A hard head really does make a soft ass. I'm stubborn. I'm too soft and I'm far too forgiving. My greatest weakness is giving people the benefit of the doubt because I think that they have the potential to make my boys happy or feel good about themselves when it's all said and done (if I can make someone feel good about themselves, I'll do whatever it takes if I feel it in my heart). I usually end up going over a shitty situation until I'm sick just because I don't understand where I went wrong or how I'm at fault when there's a shitty outcome.
And that lands us in the shitty situation where I ended up on the interstate in the wee hours of a Sunday morning with my five year old curled up asleep in the back seat. The plan for Draven to meet Austin in person was a bust and for the sake of all aspects of my health and how hard it's been for me to recover, I'm not going into detail. I got incredibly worked up and it was because I was heartbroken and I was beating myself up. Luckily, Draven really didn't notice because he was running around with my baby sister and he was exploring the millions of toys that my dad always had at his house (after telling him like always that he can take home any of the toys he wanted to take). I spent every second silently praying that he couldn't tell that anything was wrong. I also spent every second silently apologizing to him. Draven is like me in a lot of ways and this situation was no different. Noticing that he hadn't heard from his dad would be the very first time that his intelligence, innocence, and advanced development could be potentially problematic. Every time I attempted to make another phone call to him, I broke a little more on the inside, praying that he wasn't going to do exactly what I always thought would happen. I felt like I was failing that little five year old version of myself that I always saw in Draven. I was on the other end of the situation that I grew up in and I saw enough of what my mom went through. I had the advantage of having been the child in the same situation and I had always been confident in knowing what to do. Me being me, I exploded and tried to figure out how I was in the wrong.
Noticing that I had a splitting headache brought me back down to Earth. My anxiety was still through the roof and I noticed that I was having a really hard time sitting still and I was keeping my distance from Draven because I couldn't let that shit go. I knew I would be giving off bad vibes that he was going to be able to pick up on. He and Devin always know when something is wrong with me. We left when he finally said he wanted to go home. He told me that he had fun with La'Ziya, but he still wanted to see his dad. I wanted to cry and hug him as tight as possible. I just kept thinking of all those days and nights I spent feeling him kick and roll around in my belly, imagining him as a kind, happy, and loving little boy. Every moment spent like that I promised that I would never let anything or anyone hurt him. Five years later, after so much hard work and protection and love, I felt like I foolishly broke that promise.
I thought that I couldn't let it go or look at Draven without falling apart. The moment we got back on the road to come back home, he was asleep, completely oblivious to what I was going through and I was thankful. My headache was gone, but I was dizzy and nauseous and had to pull over an hour and forty-five minutes away from home in the pitch black darkness in the middle of Fayette County.When I tried to get back on the road, slightly past the second toll, it happened again, this time with my legs and right arm going completely numb, limp, and lifeless for at least a minute.
Luckily I was on the phone with my mom when it all happened (she's a lot stronger than she used to be because she heard me vomiting and didn't lose her shit like she would have when I was a kid). I felt stupid and hopeless because I was trying so hard to be forgiving and I got myself worked up to the point of being sick with my baby out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. My heart would have stopped if I would have thought about what someone could have done to us.
We ended up at a rest stop right before you get to Charleston when I threw up three more times and my entire body went numb. When the numbness passed, my body started to shake uncontrollably. The shaking stopped and I was only twitching and that was a clear indication that my anxiety spiked my blood pressure up and my body couldn't handle it (I'm pretty sure I had a TIA which is basically a mini stroke that only lasts for a few minutes to hours. I didn't think it was possible because I'm so young, but my dad was around my age when he had his first one). I also realized that I hadn't taken my Celexa because I was going to be driving and didn't plan on spending the night (when I should have, I already know). I should have let the events from that night roll off my back because I was now in the same position that I was in nine months ago when I was laying in a hospital bed. I didn't even want to guess how high my blood pressure had gotten, but I could tell that it was just as bad, if not worse, than it was before.
Like always, my mommy and Thomas came to my rescue and Draven never woke up until we got home. I had never been so happy to be in my own little space away from the world in all my life. I never really thought about how the rocky relationship between me and my dad made Momma feel, but now I knew. I had gotten a crash course. One day, Draven will be able to make his own decisions in regards to his relationship with Austin, but after the rapid change and decline in my health that night, I'm done. I'm washing my hands of the situation. When something worries me to the point where I feel like I'm going to die, I just have to let it go. From now on, my motto will be to inhale, exhale, take your fucking medication, blog about it, and let that shit go.
