My youngest turns 14 today.
I could wax melancholic, ask where the time has gone. I could reminisce of the days he climbed into my lap, his favorite storybook in hand. Now he’d rather watch videos by his favorite YouTubers.
(Well, not all the time. A couple weeks ago, he was feeling sick and asked me to read to him. You can bet I dropped what I was doing and grabbed a book and my reading glasses.)
A year ago was my son’s 13th birthday. It was a rough day.
Actually, it was a Rough Season. The Roughest Season I had ever experienced with my son.
On January 1, 2022, I had set goals and made plans. I was ambitious, as usual. And I like to see things laid out on paper. Little boxes I can check. I made writing schedules and work goals, family schedules and exercise plans.
Then our family got Covid in mid-January of 2022. By the end of January, we were pulling out of it. My youngest had gotten the lightest case of us all, but he was having trouble eating and started throwing up.
He also began verbalizing a lot of worries (more specifically, fears). Couldn’t seem to move past them.
When he started vomiting water, I took him to the doctor. They gave him anti-nausea meds and that was the end of the vomiting.
But it was the beginning of the Rough Season.
Those worries grew and he could not move past them, could not work through them. He was struggling with some form of long Covid affecting not his body but his mind.
Anxiety hit hard. Depression came on its heels. As a verbal processor, he needed to talk things through with someone. I was usually that someone.
We missed a lot of activities. He had a hard time focusing on the simplest things for even a short time. He struggled sleeping and when the fears were triggered, sometimes panic set in and my husband and I would take turns talking and reasoning with him, sometimes singing to him or praying with him.
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