Crying in The Dark - Chapter Three - The 'S' Word

           Last night, I was talking to a mom on a website, which I will not name.  We were discussing Autism and how she has a family member with Aspergers and because he isn’t around her often, she forgets that he has this disorder and she feels that he’s selfish.  There it is, glaring at me – the horrible ‘S’ word; spoiled. 

            I do not blame anyone for looking at a parent of a child who has Aspergers and saying to themselves ‘Man, that mom (or Dad) needs to get a hold of that child, they’re out of control’ or ‘Did you see what her child just said to her?  My son would not  get away with that!’  The reason I don’t blame them is simple, they don’t know.
            My son, appears to be the most selfish child I have ever met.  But all I can do, to stay sane – is breathe; just breathe.  This is what I told her, when we spoke about the disorder and what I went through last night during dinner.  My mother, son and I LOVE breakfast for dinner (mainly because we love biscuits!) and so last night, we treated ourselves to one of our favorites.  This is what dinner went like:
            My mom, my son, and myself sitting at the dining room table. He has Country Ham (cut up before he sits down ... you'll see why in a minute), fried eggs, a bowl of country gravy and we have a bowl of fresh biscuits. He sits down, chooses his own biscuit (he also has a spoon for the gravy, a fork for the ham, and a fork for the egg; because you cannot let a fork that has touched an item of food, touch a different item of food). We ask him what he wants to do with the biscuit and he places it inside of the bowl. My mom asks if he wants the gravy on top of the biscuit, he says yes. NOW ... When my mom is doing this, she proceeds to CUT the biscuit while he's watching. Plus, he's already seen it was whole, so he'd know if you cut it. He FLIPS OUT and yells at her because she cut his biscuit. I in turn, take the bowl, dump it on my plate and we start all over.  It is easy for me to see why I am a single mother; not many people can understand what it is that we go through every day.  Some days we have a fantastic day, others are fine, and then … we have ‘those’ days.  I am going to take you back to a time when I was in a relationship with someone and I will not give a name, because he deserves better than to have his name splattered all over a book.  So in order to keep the identity of my ex and friend, a secret, we’ll call him ‘Friend’.
            My son was two and friend and I thought it would be nice to go to his brother’s house because it would give us a chance to get to know one another.  So, it is around 9:00 at night, so the sun has already gone down.  Yes, I know … I’m bringing my son out late; but he was going to be going to sleep at Friend’s brothers’ house which was about 30 minutes away.  Anyhow, we’re walking out the door and my son see’s that we are not walking to mine and immediately we have a problem.  My son does not understand why we have to take that car, when we have our own car.  Well, I didn’t have enough gas in my car, we would have had to stop to get some, and I didn’t know the way to his brother’s house.  Yes, all of that could have been worked out, but I thought he was just being a child set in his ways.  So he’s in the car, safely buckled up in his car seat and we’re driving.  All of a sudden, he starts screaming.  He can see white lights coming at us and he doesn’t understand, it’s dark, ‘hold my hand mommy’.  He’s screaming as if someone is killing him, but he only see’s the headlights from the cars on the other side of the median.  As we’re going down through his brother’s neighborhood, he is still crying uncontrollably and I have been trying to soothe him the whole way with nothing to show for it.  Friend yells a cuss-word and my son jumps and squeezes my hand, he hyperventilates.  We’ve arrived at the house, I pick him up and I hold him.  I hold him like someone is going to take him away.  I was scared for him.  That night was a bad night for everyone, my son most of all.  Friend was very displeased with himself, but the damage was already done.  He knew then that he could not be in a relationship with someone who had a child like mine.  The ‘s’ word strikes again.