Why do I feel like a bad mom?

Wow! What a week! Well, maybe more like a two weeks. It started with what I now call the infamous baseball incident. Alex has been really interested in watching our local high school baseball team play. One game, they let him keep a ball that he later slept with and took to church with him. He then proceeded to loose the ball down the sewer drain in the street. One thing led to another in an attempt to console him (including a trip to the local fire station) ending with the team signing a ball for him after a game (they are such wonderful people here...his principal has a son playing on the team and his aide is one of the coaches with a son playing). I felt horrible though for the way I handled his obsession with the ball. Yea, yea, yea, I know that "typical" children have things like baseballs that they obsess over. Those with Autistic children know what I mean when I say they obsess..it really goes beyond obsession. It simply wears you down.

I think the most frustrating thing is that it seems to me that all of the "dealing" with Alex falls to me. I am the one who is always here. I love my husband but he isn't always here and he wasn't here when the ball went down the sewer. He wasn't here this week when he didn't have his AR book in his backpack and Simone didn't have her lunch and he spilled syrup on his shirt requiring me to bring all of these things to school. The thing I am struggling with the most is the feeling that I am dealing with all this alone. I know deep down that my husband does what he can do when he can do it but others close to me are continually letting me down as well on much deeper levels. So I feel, once again, I am doing it all or more importantly maybe I am doing it alone. Now, it isn't anyone's responsibility to raise my children but my own. Don't get me wrong, I know that. However, if he had cancer, would everyone act as though it wasn't there? Would they think I needed help? Would they ask me what he or I needed? I often wonder.

This week was Alex's first time taking standardized testing. I was nervous myself so I can only imagine what it was like for him and the other kids, teachers and parents. This had to be the worst week for him. Answering questions in a format he is not used to the material being presented in. Not having his normal routine to his days. I tried to be supportive but after being called into the school twice this week and seeing him agitated after school....and today especially looking totally wiped out walking home from the bus stop, I cried. He even let me hold him after school today as he cried (and I continued to cry) and said that he wanted to "quit school". I had to talk him into going to tennis today after school, thinking the release of energy would be good. He was frustrated for not "winning" in their drill at the end of the class. He then wanted to practice by bouncing the ball off the house and lost the tennis ball in the gutter. Again with loosing a ball!!! You have got to be kidding me. Husband again isn't home to help and he goes to bed crying with me not being as supportive as I should have been.

I'm still struggling with the whole should I work thing and the more I think about it the less confident I am that I won't have to put everything on hold again for my children, husband and especially Alex. However, I feel that I am not happy personally/with my identity and where I am and if mom's not happy then nobody is happy.

On top of all of this, I have become obsessed with the new TV show Parenthood. The parents dealing with their child with Asperger's syndrome is sooooooooo us. When I watched this week's episode where she was asked to work for old friend running for elected office like she used to do, she was so excited and after being offered a job, had to turn it down feeling that she needed to be home I found myself sobbing on the couch. I was crying to the point that my husband couldn't stop me. Deep down I know that I am blessed that I not in a position that I have to work but why do I feel so awful that I feel like I can't work?