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by J. Billings

As the parent of a special needs child. As the parent of a special needs child. I need to say that again for it to resonate. My son is speaking to himself in a language I can’t understand. I want to understand it. I don’t want to understand it. Right now I see the teetering edge of with-it-ness. Traces of food on another child’s shirt mean he’s a child. Traces of food on my son’s shirt mean he’s a child missing something. He does not have it all. But he does, as much as anyone else. I have a magnitude of vice packed into my darkness. I can see everything he does not have, and I think that’s the difference. We see what we can see and don’t see what we can’t see. I can’t see brainwaves. I can’t see hurt until I can see it. He’s not bare. I know that for sure. If anything, I’m the one who’s bare because I carry deception. This word is not of emptiness. It’s of heaviness. The actuality of with-it-ness. There are precedents and that’s the problem. In the same way I can’t bare myself without something to expose, he can’t be bare without expectations. I wrote a letter to him before he was born and I told him I loved him, there were no expectations, there was only himself. My brain refuses to listen. I tell my brain to listen and it does not. I should not expect. I should want. This is the consequence of parentage. I’m finally—truly, verifiably—a Father, because I’m sad. That settles it. I’m thinking about school. I’m thinking about therapy. I’m thinking about a doctor’s appointment. I’m thinking about a neurologist’s appointment. I’m thinking about a nutritionist’s appointment. I’m thinking about sleep tonight. I’m thinking about sleep on vacation. I’m thinking about the possibility of sickness. I’m thinking about the possibility of unsickness. It’s healthy and the worst thing. In the same way as dreams. I dream of being an athlete and I’m adrenalized. I wake up and fear death. I am on the way. We are all on the way. He is on the way. Sometimes I don’t think he enjoys the way. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t enjoy his way. But a lot of times I don’t enjoy my way either, so what does it matter? Maybe that’s life and everything boils down to difficulty and frustration. Sometimes I think I’m being cleansed. I know this thought is selfish. This is a human tendency. Humans imagine fatigue as shards of glass and annoyance as thorns on a crown. I believe there could be a miracle because all miracles are organic, chemical processes. They are unpredictable but he is unpredictable. I am a horrible father. He is a wonderful son. I think it’s always this way. I don’t think it could ever be any different. Nature and its inevitabilities. I went to the doctor today, for myself, for once. And we talked about the things that I talk about every day as it relates to my son and I acted like I didn’t know. I acted like it was the first time I had heard about gut flora. I told him it was interesting when the doctor said the mind is connected to the body. I made a child’s listening face when he said caregivers typically experience higher anxiety levels. Why is it embarrassing to say I know it? I know it. Write what you know. Write what you know or it isn’t worth anything. Well I don’t know shit about this. I’m knowing of it but I don’t understand it and I don’t know about it. I’m watching my Gunners and they might win the Premier League and I ask myself why it all feels so dumb. I’m happy and I tell myself it’s dumb and when I feel numb I tell myself I should be happy. The diagnoses pile. One reality begets another reality begets another. Maybe I don't like all of these superhero movies because I feel like I’m living in a multi-verse and it’s a pain in the ass to watch Benedict Cumberbatch try to explain what I already know while I sit there and shake my head and pretend to be clueless. Here it is: everything that’s possible is what happens and everything that does not happen is not possible. A lot happens. A mom is rotting in her car in the parking lot. She’s not old. Everything has to end at some point. But this doesn’t seem to have an end. Thank you, I don’t know how we do it either. I really have no idea. What is this “it” you speak of—Survival? Keeping myself upright? Keeping my kids alive? We do it the same way you do. Fear. Responsibility. It’s the same. We all have the same level of tolerance, I’ve just been stretched by time and experience and sleepless nights. I am the parent of a special needs child. I am the parent of a special needs child. I need to hear myself say it again. Or maybe I don’t. Everything is I do or I don’t. It’s bad to think of the future. It’s good to sensitize myself to the possible outcomes. The only ones we think of are at the beaches of the bell curve, never the crest of the wave. What if nothing works? All the advice is bullshit and corporate advertisement. I can’t just be figuring this out now. Here is the precursor to isolation. I don’t want to be sad for myself, I want to be sad for him, but I’m not sure I should be sad for him. It’s a gift, it’s a superpower, it’s a sixth sense, it’s a fenestration in the brain and it’s genetic and it’s unstoppable and it’s silent and it’s noticeable—we should have seen these microscopic signs and knew immediately what to do because an influencer on YouTube posted a video of their son doing the same thing but instead we ignored it because it’s easier to ignore than lean into terrifying reality—and it’s mysterious and it’s unexplainable and it’s anti-biotics and it’s vaccines and it’s definitely not vaccines and it may be this one vaccine and it’s forever and maybe it’s God and it’s temporary and it matters because it’s the only thing and it doesn’t matter because it’s only one thing in his wonderful growing life. And why is it that I can only think of this one thing when he runs and smiles and loves me in the way he does and it all goes back to this one thing when there’s so much more. I can catch his eyes and say I love you and sometimes he says “luff oo” and I am happy again and sad and hope is flashed and I want to fucking kill it I want to strangle it and mash it and I want to push it down because it’s a false hope, that’s what everything in me says it is, so I want to commit murder upon it, self-defense procedure, elimination of my happiest memories. Is it only for me? Is this all only for me and does that matter? Where do I fit into everything and why the hell do I want to force myself into it? Every time I read this again I am filled with... what I am filled with. That’s a question. What am I filled with? Maybe putting these words down isn’t a good thing. I’m probably being insensitive. I’m probably being extremely insensitive. I should be working these things out in my own recesses. But I want to write it all down. Every one of these thoughts is vital, even if some of them are evil. I’m trying to learn. I wrote some of this while I was working. I wrote some of this on a plane. I wrote some of this while I was sitting in the dark in a hospital room, next to him. Next to you, my son. I could feel your heartbeat and I didn’t like that it was there under my hand because that meant it could not be there. You were sleeping with wires laced around your head and ziplocked in place. You have no idea what’s going on. What a load of shit. You have an idea of what’s going on. Of course you have an idea. You probably have a much better idea of what’s happening than I do. We look at things differently and I have no doubt you see the world in a better way, because I’m looking at the world from the perspective of numbers and facts and you’re looking at the world as a place of cause and effect and emotion and feeling. I’m losing sight of this. You can see so much better than I can. We watched one of my home videos and I was your age and I looked just like you. I looked just like you. (You were the precedent and that’s how it always should be.) I did the head thing you do. You know, the one where you jerk your head down and blink your eyes. It wasn’t the same but it looked the same. And I talked and I heard you speak and I wanted to throw the projector through the fucking window and I wanted to wake you up and talk to you and I also wanted to sleep for a very long time. I’ve never thought about drinking Nyquil before and I know sleeping for a very long time would not help anything but I still want to do it. Mornings are terrifying gifts and I’d like to postpone them for a while or maybe, sometimes, if I’m honest with myself, for forever. I hate people asking "How are you doing?” but I also need it, for my own selfish fulfillment. I’m exhausted, please excuse my unwillingness to function. I can’t stop grinding my teeth, I need you to know why I cannot stop grinding my teeth. I don’t want to leave the house, I don’t want to take my son anywhere, I need you to understand it’s not easy to take him places and sympathize with me but don’t ask how you can help because I’m the only one who can do this. I’m the only one who can do this and I’m going to make you feel bad about it. You should feel so bad. You can’t do this. You couldn’t do this if you wanted to. That’s what you tell me. “I don’t know how you do it, I could never do it.” And now I agree with you. I’m so bitter and that makes me the same as every single person on earth. And yet, my son is not bitter. His difference is good. He will take your hand if he needs you. He will want you to leave if you’re not kind to him. I’ve lost sight of how simple the world can be. I’m worried about becoming “proficient” in Microsoft Excel and ratios with Xs next to them and what does BSBY stand for again and EBITDA this and SOFR that and all of the other abbreviations which stand for something and mean absolutely nothing. We invented this kind of life where these things matter and the people who they don’t matter to are not worth very much. Those people should be worth more. Sometimes he just doesn’t like to wear socks. They yelled at us in a Barnes & Noble because he took his socks and shoes off. You fucking idiots. Do you think Ernest Hemingway walked around in shoes every single minute he lived in Key West? Allen Ginsburg probably didn’t own a pair of shoes until he was posed in a casket. Look at the art on our white walls, here are the canvasses of the Greats! We’re packaging the Greats into fake collections so you can put them on your bookcase and use them as coasters after you shuck off the Barnes & Noble labels so your friends can think you found this pristine collection of Shakespeare in an old attic or a flea market. Put on your goddamn shoes, and do it quicker, because people are trying to order coffee here and buy funny calendars of cows with spots that look like different states. Don’t you fucking dare read Goodnight, Gorilla without your shoes on. I’ve made more of a mess shitting in the Barnes & Noble bathrooms than any mess my son makes by taking his shoes off. There’s a contempt for people who are seen as less than. I don’t blame anyone for it. It’s innate, it really is. I have to do these things, I live by these standards, I’ve worked my whole entire life and done everything right, so why should this person get to disregard everything we’ve put in place as a righteous society only because they can’t talk or use utensils? He can talk. Let me just say that. He can talk. It may not sound like talking but he’s talking. Charles Dickens probably smelled like shit. Did they ever think about that? Robinson Crusoe is up on the wall in a glorious silhouette, he’s one of our greatest literary heroes! He didn’t wear any clothes, dipshit, and neither do any of the characters in the various eroticisms sitting on the shelves in front of my kid. Here’s the Dummy’s Guide to Selling Your Feet on OnlyFans. But don’t take your shoes off in here. What’s funny (it’s not funny) is that they will let a dog i.e. an animal walk around, but not my barefoot child. What is happening to me? I like dogs. I swear I like dogs fine. Suddenly, now, I seem to dislike lots of things I know I don’t dislike. I’m trying to figure out what I love. The one thing—he’s not a thing—I love is making me resent the other things of life. No, it’s not because of him. It’s all me. I make me resent myself. Okay, when I think about it, I guess there’s a lot of things in books that you can’t do in a bookstore or in public. But taking your shoes off shouldn’t be on that list. Let’s take a step back, maybe a leap back. Who is this hurting? It’s hurting my son. I’m watching a video of bees engulfing a hornet and beating their wings to roast the hornet alive. I tell myself: “You like this because you’re angry.” I’m doing the thing where I watch a movie and stop every fifteen minutes to scroll through my phone. I’m watching The Last Temptation of Christ and I really like the fact that Jesus hates himself. Everything is Should I or Shouldn’t I. No one knows. Nobody knows anything. They think they do but they don’t. They won’t admit it, but they don’t know. I’m glad they don’t know because I definitely don’t know and I’m coming to the conclusion that I don’t ever need to know anything for sure. They said, “Don’t worry, you have time, just make sure he can speak by Kindergarten and read by 1st grade and he’ll be fine.” He’s only 1, there’s time for him to... He’s only 3, there’s time for him to... There’s not enough time. There’s always a horizon. I’m older. He’s older. The world grows closer. They’re kicking him out of bookstores because his feet are sweating and I don’t know what to do about it other than to be angry at an old woman in a green apron and cuss her out when I’m outside and then feel bad about it and feel worse for my son and realize he only knows what he knows, and why can’t he know this one small aspect of welcome? READING IS A GIFT; IT’S THE CURE (unless you do it barefoot on our carpet). If we let him do it, then what about everybody else? What about everybody else! Apparently, there’s a pandemic of shoelessness I’m not aware of. But what about everyone else? I could keep going. Now there is something I could repeat. What about everyone else? What about everyone else. Well, what about everyone else? 

I only know of this boy.

J. Billings lives and breathes in Hilltop, OH with his wife and three sons. His work can be found in Blood Orange Review, ergot., Bruiser, and Overheard, and is forthcoming in BULL, San Antonio Review, and Black Warrior Review. His son Abe loves tigers and snow leopards.