Irr. It. Tation.

There are times I find myself gritting my teeth, feeling as if my head is about to explode, and I just want to scream and break things. Is that irritation? Maybe it's more than that. I don't have a very good scale for these things in my head.

Anyway, let's call it irritation. This morning, I was trying to sleep a little while on the couch while Youngest got ready for school. I did this in part because I was fucking tired, but also because he has told me that he gets ready more easily when he does it himself. So fine. However, he also is vocal in his disapproval of my sleeping when he thinks I shouldn't be (he routinely wakes me up on weekends when I am trying to sleep in). This morning, he kept making this little whimpery noise as he walked around. Like "pity poor me, I have to go to school." Like, he could get himself ready, but I should be awake and ready to tend to him if need be...?

It was so fucking irritating. I just wanted to sleep for twenty minutes. Once I went ahead and got up, he made the noise again, and I told him that it was really irritating, and he had been doing it all morning.

He told me I was imagining things.

Which would have gone over so well even if I were in a good mood, but this morning, it was as if he had just whacked me with a red hot poker. GGAAAAARRRHHHHH!!!!

It is awesome to have a ten year old that is brilliant and an independent thinker. It is not great to have a ten year old that thinks he can use my illness against me. This has happened in the past, he has told me that I must have imagined something, or was hearing things, etc. Because I have gone to the trouble to explain hallucinations to him to try to keep it from being too scary, he knows about it and smacks me around with it.

Neither of us would back down this morning, and we ended on a bad note when I dropped him at school, both of us convinced that we were right. Collision of autism and mental illness. He can't help making weird noises, I can't help my irritation sometimes.

So I guess I will take him out for ice cream after school. Or cocoa. It's really fucking cold here right now.