Rounding Home: A Memoir of Love, Betrayal, Heartbreak, and Hope with an Intimate Look into Raising a Child with Severe Autism

by Sarah Swindell

  How was I going to continue living this way? I was so tired in every way possible, I felt as if life was dragging me down a path I didn’t have the strength to endure any longer. I felt like a failure as a mother; not only was I unable to help my son who was so clearly struggling, I wasn’t present for my three daughters who desperately needed me, as well. My life had once been a beautiful fairy tale and now it felt like an ugly living nightmare, and I was terrified to continue living in it. My dark, clouded mind whispered that my children would be better off without me, a new stepmother down the road would most certainly do a better job than I ever could; at least she would be a better example for my daughters. I loved Dawson so much, I just couldn’t figure out how to cope with his daily struggles through life anymore. I wondered if he was as miserable as I was. How could he not be?

  I sped up as I approached the overpass. It was still dark out, the only illumination detectable emanated from the dim lights of empty stores in the distance, fuzzy through the thick layer of fog still blanketing the city. There were hardly any cars on the road this early in the morning, and I wondered if anyone would even notice when we sailed through the concrete barrier.

  Would my car crashing to the pavement below make a sound loud enough for anyone to hear? Was the overpass high enough? Was I going fast enough? I sped up a little more as I gripped the wheel a little tighter.

  CHAPTER 1

  FEW PEOPLE THINK THEY HAD the perfect childhood, but I do. This makes the events in my life so hard for me to explain. While I can’t blame myself for all of it, I do blame myself for a lot of it. I blame myself for how sideways things became for me, and more importantly, for my children. I realize the word “perfect” means different things to different people, but when describing my childhood, it’s the only word I come back to over and over again.

  I was the youngest of four children, and my siblings would probably agree that I was a bit spoiled since I was the last. Growing up I had a large group of close friends, rode my beloved green Schwinn ten-speed bike everywhere in my neighborhood, and had summers filled with sleepovers and summer camps. We ate dinner as a family together almost every single night, and laughter was always present at our table. On the rare occasion when my mother didn’t cook, we would all pile into my dad’s Cadillac and drive to Champions Country Club for dinner. This was always my favorite thing to do. I loved the tinkling piano, fragrant flowers, and the little baskets of crackers with pats of butter wrapped in gold paper. I could never get enough of them. I even loved the tiny bowl of pastel mints in the beautifully decorated ladies room, with a gold-plated sink and plush pink carpet.

  My mother always looked beautiful. She was equally as beautiful dressed up for a night out, as she was in the terry cloth zip-up bathrobe she wore every morning. She had an unpretentious elegant style and grace about her. She was tall and thin with just the right amount of curl in her naturally blonde hair; she always looked as if she had just stepped out of the salon. Her perfume was this soft floral scent which I called “the mommy smell.” My own children would also call it the mommy smell as they were growing up.

  Most of all, she was kind, loving, and always there for us. She would draw funny little faces with colorful markers on the hard-boiled eggs she put in my lunch every day and wrote sweet notes of encouragement on my napkins. She taught Sunday School when we were little, volunteered at the hospital, and was home to greet us with her big, loving smile and a hug every day after school. She definitely gave June Cleaver a run for her money, and I wanted nothing more than to be just like her when I grew up.

  My father was just as handsome as my mother was beautiful. He was smart, witty, and was always the life of the party. He was the president of a small oil company and worked hard to give us what we wanted, but without spoiling us. He did, however, enjoyed spoiling my mom. Every Christmas there would be a tiny, beautifully wrapped box under the tree for her holding a gorgeous piece of jewelry inside. He took her on lavish trips, and she was able to buy all the Ferragamo shoes she wanted.

  He was a big smoker, like so many businessmen were in the early eighties, and was rarely without a cigarette in hand. Even though my father quit smoking in his late fifties, the smell of cigarette smoke still sparks loving memories of him. My parents were madly in love back then and still are to this very day after fifty-eight years of marriage. I still catch my father giving my mom a gentle pat on the tush when he walks by her, and they just simply take care of each other, in various ways that seem effortless.

  My father wasn’t around the house very much when I was a child; he would leave for work very early each morning and return home late. However, he made it a priority to give each of us his undivided attention when he was home. He always tried to make it to every sporting event my twin brothers were involved in, my sister’s horse shows, or my dance recitals. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of when my father and I would drive into the big city on the weekend to see the giant skyscraper where his office was located. I would play secretary outside his office while he did whatever work needed to be done, gazing out the window in amazement at the vast Houston skyline.

  Our home was in an upper-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. It looked like a mini White House with four tall white pillars in the front, a perfectly manicured lawn and numerous towering pine trees surrounding the perimeter. The house was a large two-story home. My sister, two brothers and I all had our own bedrooms upstairs, while my parents’ bedroom was tucked away downstairs. There was a guest room and even a game room with a pool table and big circular bar that hosted plenty of parties over the years. The backyard had a sparkling blue swimming pool surrounded by a large deck where my mother would often be sunbathing her already perfectly tanned skin. It was always the most festive house on the block at Christmas and the scariest on Halloween. Everyone in the neighborhood knew each other, kids rode their bikes everywhere and spent summers playing barefoot outside all day until the streetlights came on. There is not one thing I would change about my childhood.

  One day in 1984, my father came home, announced he was retiring from the oil business and that we were moving back to Farmington, New Mexico, the small town where I was born.

  “Why Farmington, of all places?” I asked my parents, a little stunned as we sat at the kitchen table.

  My mother cheerfully chimed in, “We have had enough of the big city and are ready to slow things down a bit now that Dad has decided to retire, sweetie. I know you will love it! It’s not far from Colorado, and you can ski anytime you want.”

  Well, that was good enough for me, and just like that, I was on board with this huge, life-changing event. I was fourteen years old, and my brothers and sister had already gone off to college, so I was basically an only child at this point. My parents were ready for a change from the hussle and bussle of the big city and traffic, and ready for the slower pace of small town life they had known and loved.

  It’s funny to think back at just how traumatic and scary that should have been for me, but I was actually excited for this new chapter. I didn’t feel an ounce of fear, maybe because up until that point fear was something I had never truly experienced. The worst fear I had dealt with was watching the movie Helter Skelter as a kid. I knew I would miss my friends in Houston, but wasn’t concerned about making new ones and was eager for the challenge.

  I quickly discovered just how different Farmington was from Houston, as I looked out the window of the tiny plane. I saw nothing but brown. Everything was brown. The grass, the leafless trees, the dirt, the flat-top mesas. It all just looked so brown, dreary and dead. It was December and bitter cold, so very different from warm and humid Texas weather. As the plane touched down at the small, one-level airport, a strange wave of fear washed over me. I felt like I was an alien that had just landed on another planet. I was not prepared for how different things would look and how different I would feel.

  This is going to be very interesting, I thought with a small sense of panic.r />
  The minute I stepped foot into my new school a few days later, dread entered my entire body. It was nothing like the beautiful brand-new middle school I had attended in Houston. This school was an old, one-story building that looked as if it would crumble to the ground at any second. The classrooms smelled like a cross between mothballs and old socks, the desks had rusty metal legs, and the library was always freezing cold. Like most schools, they assigned someone to be your “buddy,” which is sort of sad for all involved when you think about it, having someone forced to be your friend when you’re the new kid.

  I remember everyone staring at me with a strange curiosity. They were so fascinated that the new girl was from Texas, they all wanted to hear my accent. I assumed it was because new kids were a rarity, and I quietly wondered, why would anyone live in, much less move to, such a depressing place? My heart ached for the comfort and security of my old life in Texas. I missed the green trees, warm air, and the familiar, friendly faces of my friends in the hallways at school. I suddenly missed them more than anything else in the world.

  After a few months of crying every day after school and begging my parents to PLEASE move back to Texas, things slowly became more bearable. I tried out for the cheer team the following year and made it. I became friends with the girls on the squad, and things were starting to look up. Farmington was slowly starting to feel like home. But things changed dramatically my sophomore year, or maybe more accurately, I changed dramatically. That summer I grew three inches, got my braces off, and learned how to transform my hair to the perfect shade of blonde.

  My body still had some developing to do, but I could sense curiosity in the boys’ staring eyes. I had no idea how to handle all this new and foreign attention from the most popular boys in school. In my mind, I was still the awkward, goofy, skinny girl who boys paid zero attention to. While I used to be invisible to them, now I was the girl they looked at and pursued. This was all new to me; boys had never really flirted with me or actually tried to get my attention before, and I really didn’t know how to respond to it. I couldn’t tell if I liked it or hated it.

  Before long, it became very clear the older girls in school were not very happy that I was stealing the attention of “their” boys, and they let me know it in a big way. My car was keyed, and horrible words like “slut” and “Sarah gives head” were written in shoe polish for all the school to see. I didn’t even know what “head” meant at the time, and rumors about me spread like wildfire. If I went to a party on the weekend and was alone with a boy at the party, the assumption was that we had sex or did other things that I had never heard of. These boys were older star athletes, everyone worshipped them and believed anything they said. It got so bad that I lost most of my friends. I just assumed they didn’t want everyone to think they were associated with the school slut. I was so lonely that I eventually gave in to their advances, trying to find the acceptance I was craving. At the time, I thought the older boys were my friends, but in reality I was more like a project to them. In a way, I came to live up to my reputation because it was the only thing that felt good at the time and distracted me from the hatred the older girls handed me.

  I was fifteen years old when I had sex for the first time, and I hated myself for it. I hadn’t even started my period yet, I was physically still a child and was in no way ready for the emotional or physical repercussions. I was doing very adult things, with the mind and body that was not quite ready yet. I was on an emotional roller coaster, scared to go to school, while at the same time craving the positive attention from anyone who would give it to me, it was a vicious cycle. The more the older boys talked to me; the meaner the girls got. I was always on high alert for the next comment aimed at me, yelled across the quad for all to hear, or who was waiting around the corner in the halls for the chance to insult me to my face.

  The bullying got even worse in 1986 at the end of my sophomore year and continued into 1987. I was actually afraid to go to school and did everything I could just to blend in. I wanted so badly to be invisible again, but at almost six feet tall, that was a virtually impossible task. I was on the dance team at that time, and the mean girls would throw all kinds of stadium food at me. I distinctly remember getting hit in the face by a hot dog as we marched onto the field to perform at halftime, but I hardly flinched when I felt the smack. Even though pure humiliation seared through me and tears poured down my face, I continued to march like nothing had happened, keenly aware of the laughter from my tormentors in the stands. My parents were always at the games to watch me dance, but where they sat was so far from the student section, they never noticed a thing. I did make a few friends on the dance team and was grateful they seemed to not be bothered by how hated I was by the older students. I became really good at not talking about what was happening to me and prayed every day no one would see the next violation.

  I was too ashamed to ask for help or talk to my parents about the demoralizing things that were being done to me. I felt dirty and embarrassed at who I had become, and by this time my self-worth was nonexistent. I know now I could have easily gone to my parents for help, and I am sure they would have done anything for me; but as a teenage girl, I was more afraid of them finding out what I was doing sexually. I even wondered if in some way, I deserved what was happening to me.

  It was one of the most difficult times in my life even to this day, and I am no stranger to hard times. Just writing about the events that happened more than thirty years ago, still brings to life the same sense of fear and self-hatred. The word bully wasn’t really used back then, and there were no “anti-bullying campaigns” like there are now in school. I can attest to the destruction it can cause, as well as the painful emotional scars that last a lifetime.

  Twice that year I was sexually assaulted. No, I was not pinned down and raped, kicking and screaming like I thought assault was back then, and both very different from each other. The first time, one of the popular boys drove me out to a place called “the hills” during lunch. We had what was called open lunch and could leave campus for an hour. I was excited and naively thought we were actually just going to lunch together. I remember nervously asking him where we were going to eat. He just looked at me with a cat-about-to-eat-the-canary look and said not to worry about it, that it was a surprise. Once we got there, he put the car in Park and turned to look at me. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and I suddenly became very nervous by the look on his face. He quickly climbed on top of me in the passenger seat of his tiny two-seater, unzipped his pants and proceeded to ejaculate all over my shirt. I was stunned—the whole event felt like it lasted less than a few seconds. Just as quickly as it started, he climbed off of me, and not a single word was said by either of us all the way back to school. Once we got back to school, I went straight to the restroom to wash my shirt and sat in the stall, missing class as it dried, feeling nothing but pure humiliation. Once again, I felt I must have deserved it because I chose to go to lunch with him.

  The second assault was different than the first, but actually worse in my eyes, and it affected me for a long time. I had gone to a boy’s house for a get-together that he was hosting. It seemed fine to me because I knew most of the people he said he was having over. I came straight from a babysitting job, only to find that he was the only one in the house. When I arrived, he asked me to go to the back of the house because he had something for me. I reluctantly followed him, thinking he must have a cool new stereo or something like that to show me.

  We got to his parents bedroom when he said, “This is what I want to show you.” He turned around, grabbed my hand and put it on the crotch of his pants. He pushed me onto the bed and started kissing me aggressively while holding my hand in place. That was when I heard laughter coming from his parents’ closet. I managed to jump from the bed and open the closet door to find four or five boys hiding inside with a large video camera in hand.

  “Oh my God, what is going on?” My voice was trembling so much I could hardly understand my
own words. Clearly there was not a party going on, they were planning on videotaping what they assumed was going to happen. I ran as fast as I could from that house. I can only imagine how my life would have been affected had their mission been accomplished.

  It is a violation that is hard for me to explain, even now. Some might even disagree that it rises to the level of sexual assault, but whatever it was, it stayed with me my entire life. My heart aches for all the women who have endured far worse than I did, most likely keeping it to themselves and feeling like it was their fault as well. I feel certain those two minor events changed my entire path in my relationships with men.

  That year changed me in a million different ways, and I plunged into such a dark place that I feared I would never climb out. I lost my innocence, I lost my friends, I lost my confidence and my free spirit. But most all, I lost my ability to trust. I never told a soul when it happened. I held it all inside; it was only years later that I told my family.

  That year was the first time I casually thought about suicide. I now understand there is no such thing as casually thinking about suicide. I thought about pulling into my garage with the tiny remains of those degrading words still painted on my car, closing the garage door and letting the engine run. It would be painless and quick. I fantasized about what my bullies would do when they woke up to the news I had killed myself. Would they laugh and be happy, or would they feel a tinge of remorse? I wondered what all the boys who hurt me would think; would they feel any guilt? But I also thought about my family and how broken they would be if I actually did it. The love I had for my family was the only thing keeping me alive, and so I kept willing myself to get up and endure yet another humiliating day at school.

  It was only after I had become a senior that I felt free from my tormentors. By then, they had all graduated and things became a little better for my last year in high school; however, the emotional damage remained deep inside. I became co-captain of the dance team, joined the drama club and had real friendships with a few girls. I thrived when I was on stage and did it as much as possible. I loved being someone other than myself. I fell in love with acting, and I knew it was something I wanted to pursue in my adult life. I loved the freedom of diving into different characters, and my fellow drama club members accepted me just the way I was. I even had a real boyfriend who wanted me for more than just sex. I finally felt like a normal teenager.