Hot Mess

I am without a doubt, a hot mess. Within the past few weeks I have helped my sister in law and her family arrange a slideshow honoring the life of her mother who passed away after a long battle with a neurological disease that over a span of a few years simply eroded everything that was her. I’ve listened and tried to support my best friend when she got the news that her father, a man I grew up calling my “other father”, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This week, she called to tell me his outlook is bleak at best, with an estimated six months to live. Her son has been extremely depressed, not only contemplating suicide, but placing a gun into his mouth, unsure about whether it was loaded or not and pulled the trigger. I can only be grateful that the gun wasn’t loaded. I have played referee in my own house between two warring teenage girls, one of which is going through her own struggles with depression that goes hand in hand with an under active thyroid. Whether it’s one or both of those things, I’ll probably never know, but it does make life in my house tense, to say the very least. My own mother has been suffering anxiety attacks, one of which I helped her through during her visit to the dentist office. It’s jarring to walk into a room and see the woman who raised you reduced to a quivering, sobbing human unable to control her emotions over something so simple as needing an extra appointment to have fillings done.

Through all of these things, I have been trying to get through with a little grace, a little sanity left in tact, but every day the strength that I draw on seems to be dwindling. I’ve found myself in tears more than once this week, feeling completely lost and insecure as I try to help those around me that I care most about. This is not my typical I’ll get through this, I know what I’m doing, I’ve got this post. This one is the one where I say I feel lost. I’d love to say I know how to help my daughter, my best friend, my mother, my sister in law, but I’m at a loss. The only thing I can do right now is hold on tight and hope that when things start to look up that my sanity is still in tact and I’ve grown in some way through these experiences.

Catch 22

There is a catch 22 when it comes to parenting and many things that come with adulthood. We are often tossed into life unprepared in some way or another. We’re expected to know who we are, who and what we want to be and how to handle every situation, but most of us don’t. Not everyone is willing to own up to that, but I am. I have a good idea of who I am and who I’d like to continue to grow to be and yes, I am definitely still feeling it all out.

My daughter is 17 and in just a few short months, she’ll be considered a legal adult. She’ll be old enough to vote, go to war, smoke cigarettes. Like her mother at that age, she thinks she knows everything. Oh what I wouldn’t give to know everything again! What a blessing it would be to know how stupid adults must be and have the freedom of a young life stretching out in front of me.

For nearly a year, I have struggled to get her over those last few hurdles that she needs to face before adulthood. I’ve struggled with helping her find a job, pushing to remind her that she is a senior this year and once that’s over with, education becomes her choice. Like any other mom, I’ve struggled with teaching her the skills that she’s going to need like picking up dirty clothes, washing clothes and dishes, how to manage money (kind of hard to do without an income, no?)…Each hurdle I’m faced with an insurmountable resistance.

Now, to be fair to my daughter, she has an under active thyroid which affects her moods and has been dealing with depression. However, since things are rarely fair to me, I am going to be honest and say she has been caught lying multiple times, not just to me, but to other people as well. She appears to be compliant with certain requests or advice that’s tossed her way by myself, her therapist and a few others who care about her and mean well. That appearance is usually short lived and then we start back at square one again.

I am not just her mother, I am a person. I am flawed like anyone else and as I said before I’m trying to feel it all out for myself, and my children. I am, to be frank, doing the best I can without screwing up too much, just like most other parents. Here is that catch 22. Choosing to be a parent or getting surprised, we all get into this not knowing exactly what we’re doing 100% of the time. We are, in the best of times, wise from life experiences that are both good and bad. I have shared as much of my wisdom with my daughter as possible and because I’ve made a lot of bad choices in my life, my biggest hope is that she is able to learn from them before she needs to. I am doing my very best, but I get told far too often that my best isn’t good enough. When I seek out help, I’m told to “deal with it”. This doesn’t just happen with parenting either, this is the catch 22 of being an adult. You go about your life, trying to do your best to make the world a little better and sometimes you need help along the way, but sometimes when you’re unsure and need help, you’re told to deal with it.

I struggle every day to give my daughters what they need not only to be able to survive but to thrive. And then I struggle against thinking I’m a bad parent because I have children and a mother and friends and family who all criticize my parenting. And then I struggle when I have to push my daughter in ways that feel completely foreign to me. After I push, I struggle again to try to remind myself that I’m doing the best I can and I’m a good mom when those same people criticize me again for taking another approach.

I dealt with a very grouchy 17 year old yesterday who decided to stay up all night, yet again. I picked her up from therapy, promptly, only to find that she was in a “mood”. She took her mood out on me, on her sister, my dogs, even my doors. This morning I was met with resistance when she decided she wanted to stay home from school and I had to remind her that she simply can’t miss any more days. Why? Because she lied about being sick for over a week, to me, to three different doctors, to her father, to her therapist….And then I was met with the grouchy 17 year old again. And after I dropped her off at school? I bought myself breakfast (because morning drinking is socially unacceptable), came home, sat down and cried. This has been going on so long now, I just keep hoping for some middle ground, some peace, a little less resistance, a little more of the love and respect and patience I have shown returned to me.