Living with anxiety can be a little overwhelming but living with someone with anxiety is a completely different beast. Over the years as my son has gotten older I have gotten to know him better. Most parents are frightened with the proposition of their child getting older. When I tell people I have a 17 year old son they immediately give me that, “ooo sorry,” face as if I have been given some terrible burden. However his age has been the greatest gift as we go into the older digits and are further away from the elementary years.

One of my biggest short comings as an adult was my inability to express myself out of fear or concern of how others would take it. I tried to deliver things in such away as to keep from hurting others. Another one of my short comings was my inability to articulate my feelings. This is something that developed because of my lack of voice growing up. I could scream I hate you because that only hurt the other person, but the thought of uttering an unrequited I love you was so painful that it became crippling over the years. So like many people I hid in my shell and only exposed the parts that I felt were the greatest parts of me, my humor and wit. However there is this big hearted emotional person that has made her way out in the past few years. It is refreshing, except for those times where you become so emotionally invested that you cry yourself to sleep because of a failure you have brought upon yourself. However, I would not change those things about me because I take stake in my own life and if I did not cry, then what truly matters? I somehow find the strength to get my ass out of bed, dry off the tears and dive right into what I believe is my next big thing.

The person I am now, is not the person I was ten or even five years ago.

When I look at my son I see his father in almost every gesture but for the most part my son is who I am emotionally. That used to worry me so much. I feared that my inability to articulate words would cause him to be hindered as a child. He was after all being raised by a woman who had yet pieced herself together. How do you build a man when you’re quite the jigsaw? The answer is that I found the glue that bound me in his every I love you.

When I had my son, something inexplicable happened. There was no big gasp before taking the plunge. He was the calm after the storm. He became my who, what, when, where and why. Why? Because I was meant to be his mother.

He gets anxious often. I can see it in the way he caries himself. He pays attention to everything and picks up on so much yet sometimes he needs me to ease his mind on the simplest of things. He needs to know things and how they function, why they function or why not. When he was younger I would ask him to explain things to me and to tell me how his day in school was and he would always say, “good,” or “fine.” That used to frustrate me in such a way. I wanted to know more, I wanted to talk to him and most importantly I needed to know I had not damaged him.

Now that he is older and can articulate his feelings I dive in and swim in the vast emotions that exist inside him. He is such a caring human. Much to my surprise I have nothing to be concerned about. He is not like me in every way emotionally, he is more resilient than I. He is bold. He is honest and most importantly he is this older version of the little human I once wished to raise. He took everything I worried about and became a hybrid of the best possible outcome. One of my favorite things about our relationship lies in the fact that he can tell me when I have been hurtful and not at my best. He accepts my short comings as a parent and in the same regard never forgets to tell me how well I have done.

I try to put his heart at ease every step of the way because he needs it, but most importantly I need him. He has no idea how much of a burden I place on him. Without him it is as if no clear path for me exists. With him, everything is sunshine.