Rough Days

There are a couple of blogs that I read every day and one of them recently was talking about how people like to post their best pictures and tell their best stories on their blogs but they never post the true reality of their lives. So, I am going to try to be a bit more brutally honest on here and I guess that includes today. So, one of the other blogs (not the one I just told you about) was sent to me by a dear friend of mine. She said that the lady has 4 kids and one of her daughters has Epilepsy, so she thought I might like to read it. First off, this woman is very strong!!!! Not only does one of her kids have Epilepsy, which I am finding hard to handle in itself, but her other daughter has a heart defect they have been dealing with for 10 years!!!!!! Needless to say, she is a strong amazing woman. The post I read though was about the one year anniversary of her daughters seizures. Of course it is a date and story that will never escape your mind and she wanted to write about it. It was written so well and so moving and I think it just brought out every emotion I have been stuffing down deep. I started thinking of what we were doing one year ago. And at this time last year we were moving here from Illinois and having a fun time traveling cross country. Cass was excited to watch her Hannah Montana dvd daddy bought her for Valentines day and couldn't wait to do something fun once we got to our hotels at night. She was so joyful and always had a smile on her face. Flash forward to now and it is rare to see her smile. Of course she does smile when something is funny or when she is playing with friends. But you don't see the joy you used to. Even her smile, it doesn't brighten her face the way it used to. It is like we have a whole other kid. Like the day she started her seizures, was the day she died and a new kid was born. It breaks my heart and all at the same time,I know there is nothing I can do about it. She is struggling in school, and not just a little bit, she is falling way behind. And when I tell people, people who have no clue to what it really means to deal with this, it is always so easy for them to tell me to do one thing or another and it bugs the living crap out of me. I have heard "pull her out of school", "have you thought about homeschooling?", "why not find an alternative school for her?" and if I bring up looking at a special needs school, it is always "yes, you need to do that". I hear people tell me that she doesn't look right, her actions are not normal, if I am noticing her doing (enter action here) differently or wrong. YES!!! Yes I know these things and yes I notice each and every move she makes. But no, there is nothing I can stand up and do right now and yes, that kills me!!!!!!! If there was some magic wand I could use to make her struggle less, don't you think I would have used it by now? All the strangers who stare while she is having a break down or tell me that my child is doing this or that, I want to scream that she is struggling. Even if she has a smile on her face on the outside, her insides are confused. She doesn't know up from down for most of the day. Do you want her to actually look like a handicapped child for you to understand that she is mentally handicapped? Our family is dealing with quite a lot these days when it comes to Cass and that includes Cass herself. She knows she is different. She cries because she knows she is different and cant do certain things. And in return, I wait until the house is sleeping so I can stop the strong act and cry myself. For most of you reading this, this does not pertain to you. I have an amazing support of family and friends. I don't want for one second for you to read this and think it is you, because if you are reading this, I love you to pieces and that's why you get to read this, lol. I guess I am just taking this opportunity to be brutally honest and maybe lessen a bit of the stress..................rant is over. I need to go hop in the shower and get ready for my day :)