120 school hours, 68 work hours, 6 football training sessions, 3 football matches and a swimming lesson – a week – I’m not sure we all really knew each other anymore. They talk about ‘passing ships in the night’ but we’d become more like satellites zooming light years apart in space. So, on 23rd March 2020, when Boris told us all to spend the foreseeable with each other, a collision of satellites was only a matter of time.
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One of the themes that’s continued to arise over the last 8-10 years, both in my head and within my online community, is a diagnosis for all that Hugo is and does. I consider seeking a diagnosis when things are bad – when Hugo’s thrown the shit at the parental fan and I feel like I’m drowning in failure, it’s my flare for help. Then things settle down for a bit, a teacher/GP or CAHMS give you a look/letter of “I’m sure he’ll grow out of it”, so I lose my gusto and don’t want to rock the behavioural boat – until the next time!
But you know what they say, doing the same thing again and again expecting a different outcome is madness. So, for anyone with a spirited firecracker, who’s tick is ticking to a different tock, here’s where we’re at with a diagnosis, or – as I’ve come to prefer it – ‘description’. After all, a diagnosis tends to imply something’s wrong and it’s not that there’s something ‘wrong’ with Hugo, it’s just that he’s different to the ‘norm’.
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I didn’t think I could get any more emotional this morning, Hugo actually thought I’d lost the plot as I followed him around with a grin on my face. And then I received The Text Message to send any emotional mother over the edge of all text messages from his yr 6 TA
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Yesterday I cried. I cried on my own, into a pillow; I cried into my mum’s arms; I sobbed into Mr OG’s chest and I wept in the headmaster’s office. I wasn’t crying as England crashed out of the world cup. I wasn’t breaking down ‘cos Cas had pissed all over my side of the bed during his nap and I wasn’t overcome with emotion finding out one of the kid’s passports had expired when they need it to visit their State-side gran in 2 weeks. I was crying, hurting and lost – after 482 days/68 weeks/15 months and 25 days it felt like we were back at square one with Hugo – a two day school suspension.
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I’ll be honest, I’ve recited this post in my head a thousand times – never getting further than the fourth line. I’ve promised (my instagram following and myself) for a few months that I’d share what it is exactly that we’re going through with my beautiful, biggest bean – Hugo. Sometimes things are just too great to share in a social media caption, and definitely too monumental to squeeze into a 15 second instagram story. But the main reason I’ve procrastinated over this tome for the past two months – abandoning all other writing until this was complete, is that it’s hard to write about something when I’m not sure where it began, it feels like we could be in the middle and I most certainly don’t know if it will ever end.
But even before I begin, a preface if you will, I need to mention a couple of things. As always, I have Hugo’s permission to share our story. Secondly, Hugo, 85% of the time is a wonderful, intelligent, talented, sporty, witty and glorious person. It’s unfortunately that the other 15% is coming close to ruining our lives and Hugo is adamant there is nothing he can do to stop it. We’re trapped on Hugo’s emotional roller-coaster – I just hope someone finds the brakes or gives us a soft landing when we crash.
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