My #BraveTogether entry

#bravetogether

At the start of quarantine, my mom left to go to her mom's house in Berea. She was looking for a house there. Soon after, my dad left with her. My godmother moved in to look after me. I missed her, but I was also angry, because I felt abandoned. I started fighting with her, our relationship wasn't very good when she was there, so the move just drove the wedge further. Every call and text felt awkward and forced, eventually I stopped having contact with her. This just made everything worse. My godmother had to force me to call her. When I did call her, I felt anxious and said as little as possible to end the conversation. My mom was upset because she knew how I felt. She wanted me to be able to talk to her and tell her about my life. I went back to not talking to her. Also during this time, I was dreading moving to Berea. Every time Nira (my godmother) would bring it up, I would start panicking and have a meltdown. I didn't want to live there I wanted to stay in Louisville, I thought then that I was happier there. Truthfully, I wasn't healthy mentally, physically or emotionally. I have struggled with a binge eating disorder since my grandmother died and without my mom there to help me, my weight continued to go up. Nira was aware, but did basically nothing except tell me to stop. A year into this whole thing, my mom's friend at the time, Kayla finally decided to leave her husband like everyone had been telling her to. She moved in with her two kids, my siblings by choice. At first this seemed awesome. I got to be with the kids all the time, and Kayla was really cool. Then I decided to try again with my mom. It was really hard, we were constantly arguing. This is when Kayla started to undermine my mom as a parent. Every time we would fight, I would tell Kayla and she would validate me, saying my mom didn't understand because she was autistic. While all of this was happening my weight had gone up to 208. It was at this point that Nira told Kayla to stop giving me fast food, which she did pretty much everyday. For some reason, Kayla didn't see the problem at first, so Nira explained to her that I have cerebral palsy and to much weight on my joints would be extremely dangerous to my health. I started to lose weight, but Kayla still gave me fast food sometimes. At one time she had to go out and buy food because we were at her sister's house and all the food was expired. Instead of buying me baloney like Nira had told her to, she decided it would be easier to buy me a whopper. With all that happening, Kayla was still bad mouthing my mom. When she didn't want me to go back to in person school, Kayla said that, because she was autistic she wasn't able to emphasize. The reason she didn't want me to go to school was because my whole family was isolated. My mom has EDS, among other issues and is very at risk for covid. At the same time, her best friend is a chemo patient and the only way she can see him is if she stays isolated. My nervousness about moving continued to grow because I knew my mom wanted to homeschool me after quarantine. I was started to get hopeful when Kayla started saying she wanted to buy the house. I had an idea in my head that if Kayla bought the house, then maybe I wouldn't have to leave Louisville. The problem was when things started to change. She wanted to buy the house cheap and fix it herself, despite that my mom wanted to fix it and get full value for the house. Then Nira said she was moving out, despite that mom had her there to help with the house. All this and nobody was going to tell her until she came to bring me to Berea. I told them repeatedly that this was a bad idea, that because she was autistic she didn't react well to change. I told them to tell her before she came, I was ignored. It was at this point that I was ready to leave. I was depressed, and I needed my mom. I thought my problems would be solved by staying, but I needed to fix my relationship with my mom. On the Monday she came to get me, everything exploded. I was outside with my boyfriend, but I could hear the chaos inside. Everything I was afraid would happen did. My mom was now forced to deal with too much change at once. Another thing about autism, is that most people are unable to regulate their volume when they're frustrated. Kayla didn't understand this and got offended when my mom started yelling. She went to her room and refused to come out, even though my mom stayed for several hours longer than she was supposed to, so she could work it out with her (if you haven't realized Kayla is basically a child). For about a week it was all my mom could think about. Now things are sorted out. Homeschool isn't that bad and my mom and I are finally in a good place fore the fist time in years.