HE

I feel older. I feel empty. The sky remains perpetually cloaked in dark clouds, day and night. It has been months since I last saw the sun. Mornings come too soon, and night falls far too quickly. In this endless twilight, a slow, steady rain continues to decline.

I am exhausted—beyond what words can fully express. I can’t move; I can’t think. I feel endlessly lost. How am I supposed to manage this? How do I move forward? The thought of facing another day overwhelms me with a constant noise I can’t escape. I went outside and screamed, “I don’t want this anymore! I can’t take this anymore!” Is anyone out there? Can anyone hear me? Please, someone.

David is sad again. He didn’t take the test. I held him close, trying to mask my worries and present a calm, reassuring front.

“Don’t worry, my child. We will find a solution. I promise.”

David can’t speak—or at least, he can talk only with incredible difficulty. He never really could. I’ve taken him to doctors since he was very young. He followed all their instructions, but his words never came.

“We need to differentiate why he can’t speak. Is it a neurological issue or a psychological one?” they said.

I’ve tried everything to make him happy, ease his life, encourage him to speak, and make friends. But slowly, he began to withdraw. In kindergarten, the girls would laugh at him.

“You can’t talk. You’re dumb,” they mocked.

He would hide under a tree, waiting for time to pass. After lunch, he would stand by the fence, waiting for me. He knew I would come to take him home. The teacher once suggested I leave him there longer to try to “break the habit.” I did, though I knew in my heart it wouldn’t help. If he couldn’t connect with anyone in five hours, why would two more make a difference?

And then, when I would finally come to take him home, he would break into silent tears. No screams, no outbursts—just quiet, endless crying. It broke my heart. I started picking him up after lunch again. I couldn’t bear his pain.

Then school began. The doctors finally gave us a diagnosis: autism. We enrolled David in a special school for nonverbal children. But every morning, he would cry. Silently. He didn’t want to go.

“Why, David? What’s wrong? Please, tell me—I’ll fix it, promise,” I pleaded.

“No school!” he said, his big, beautiful brown eyes begging me not to make him go

.

“David, listen. We live in a country where everyone has to go to school. No exceptions. I had to, your father had to—everyone does. But please, tell me what’s wrong so I can help.”

“No school!” he repeated, tears streaming from those beautiful, heartbreaking eyes.

Sometimes I couldn’t bear it. I would call the school and say, “He’s sick.”

“For how long?” the teacher would ask.

“I don’t know. How could I know how long he’ll be sick?”

“If it’s more than two days, you’ll need a doctor’s note.”

“I know the rules, thank you. Let’s hope he’s better in two days,” I’d reply.

And for those two days, David was happy.

“Zug (train), Mama,” he’d say gleefully when I told him he could stay home. So, we would spend two days at the train station, watching the trains. It didn’t matter if it was cold or scorching hot—nothing else mattered except seeing those sad eyes light up with joy.

He’d point with his tiny hand every time a train arrived or departed.

I’d sit there with a book, pretending to read, but I was watching him.

“Let’s go eat, David,” I’d suggest.

“Nein, Zug! Kein Essen!” (No, train! Not eating)

But my free days were limited. I couldn’t spend all my time at the train station. We traveled sometimes, but it was never as magical for him as being by the train. He always wanted to visit bookstores, hunting for books with trains on the cover.

“Zug. Schön,” (Train. Beautiful), he’d say, admiring the pictures.

Then something remarkable happened—he started reading. He could read clearly and perfectly. He’d pronounce every word on the page. But speaking to us? That was still beyond him.

He also began writing. He would draw trains and write about them, giving them voices and stories. Slowly, we found a way to communicate. He was incredibly gifted—he could do math in his head, never needing help. But his grades at school were disastrous.

I asked his teacher about it.

“Yes, he writes perfectly,” she said. “But he can’t speak, and participation is essential.”

“And are you here to recognize his abilities,” I asked, “or to remind us that he was born different?”

The teacher sighed. “Look, I understand your frustration, but my hands are tied. We have a system, and we evaluate children according to that system. I can’t change it.”

And so, I searched for solutions. For years. But the answers weren’t there.

“Let me get this straight,” I said in one meeting. “If a child can’t speak, he will never graduate? He has no chance of attending university?”

“Exactly,” they replied.

“Then let him stay home. I’ll find a system that works for him.”

“We can’t allow that. School attendance is mandatory—it’s the law. Homeschooling isn’t permitted.”

I researched endlessly, hoping they were wrong. But the law was clear: school attendance was mandatory. Education, however, was not the priority.

I feel trapped, reduced to a number on a bureaucratic chart. My child doesn’t check the boxes on their chart, so he is set up to fail. It doesn’t matter what he knows—only what the system expects of him: to speak, to actively participate in class. Written work, in most subjects, isn’t even mandatory.

And so, we stumble through each day, each year. My boy, with the most beautiful eyes in the world, is weighed down by bad grades and a system that offers him no future. Yet, he knows the history and technology of every train in the world.

He possesses a brilliance they refuse to acknowledge—whether out of ignorance or choice.

I am at my limit...