I’ve gotten up, made my bed, made my coffee, even made my face. My body has clothes on. It’s all a facade. Inside my body, I am crumbling. Another school year has started, and I am still failing. Failing to understand how to help Isaiah. Even now, as I type this, I hear him pounding on the keyboard , demanding my attention from the other room. He wants me to watch him carve into the table with his pencil, and rip his paper in frustration. He NEEDS me to see that. Maybe he doesn’t think I get it, but I do. It’s all I can do to keep from pulling my own hair in anger right now. Tears are not far away today. I’m trying this year to give less verbal instruction, that’s what he says he needs. But we are only a week in and that’s not working. I hate that I’m struggling, that he is struggling. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, behind the facade. And so …. Sometimes I have to get it out , out of here …. into the elsewhere that exists outside our four walls.