Call me crazy but I was expecting things to get better, faster, once Gavin was out of the house. I knew that things wouldn’t be better right away, I guess I was just hoping.
As it stands, Gavin’s been gone for almost 2 weeks and things are still not going well on the home front.
We met with Dr. Patti last night and talked about that very thing. She said that unfortunately, this is not something that’s going to be fixed overnight. This is very likely going to take a long time.
To show you just how traumatized Lizze is, the very thought of him coming home puts her in the fetal position, sobbing.
Gavin returned home briefly yesterday morning and that very brief return, less than an hour, knocked the boys off kilter.
This is such a horrible position to be in because, on one hand we miss Gavin but on the other hand, having him home destabilizes the entire family. This is the very definition of dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t. This sucks.
The overall stress in the house has been diminished in Gavin’s absence. However, the individual struggles the other boys have, now shine though.
Before, everything was buried underneath the violent tantrums Gavin had, on an almost daily basis.
Without those tantrums being present, we are much more aware of the other fires that need to be extinguished, and there are many.
Gavin will be returning home for a few hours on Friday and that’s going to be tough on everyone.
This whole thing is a double edged sword.
When someone decides to lose weight, one of the first things they are told is that it will take as long to lose as it took to gain. While I'm sure it isn't literally true, the point is that if you have struggled for 5 years, you aren't going to lose it all in 5 months therefore you need to set realistic goals and judge yourself by how far you have come, rather than how far you have to go. I think this is true of many struggles. Yes, you have struggles in front of your family. Some lessons will be HARD to learn and may need repeating – but, look at how far you have come.