Fee's World

You look at my pictures on Facebook of our festival so far. You see fun and smiles and a good ‘wholesome’ time. Great family experience! Day 1 at the Bluedot festival looked ace. On Facebook.

Reality? It had me questioning EVERYTHING. It was pouring with rain, which is no fun in a wheelchair under normal circumstances, at a festival? Shit. Utter shit. Fortunately we have an off-roader, which weakens the shit somewhat, but the shit is still there. Nowhere to sit or lie out, watching everything from under cover, blaa blaa.

The very pits is when your autistic child has just taken SO much that they have to explode somewhere. And that somewhere is always at you.

We know this, we anticipate this, he’s been to a festival every year of his life since he was 11 months old. The day after we arrive is always bloody hard work, but every year it gets easier. We get better. We’re more attune to triggers, we’re better at seeing it coming.

But we forget. We try to wander round setting what’s on, going with the flow, because that’s what we’ve always done!

It doesn’t work. We end up back of the tent, all unhappy, all sad, all questioning our life, our family, our ability to cope. Basically what the holy fuck we’re doing.

Then we all calm down, we chill out, we reflect, we move on and the next day we have a plan of action.

It’s not easy. We exclaim it’s the last festival we ever go to. Why are we doing this?

And then we talk, we wake up with a plan and we stick to it. We have a lovely day and it’s all forgotten about.

But while this is wonderful and fulfilling and fantastic for the kids and us, it IS NOT easy. In fact, it’s bloody hard.

It’s Facebook all over though, isn’t it? Am album entitled,”Summer 2019″ with happy smiley pictures, music, art, science, culture. This is NOT reality. Facebook-tinted-spectacles. Not reality.