, get us, out of that cycle of emotional abuse and control...it didn't work.

"If you don't like it, leave," he'd say. "But Nate stays here."

I didn't realize that is how true that statement would be...no matter what I did, no matter what I do. Nate says he forgives me for that abandonment. How do I forgive myself as I still allow it.

The flashes escalate. A recurring adventure in Hell's Cactus Garden.

Why is it son...

that you don't know?

"I don't know."

If I hear those three words again, I think I will be sure to pound my own head into the already existing dents on the refrigerator door.

Why?

I don't know. I don't want to admit why? I just want to do it.

His wit and wisdom belongs, in his estimation, to him? Why? It's because he's autistic. By definition...it's his. Solely his. To give it up to us is to lose power. Lose parts of his loosely integrated self...and he can't afford to lose parts until what he knows and what he understands are tightly interwoven, so that he never forgets.

The realities of spatial thought include the lack of total synthesis until every part is understood, integrated....autism is about fighting disintegration...every minute of every day. And no one really teaches how to do that...and few acknowledge that it's necessary.

And there are people without autism who think this way, those whose visual and spatial imagery work well when the verbal and analytical centers of their brains are shut down...the ones I know are most often architects, designers, inventors, and other systems thinkers. One of the most notable example of this in the last century was Frank Lloyd Wright. He drove clients and bosses crazy because he 'didn't know' in design speak...he couldn't draw a single line or sketch until the entire design was complete in his head or...he'd have to start from scratch. Oops. And there he'd be, pencil in hand just hours before a design was due.

Winston Churchill, Sir Francis Galton, Tesla...Faraday...

There are days when he knows. And what he knows comes flying out of a can like one of those silly springy snakes from the gag tin can of nuts...or like a faulty Jack-in-the-Box what pops before the song is done. Whap! Right in my face. And it scares him so, that he's let an idea or thought or creation or analysis fly from the safety of his own space, that he never goes there again...never to the same place again.

Well, son...what of Tao? Does the Tao not apply to you? The universe is not a camera what captures your spirit in the sharing. It merely observes.

Please be observable.

Ya know?

"Yeah. I know."

What do you know? What do you know? What? What?

The seed was planted too deeply. And yet it germinates, and roots, and grows...deep in the earth and inching toward the sun...

"There is a season."

Ah.