The Longest Post EVER!

I find that I want to blog when I'm restless or anxious or stressed. Those days, those months, those years that are quiet and without excessive drama don't seem to warrant public disclosure of intimate thoughts and ideas. It's the moments of despair or loneliness or exasperation that drive me to publicly expound on the circumstances of my uneasiness. Why is that? I'm not so much asking you, as I'm asking myself. And when I answer myself I feel sure it is because if it is documented and spelled out definitively, it is justified....the uneasy feeling. And the me that answers inside my mind is quick to add that it must also help me to quiet whatever has triggered the disquiet. Psychologically speaking, I'm sure that's true.

This day of this month of this year, it is the act of parenting that pierces the complacency. Maybe not so much the act as the trial; and actually not so much the trial as the responsibility to do it adequately. A decade and a half ago, when I was not an adult but not a child either, I was not so naive as to believe I was capable of effectively navigating the journey on which I'd embarked. I was smart. I'd read the statistics that this society uses to resign us to a category that fits nicely on a graph. I knew that rearing a child without the benefit of money and wisdom and patience would be difficult at best. I was mostly right. With intelligence and sheer determination, I was able to conquer all of those. Understanding, of course, that money and wisdom and patience are infinitely developing elements if you evolve in ways that childhood parables and Sunday school teachers lead you to believe you should. Upon reflection I realize I overlooked a different, but important, element. Maybe I considered it and shrugged it off. Maybe it never occurred to me. In either case, I under(never)estimated the dynamics of psychology; that psychology that invents guilt whether appropriate or not....the psychology that places the need for love and validation above common sense. So I find myself, 16 years and some months later, aware of, but still bound by that miscalculated component of parenting.

When I married all those years ago, I suppose it was because it was expected. It was possibly even necessary. Mostly though, it was designed to fail. All the statistics and graphs and day-time talk shows predicted it. After all, as a quasi-adult I couldn't fathom the complexity of marital union or love or postpartum depression. As a teenager though, invincible and willful, I was compelled to invent an exception to rule. Not to say that I ever had faith in my endeavor. If I did, I can't recall now. Even for all the inevitability of matrimonial demise, children were born-actual pieces of me-not improperly described as extensions of my soul; apart but not separate. In the end, and now as I see it in history, that psychology factor that I had failed to grasp manifested in the creation of those extensions not separate from me. It took root and persisted into the very core of my essence; unbeknown and undetectable to me.

When the marriage finally failed, or rather was officially acknowledged as a failure, it was as difficult and dreadful as one might expect. Confirmed rejection never comes without hard feeling, no matter how inevitable. There was the oft-encountered, but tired, battle for parental titles that reduce your family to primary and joint participants. There was extensive placing of blame. There were court dates upon court dates. There were confrontations and allegations and general indictments of character. Aside from all of that tribulation though, there was that psychology....its roots invading my days, my thoughts, and my relationships with my children.

They were young....I doubt the second of the two even has recollections of her own that weren't born of the re-telling of this event or that. The older, though....she remembers. An innocent victim, she recalls the arguments and name-calling and various broken adornments. She recollects the cursing and the temporary break-ups. She can recall things that I would readily exchange all my days to erase. It isn't appropriate for parents to infect the lives of their children in those ways. I knew then and I know now. But, I participated still; and for that I am eternally guilty.

In the months and couple of years immediately following the dissolution of that destined-to-fail marriage, I was hyper-focused on the damage already done. I was powerless to erase it so, alternatively I established a pattern of denial and leniency to relieve my own guilt; to overwrite and override my egregious parental irresponsibility. I disregarded her insolence, that innocent casualty of my inadequacy , postulating that it was part of a necessary and expected process. I ignored her disdain for my boyfriend-now-husband and denied him the authority to discipline or even address her disrespect. I allowed her the liberty to argue against my preference and opinion on matters of all sort. In my mind, I was allowing space...encouraging independence...diminishing my guilt for robbing her of the childhood that was her entitlement. I believed I was doing all the right things in the right order that culminate in that graduation/wedding/firstborn event wherein she would thank me for my patience & insight and she would sincerely apologize for all the times my heart was broken. I thought if I assisted her in establishing her own boundaries, rather than create them for her, she would learn some lesson that children are supposed to learn for later use as a productive member of society. I didn't succeed.
A couple of years turned into years and years. Insolence became blatant defiance. Disdain was replaced by vehement hostility. Then somewhere, somehow I lost the upper hand. And over time, I became resigned to the idea that I was powerless to stop what had developed. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I could never reverse it, even if I did find a way to stop it. I often appeased her for the sake of tranquility. I overlooked the bad things, in part because I have been relieved that I've not had to suffer the angst commonly associated with a young woman's moral fortitude and public reputation. Teachers and parents of her friends rave about her manners and attitude and helpful nature. I believe with 99% certainty that she doesn't drink, do drugs, or have sex. So I elected to overlook much of her bad behavior as if my disregard was some sort of barter for her moral virtuosity. And so it has been: we've danced this precarious psychological waltz, she and I, month after month...year after year; a lifetime it seems.

Eventually, and maybe too late, I realized the power (I thought was mine) had shifted. Her will to win was only bolstered by my feelings of guilt. SHE was telling ME how I was supposed to parent and I was compliant because I believed her when she said I was not being a good mother. Inside my head, she would never have cause to verbalize it if she didn't believe it. AND if she believed it, I must have been failing miserably at something. So when I come home and the dishes haven't been done as I've directed that morning....I accept some rambling excuse about being so sore from soccer practice and hand her $20 to go to a movie if she'll just go ahead and get it done now. When I ask her to clean her room day after day and it's not done on Friday afternoon, I believe her when she says she'll work on it all day tomorrow if she can just go spend the night with her friend tonight. When she announced to me (and most of the town) that I shouldn't drink because I would go to hell otherwise, I stopped drinking altogether. Understand that I was no raging alcoholic. I wasn't neglecting or abusing my family. I wasn't breaking any laws. It may be arguable that, for a short period of time, I drank more often than some find acceptable...but never so much or often that it interfered with my job or needs of my family or daily functions of life. Still...I quit. And once I acquiesced in that regard, she began to insist that I had a parental obligation to attend HER church. Again, as a family this time, we complied in hope of meeting her obvious emotional needs so as to find a semblance of peace for all of us. And all the while, she continues to disregard the majority of my requests and directions. She verbally berates everyone in our home. She physically confronts my husband. She persecutes anyone whose opinion is different than hers. Most of the time, she does it all in the name of concern for salvation of those she judges. One might think that her behavior directly contradicts the causes for which she claims to stand....that idea is lost on her.

An unfortunate consequence resulting from this situation: My second daughter, 3 years younger, becomes a little more empowered, every single day, to behave the same way. She offers up the same disrespect with the same attitude using the same words.

There is no doubt that I have not been a perfect mother. There have been times in this 16 years that I may not have even been a good mother. What I have been is the best mother I know how to be in any given circumstance, good or bad. I'm not so full of myself as to pretend I know how to mother 16 and 13 year old daughters...this is my first go round and there have been mistakes aplenty.

So....now I've arrived at the reason for the unsettled feeling that prompted me to post: No more. This behavior is unacceptable and it stops here and now.

I am the parent and they are the children. It doesn't work the way they would like to orchestrate it. Like me, and my parents before me, and generations and generations...we do not have a right or reasonable expectation to tell our parents how to parent us. If our needs are being met and, furthermore, our desires fulfilled and we're not being abused....we do not have the right to judge our parents as inadequate. As children, the concession is in our inability to meet our own needs and desires. Until that point, general respect for those who provide those things is necessary and expected. There comes a time in all of our lives that we look back and assess the capacity of our parents and their ability to meet our needs in the years of our minority. And inevitably, there will be something that we deem unacceptable and inadequate and we will profess to never be party to those same methods or words or ideas. We all want to be better than our parents. It's surely part of our inherent desire to improve the human race.

There was a dramatic situation blown to ridiculous proportions here in my home a few days ago. The details are unimportant because the generality is the same as it has been over and over again. It began with my children chastising me, via cellular device, for not behaving in a way they deemed acceptable at that moment. When I returned home just over an hour later, I naturally addressed the issue. What ensued was a barrage of personal insults, judgments, and outrageous disrespect directed at me, their mother. It ultimately culminated in something akin to a circus stunt gone awry.
I decided they were moving the 4 blocks across town to live with their father. I don't love them any less. I'm not going to cease being their mother. I'm heartbroken and tearful. I don't know what else to do.

I hope the lesson won't be lost.