Snippets from my memoir #2

As part of my blog I want to share snippets from my memoir 'Wrapped in Blue' to raise awareness of ASD and destigmatise mental illness.  Hence the following...

She could sense Zaki straining and pressing into the cold, hard marble in the next room. His young bones seeking, almost pleading, satisfaction from the rigidity of the cold, hard surface. As his limbs bore into the compactness of the floor, Zoya’s already constricted chest tightened a fraction more with despondency and pain. She was tired, so tired. She should be picking Zaki up from the floor and redirecting him to another activity . . . but she was just too tired right now, too tired.

In addition to coping with the weight of Zaki’s demanding treatment schedule and 24/7 follow-up, Zoya had to deal with how crappy she was feeling. Her plate was very full, and she was drowning. The feelings of helplessness were compounded by the knowledge that she had no choice but to keep functioning for the sake of her children and that she couldn’t afford to lose control of her life. Ammi had always said that one could survive anything for one’s children. She would too, if only she could stop feeling.

Many a night, Zoya spent crying silently into her pillow, stifling her sobs so that Amaar would not hear her. If he was not willing to help her with her anxious and depressed state, she was not going to ask either. Other nights, when it felt like she could not take it anymore, when she felt scared of losing control, she would call out to him from sheer panic and ask him to just hold her till she could fall asleep. Zoya pined to wake up from the nightmare of her depressive state! 

A crisis has the ability to bring out childlike characteristics in a person, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy get blurred. The desire to regress into a shell and revert to an age in which fairy tales exist, where, if you wish hard enough, dreams can come true, is just a temporary escape from the harsh absoluteness of trauma. Alas, for Zoya, regression and denial were not an option. Her children, especially Zaki, needed her, and she had to deliver. 

To purchase a copy of 'Wrapped in Blue' click on the following link:
 http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B013BP9Q32