Normal life

I am back to watching paint dry - literally.  Actually I am painting the house with some help before the rains come it is a nice squash yellow with butterscotch brown for the front door and some of the trim.  It looks amazing. 

And Alex is back to being himself.  No more nightmares.  No more episodes at home.  He is even doing fairly well at school.  The family has their life back.

It has been hard.  I think for me at least, the hardest part was the fact that the actions were not tied to stuff happening in our home life which made it so very difficult.

Tonight, during dinner, Alex turned to me and said the kids at the orphanage told him that his mother would never love him.  I was matter-of-fact when I noted they were obviously wrong because I love him, no matter what.  And then I went on with making the lunches for tomorrow. 

I look back at this summer I am think I am overwhelmed.  It is a story about a disabled child who was hit and bullied and his sense of the world was taken back to the orphanage.  The doctors call it a PTSD flare-up.  It felt like a really bad tantrum. 

I call it the journey of a child to find out if they are, in fact, loved.  Mom stayed despite all his efforts to drive me away.  Family stayed.  All the support systems that we have in life remained - unchanged.  In the end, we all just waited until he was done with all the acting out.  And then he was.

Normal life.  A life where a child is loved.