Well I guess it’s about time I got back to this… Quite the sabbatical, huh?

Being a parent is simply amazing. Watching my kids grow, and seeing them go from tiny little balls of skin and baby fat, to the talking, loving, beautiful and amazing people that they are evolving into. It truly blows my mind.

I knew that being paralyzed would offer many more challenges than other parents have to face. Sometimes it’s absolutely awesome. Gavin will run straight towards me, hop up on my shoes and climb up my chair and on to my lap. He’ll take his toy tools and try to “fix” my chair. Gavin and Evelyn have both had tons of fun “pushing” my chair around the house, all the while giggling and laughing and having all kinds of fun. It’s beautiful and it just warms my heart.

However, with the good, certainly goes the bad.

I am incredibly fortunate that my PTSD is quite limited. Sudden loud noises jolt me pretty hard, and I will lose my train of thought, and will get a little riled up and angry for a minute or so, but I cool down in just a few minutes. Long sustained loud noises really get to me. My anxiety leads me to become rather hostile. I get very agitated and often times have to remove myself from the situation before I explode.

Dealing with the kids, it really makes me feel like shit. I know that they have no idea what’s going on, and they’re just having fun. If they’re not having fun and simply screaming and crying for whatever reason. I know there’s nothing I can do to rationalize that situation; they’re just kids. The thing is though when it gets like that, I have to get as far away from them as I can. I know it sounds awful, and please don’t criticize too harshly for saying this, but I just want to scream them and tell them to shut up! I want to yell at them and say “why the hell are you crying?! What tragedy has occurred that is causing you to scream like you’re being flayed alive?” It wrenches my stomach, and tears me apart.

Another thing is they don’t listen to me very well. They know that they don’t have to listen to me, because I cannot inflict any form of punishment. Sometimes they do, and I do as much as I can to get my point across without being too harsh. Other times, however, it’s just infuriating. One of the kids will be hitting another, or they’ve gotten into something that they shouldn’t and they just simply will not listen, seemingly completely defiant. I just give up. After so long, it just drives me insane.

Last night we were getting the kids down, and I usually will go with Gavin to his bedroom while Nicole is putting Evelyn down first. Usually it’s a good time. He’ll play with his trucks and show me how they work, or pick up a book and showing some pictures, or he’ll climb up in my lap and look at pictures on my phone.

Last night though he was absolutely inconsolable. He was screaming at the top of his lungs for mommy, and I was trying to calm him down until mommy would be there in just a few minutes. I could really go anywhere because part of our nighttime routine is me blocking his doorway so that he cannot run into Evelyn’s room while she’s going down. When Nicole did finally get around to checking in on Gavin, he quieted down immediately and his mood just changed 180°.

Sometimes it seems that my presence is inconsequential. I can’t reach down and pick up the kids, pick them up when they fall, or play with them on the ground. It hurts, badly. Sometimes I just block it out and try to go somewhere else in my mind.

I know this isn’t the first post you really want to hear after not having posted anything in so long, but I really felt that I needed to put this down. I’ll try to be better about posting, I don’t really have much else to do!