Love - Hate Relationships

These seem to be an ongoing thing in my life lately. I love going to school, but I hate the pressure it puts on me and on my time in general. I hate being away from my kids 5 afternoons a week, but I love having some adult time. I'm struggling to keep up with my class work, and now I have a test next week that is worth 1/4 of my grade for the entire semester, I have no choice but to get an A. The study guide has over 200 questions on it and I have an entire 3 ring binder of typed slides, articles, and notes that I have to go through to get all the answers to the study guide. So yeah. I have no clue when the heck I'm going to get the time to do this.

I also have another love hate relationship going on right now that is a bit confusing and sometimes makes me feel like a bad mom. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Benjamin to death and I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world but I HATE autism. It's not fun. It's worse than not fun. He has really been struggling lately and has been super clingy to me. He doesn't even want to take a tippy cup or food from anyone else. If someone else gives him something he will throw it and scream until I give it to him. He follows me around screaming mama mama mama over and over and saying nothing else until I pick him up and hold him. When we go in public he twirls in circles and walks around our table. He eats infrequently, sometimes nothing at all. He freaks out over nothing at all, and there is no way to stop it. He does this in public, he does this at home, I can't stop it. The stares from people are horrible. Sometimes I just want to scream at them, sometimes I want to explain to him why he is doing these things, sometimes I just want to "hole up" in our house and hope that that autism "magically disappears". I read the articles, I watch the news stories, I read the books, HELL I'm majoring in this in college. I begged and got into a graduate level autism semenar and even though I get no college credits for it I'm going for the info. I receive all the sad stares, I receive all the "look at her out of control kid, she's a horrible mom stares", I hear all the apologies, I hear all the reasons why autism MAY have occured, I hear all the solutions on how to MAYBE fix autism, I attend the therapy sessions 3 plus times a week, I speak to people on the phone daily, sometimes for hours to keep his schedule organized, I deal with the embarressment, the guilt, the EVERYTHING. Austism has become our life, our world, and sometimes it freaks me out. I look at Ben and I wonder what's going on in his little mind, when he curls up on me I just hold him and I just want to cry sometimes. I wish the world could see what i see when i look at ben. i wish people would think before they stare and whisper. i have ears, and so does ben. he doesn't understand everything but he is DAMN smart and I believe deep down that he will grow up noticing the stares and whispers too, my older 2 children are noticing when people do that to ben.
I guess what brought all of this on is my exhaustion and what happened on Big Brother the other night. People are riled up and mad about it, and don't get me wrong so am I. Put me at the freaking front of the line to kick his F%&^ A$$ BUT BUT BUT what i think sometimes that people don't get is that this sort of thing happens every day. AGAIN I will repeat what I said early, THIS IS MY LIFE. I hear comments like that, I get those looks, I deal with people like that all the time. I do everything in my power to not only protect Autism itself but to protect my son.