Helpless

His piercing screams of "MOMMY!!!" echo in my dreams and I am instantaneously awakened.

Leaping from bed I sprint down the hall to find him still asleep, screaming and thrashing.

I climb into his bed, wrap my arms tightly around my son, and know that this is just the beginning of my real life nightmare. This is how regression starts every time. Skills that we have worked months to achieve will soon vanish on a cruel wind, night terrors will become nightly, and the terror of knowing that I will soon have to be cautious about touching and hugging my own child, for fear of setting off a meltdown, sinks into my soul. 

And helplessness sinks into my soul.

They say autism is a two steps forward, one step back process, so why do I feel like I'm taking ten, twenty, thirty steps back. 

This is not a dance I know the steps to, nor can I figure out the rhythm, and for me the lack of control that I feel in this moment, and my self doubt as a mother is deafening.

I struggle with second guessing every decision that I have made until this point. I wonder "what if" I had done something different. A different specialist, therapist, doctor, diet.

All the millions of choices soar round and round my mind driving me mad.

Why can't this be cut and dry? 

And then I feel his arms grasp tightly around my neck.

He has found his way out of the terror and is finally awake and calm, and I force myself out of my head and leave my self doubt behind.

At this moment he is hugging me, he has his head on my shoulder and I am drinking this in, because I do not know how much longer this will last.