no excuse for abuse.

Man, when are these things going to stop?

I was trying to feed E-Niner dinner tonight as he screamed out in sheer horror that we had to eat dinner and not watch TV, which he had been doing for the past four hours.

And when the blowout/meltdown/breakdown started, there I sat. Exhausted. Wanting professional help for him in our home. Uninterested in having to physically work so hard again tonight. These psychological breakdowns are relentless.

In round 738 of tonight’s escapade, both Joe and I were trying to hold E-Niner down, and Joe scraped nearly his entire hand on my wedding ring. Oh my god. I could feel his skin getting sliced open by the diamond, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. Everything was happening so fast. All we wanted to do was keep E-Niner’s head from slamming on the floor since he was so out of control.

I am going to need to take a picture of the injury for our documentation for the grant we’re putting together. Our family is starting to get these skin abrasions from handling E-Niner during his breakdowns. I don’t want this to ever become normal.

Lots of parents with special needs kids talk about “their normal.” I’ve never hung onto that phrase as a mantra. What happens in my household isn’t normal and can’t be tolerated. No one should be abused, accidentally or on purpose. There is no excuse for abuse, as my buddy James Lehman likes to say.

When my ring sliced through Joe’s hand tonight in slow enough motion to feel that there was some sort of symbolism there but so fast that I could do nothing to stop it from happening, I decided that putting my engagement ring in a safe place would be the best temporary solution. I can’t predict when E-Niner will have a breakdown, and I wouldn’t want him to be on the receiving end of a cut that long and deep.

There is a certain sadness about removing my engagement ring. “You don’t have to take it off for good,” Joe said. “You could just take it off when things start heating up.”

“Which is exactly when I’ll lose it.” I retorted. “I can’t risk losing the ring, but I also can’t risk hurting anyone else with it.”

Joe doesn’t want me to take it off, and I don’t want to have to leave it off; it is another concession we need to make for our lifestyle. Since the day that ring has come back from being sized after we were engaged, it has not left my finger for more than a moment.

This is not normal! My ring goes begrudgingly. I do not accept.