The Year My Meltdown Ruined Christmas for My Son

One year I pulled down the Christmas tree, here is my story

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I wish I could say that I remember every minute detail of the Christmas that I yanked the Christmas tree down, but I don't.

What I do remember is that in the “before time” when I didn’t know I was autistic, I regularly ran myself ragged thinking I was neurotypical and that was what I was supposed to do.

On my good health days, I would do as much as possible and try to get all the activities in. I would make all of the food I loved, decorate the tree and apartment, and wrap all of the packages.

It was all go, go, go. Go see Santa at the garden center. Go to the National Mall to see the National Christmas tree. Go to the National Arboretum and see the toy train exhibit. Go do last-minute shopping. Never go lie down or take a nap.

My inability to let go of my perfectionistic tendencies always led to disaster. My malnourishment from dealing with undiagnosed, fully-active MCAS was also making me act increasingly erratic.

My pots and my functional neurological disorder would kick in and ruin everything. I'd be fatigued and I'd still push myself through.

I've had sleep apnea possibly for years and insomnia. I was probably going through perimenopause. I was in severe autistic burnout for years and pushed through it.

Not to mention that I am chronically ill and disabled, and have a laundry list of medical and mental health issues as a result of masking and not having won the genetic lottery

What I do remember of that day Is that my spouse and I fought and it was a doozy. It was emotionally a knockdown drag-out fight. Unfortunately, my son, who was probably about 5 years old at the time, witnessed us screaming and attacking each other.

What were we fighting about? What we always fought about. At the time, I didn't live with my spouse, and I hadn't lived with him for 5 years.

When I was pregnant with my son, I moved to Northern Virginia to live with my spouse. We had a long-distance relationship for several years before we got engaged and I got pregnant (no, we did not marry because I was pregnant), and for much of my pregnancy, we were not in the same town.

After we got married and I moved, I started having panic attacks all day long that I couldn't stop. They would refire all day long. I was 6 months pregnant and could not get my anxiety under control despite my best efforts (MCAS perhaps? burnout?), so my child was steeped in my anxiety.

I couldn't take it anymore. and feared for my baby as well.

After a month and a half of trying to live there without my support network, with no friends or family to help us because his family did not care to help, I left and returned to my hometown 100 miles away and stayed with my parents.

I thought I was staying for a short while until we figured something out, but instead, ended up staying 7 years because of my horrific burnout and possibly early stages of MCAS.

Taking care of my infant son was more challenging for me than I had realized it would be. I was undiagnosed with many medical conditions at the time, so when I tried to breastfeed my child, very little milk fed him and I would fall over him every time (undiagnosed functional neurological disorder).

I had to stop breastfeeding and it devastated me. I also developed postpartum anxiety. I was emotionally an absolute mess and I couldn't take oral medications for psychiatric issues because they hurt my stomach so badly.

That is a whole other story for another time (If you want to know more about that, read my article Autistic Hyperfixation Almost Killed Me Parts One and Two).

For 7 years, my spouse and I were at a stalemate and fought bitterly every time we were together.

For a time, it was a joyous time being together and it was also inevitably a war. I am not proud of how we fought. We can be ruthless when fighting, and the fact that my son witnessed that makes me sick.

What horrifies me even more is the meltdown that I had after my spouse walked away from our fight that Christmas of 2012. He told me he didn't want to speak to me and we said the meanest things to each other because that's how we're rolled.

I started crying inconsolably and was furious. There was BPD rage, but also sensory and emotional overwhelm from the holiday being too much for me without rest and accommodations.

I reached the point of no return and started having a meltdown. Amid my crying and rage, I walked over to our beautiful and lovingly decorated tree with our vintage mirror glass bulbs, ornaments we picked out every year, and my son’s handmade creations, and yanked the Christmas tree down to the floor.

I can still hear the ornaments crashing and breaking as my son stood with his lips plump buds, oozing sheer fear.

Luckily we didn't lose that many ornaments, but we lost some that could not be replaced. Most were. What could not be replaced was my son’s sense of safety, and innocent Christmas joy. I traumatized him.

This is why I always say that a late autism diagnosis is crucial, not only for the autistic adult but for the entire family. Finding out also helps all of the people who have been affected by the autistic person’s lack of self-knowledge and inability to accommodate themselves.

To this day, my 16-year-old son still asks me, “Mombo, why did you pull down the Christmas tree?” The answer, as you can see, isn't simple. It involves a long story, but he knows the story and even knowing the story, he doesn't understand.

What my son wants and needs, in those moments, is an apology and an assurance that it won’t happen again. He needs me to take accountability for how my behavior affected him, intentional or not.

He doesn't understand what it's like to grow up unaccommodated or what it's like to grow up with the level of trauma that I went through with my family of origin. He has his trauma, but it is not as constant and unrelenting, and in many ways, I am grateful that he doesn’t understand.

Thanks to my diagnosis and my spouse’s self-diagnosis, we’ve