Part 2 The Beginning and The End and The Yin and The Yang (Sort of)
An outline with emphasis on the dating decisions that helped shape my daughters choices.
The first day of ninth grade Biggest was in the courtyard of her new high school when she saw a sight that changed her life forever. Striding along with confidence, his tall Mohawk evilly glinting with deadly sharp tips. She gazed at his dog collar in shock and viewed his black combat boots in awe, as he proudly displayed his total rebellion against society within the circle of his Anarchy tattoo, her little preppy heart began to beat with terror.....or no ...it was
Love.
A shy, quiet girl she was in the throes of being tortured by a group of people she had thought were her friends. Here, there was a way out. Here, she would be safe. Here, they wouldn't bother her, and they didn't, ever again. Here, they couldn't hurt her and no, they never dared.
And that's when we began our journey into hell.
When you read or hear the words "Sudden change in appearance, new friends, different music, falling grades" they aren't kidding. They lined up like dominoes and proceeded to all fall down. It started with a new girl friend. At first I was glad. She had been hurt and lonely. Not for long. I call this friend the Evil One. I don't feel bad for that, I met her mother, she was trying. Next she was all in black and trying to look as scary as possible.
But this is about the boy. The Punk. He was part of the training crew that led this merry pack of little troublemakers along the way to the counseling center affiliated with the school. It was there that this clique practiced their skills in manipulation and playing the system. They thought it was a joke. They compared notes, made stuff up, shared information on what would get the biggest rise out of parents and teachers alike. When they went to school that is. You see my little poem at the top of the page. Sometimes kids are just being rotten little jackasses and their parents have nothing to do with it. Sometimes parents are losers. Like the "mother" who was letting these kids hang at her house and party during the day, providing them with beer and drugs, and trying to sleep with the boys. Some of these kids obviously were living hellish lives. They turned to each other to create family and a sense of love and belonging. They did not believe that parents could really want the best for you. What I find puzzling to this day is that the ones whose families did care fell into this belief to fit in with this group. Some, like my daughter, at first felt pity and being ostracized by their other peers, welcomed the sense of belonging they found there. She didn't have to feel anxious or impress these friends. But to really belong, you had to know that parents and school and even counselors were the enemy. Only the tribe could really be trusted. And this boy taught her that society was crap, she didn't have to take it from anyone. And he was a drummer in a punk band. Who could ask for anything more. The one thing she did learn was to rant and rave. I think she had held in every angry thought for 14 years so she did learn to vent a little bit and express her anger.
My child quickly learned that we have no power. All she had to do was tell us F U and walk out. All she had to do was make some threats, break some stuff. Punch some walls, physically attack and look...There they are. Just like her friends said. The people who don't care about you. They expect you to be accountable. They don't love you for who you are. If they did they wouldn't try to control you. They would never expect you to do something you didn't want to do or try to interfere with what makes you happy. One of the most dangerous signs you can hear from your teenager is this: Their friends call themselves a family and have a hierarchy with parent figures, brothers and sisters. Another is: You expect me to be perfect and what you want me to be. You don't respect me for who I am so why should I respect you. This is a system of behavior that is being used to manipulate teens by other teens and then used on family.
But one story at a time. She dated The Punk for awhile. Then he apparently dumped her. Which caused her already damaged self esteem to spiral downward. She spiraled deeper with it. We took her out of the school. But it didn't stop the problems. Over the next two years things continued to deteriorate. Every time we made some headway we were bashed back. One of the things about a peer group like this is that they don't really care about you. But, if after an extended period of time you are not seen they start to come out. I call them the cockroaches. Just when we would get her on her feet the calls would start. And it would start again. And she met another boy.
The Soul Destroyer. This one was self centered, abusive, and respected no one. This is when the drugs got more serious and really out of control behavior began. I don't judge his mother. She was on her own and did the best she could. She felt guilty for having to raise him alone. But the fact is she held him accountable for nothing. In the years I knew them he never did anything that wasn't really Someone Else's fault. We even tried to help him. Tried to point him in the right direction and encourage him. It wasn't what he wanted. During these years I watched my child turn in to someone I would avoid if I saw them walking towards me on the street. During this time she would sometimes be missing for days at a time, come home filthy, weighed barely 100lbs. Had black circles under her eyes that looked like she hadn't slept in days, sometimes she hadn't.
This is around the time we made our final attempt at having her hospitalized. She was hanging around a lot of street people and drifters. Then she met a different type of wanderer and was introduced to a kinder gentler rebellion.
Just before she turned 16 she ran away again. Well, she said I'm going to a Rainbow Gathering in Ocala Fl. And we said no you are not and she said F U, yes I am and left. We did the usual & went down to report her missing. By that time I think they had a rubber stamp with her name and address up at the police station. While she was there, something weird happened. She had told her friends she had heard about this gathering and they decided to go. They were going there to party. Biggest noticed more than the partying. She noticed a sense of peacefulness and community. She was, dare I say it, embarrassed by her friends behavior while they were there. She started to participate in the event. I don't really approve of everything she picked up there, but..... My daughter walked out of here a Punk, and came home a hippie. Peace and Love dude, well in less she drank too much and you really pissed her off.
The Peacemaker. I call him that because he was the one that allowed her to have peace with her family. I am saving the full story for another post but he fit in better with her new style of dreadlocks, sarongs & going barefoot. She shed the Soul Destroyer. She couldn't safely leave the group for us. With this new relationship they backed off. They went away. Something we had never been able to accomplish. He was older than we would have allowed in a normal world (20), but we weren't in the normal world. And he had a real job and basically normal life. She would report to us from time to time that she heard something about the Punk or the Soul Destroyer. They fell deeper into the pit. One day we learned the Soul Destroyer had been arrested for armed robbery in another state. The Punk, well he had disappeared. Been gone a long time. No one knew where he was. During those 2 years she continued to grow up and grow more rational. Maybe too normal, shortly after she turned 18 the peacemaker ended the relationship. We all felt the loss.
But Then. We had a time of uncertainty. Because of her past there was a real fear of Biggest falling back into the pit. The only people she had to go back to were her old friends. For a little while things were shaky. Then we noticed someone was dropping her off at the end of the road and never coming up to the house. Alarms went off! We confronted. We demanded. She said, "it's Ok. I promise." Not good enough. Who?
The Punk.
No Way. You have got to be kidding me. If he comes in my yard I will shoot him! Well, yes he knows that which is why he is dropping her off down the road. Then we hear a story about how he left town to work for his uncle and got straightened out and has his life together. About how they ran into each other at someones house and found out neither of them really wanted to be around these people anymore but didn't really know a lot of other people who weren't from the past. So they had been hanging around each other instead. And it was really Ok!
"I've heard that song before. You are 18. The 1st time you come in my house wasted you are out on your rear. Do not bring him anywhere near my home."
" But you don't understand. "
"Damn straight I don't."
A few days later an audience is requested. No joke. I want nothing to do with it. My husband walks outside to speak to The Punk, who I notice doesn't have a Mohawk anymore. He's wearing jeans and a tee shirt and sneakers. They had a guy talk. They came to an understanding. My husband said we had to give him a chance. Yeah right! Over my dead body. He could be nice but don't expect me to.
That was almost 5 years ago.
So does anyone have a good suggestion for a blog name for my son in law because The Punk doesn't quite seem to fit?
Nowadays he is more like Decent Guy who works hard at a good trade and likes to go fishing.
When she is angry and ranting and raving about something we like to tease him and say we are glad he came back to take responsibility for what he created.
Well.....he did.
© 2010 All Rights Reserved
Showing posts with label Level 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Level 3. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Letter
Lets start at the ending, A might as well place to start.....
When Biggest reached adulthood she wrote us a letter. We had told her that if we made mistakes that contributed to her problems as a teenager we were sorry, we had always done what we thought was best for her. This was her response. It is our single most precious possesion. Besides the girls themselves of course. It was the most emotional moment I had experienced since the night a couple years before when the news began with "It is 10:00 PM, do you know where your children are and who they are with?" And I burst into tears because the answer was Yes.
Following are excerpts from the letter, Don't mind the Ya'll, it was a stage.
We were young parents but unlike you might suspect, parents who were not responsible enough, we were over responsible. We were crazed "create a perfect environment for our child" parents. Maybe we should have just relaxed and had a few beers.
In retrospect this is our opinion of things we might have handled differently.
What we did wrong:
1.Overprotecting. I don't mean mean not letting her play with others or participate in sports. We sheltered her a great deal when she was little. We were determined to not let modern culture spoil our childs innocence but it caused her to be out of loop in social situations. As an already critically shy child it singled her out and gave other kids ammunition for teasing. In a less shy and more socially confident child it may not have been as big a deal. I still believe in careful monitoring but relaxed my somewhat over the top standards with the other girls, staying involved and drawing lines and discussing things I find inappropriate.
Also really paranoid worry. We did not let her go on out of town field trips with school ( These were school rewards for honor roll and serving as a patrol.) and would not consider letting her go to the Arts magnet schools our other daughters later attended because it would involve a long bus ride into the city. Yeah, that bad. 3 of her best friends from elementary school attended them and excelled. This is almost unforgivable. She not only was separated from good friends with a common interest, she was/is a terrific writer. We were idiots.
That didn't work.
2. Panic: During middle school she did continue to excel but began to have more social problems with the group she belonged to. We were still more strict than most of her friends parents. I will tell specifics of what happened with her in another post but when we first saw signs of real rebellion the 1st year of high school we panicked. This behavior change was so uncharacteristic and extreme and the change so sudden. (Within a period of 3 months) we cracked down hard, all at once. Tightened up more. But, she had learned the game of "Oh, you think that's bad, watch this". So..
That didn't work.
3. Yanking her out of school and sending her to her Grandparents for a couple months, and setting up to homeschool for the next two years to get her away from her new friends worked temporarily. But while it is not illegal for your child to disobey you, walk out or outright run away, It is illegal to imprison them in your home so ultimately......Yeah,
That didn't work.
4. Using bribery to get her to counseling and try to find out what was wrong. That worked long enough for her to play some games, practice manipulation skills and tell them she was fine and explain she didn't believe in using drugs (legal ones anyway) to alter her emotions, and a lot of other bull until she got what she wanted. So really,
That didn't work.
There are many things we did over the years to try to fix the problem. Ultimately, in this case it was a situation that could only fix itself, in time, when she was ready to remember who she was and relax her own standards for herself that she could not live up to, and to use the self confidence she had gained by false means, in a way that was true to her heart and her real nature. She had created an alter ego that was very extreme and fed by substance abuse in order to overcome her fears and find power. There were several different factors. Besides the bullying issues she faced that began the domino effect, in her later teens she was able to identify that she had a real anxiety disorder. Apparently, from what we can tell, her extreme shyness and attachment to me made the normal response of trying to separate from parents and begin to grow on your own turn drastic. She had to violently separate herself from us and all that we stood for. The friends she made reinforced this behavior. She fell in with a group that new all the tricks to causing chaos in a household. ( The funny side, if there is such a thing is "that didn't really work" either. She is still a Mama's & Daddies girl, her poor husband!). Another possible factor was that she had been an eerily good child. We seldom had to discipline her and the natural reward of how people treat you for good behavior made her a little spoiled. When she 1st started having consequences it was almost like she couldn't believe things weren't going her way, she didn't have a correlation and it really made her angry. And we figured out that she also suffered from severe PreMenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. This disorder when mixed with alcohol abuse resulted in her behavior becoming extremely violent and she made verbal threats to kill herself and us. This made it necessary to call in law enforcement for a Baker Act on two occasions. On one of these occasions earlier in the day she actually agreed on me taking her myself rather than call the police. They would not accept her because she said she didn't want to kill herself while she was there. That was a fun weekend. The second time they said she had a .08 alcohol level, that was probably all it was, she needed rehab. They ignored our pleas that she was behaving abnormally while sober too. Rehab only works if you want to be there. She didn't. When I later discussed it with her she saw the correlation between the drinking while having a bad menstrual cycle herself and we all learned to recognize the signs when she was feeling out of control and leaning toward a binge.
In her own words: "I drank because I could talk to people when I was drunk, I wasn't afraid." She still struggles with perfectionism and anxiety when she can't control a situation. She has learned to recognize it for what it is and is working through that.
It is really almost surreal when I think of her change from one person into another, and I do mean a person who did not resemble my child in any way, and then back into the first person.
An illustration of that happened recently. A few years ago this was a girl who ripped the phone out of the wall when we tried to call 911. Once she was walking to a convenience store late at night and was accosted by a man who tried to push her against the wall. She pulled a knife on him, backed him down and told him she was going to kill him, and he left.
The same girl was married recently. She needed to change her name on her ID. She doesn't drive but works a block away from the DMV. She insisted that I drive her there. Her new husband had asked her to keep her middle name instead of her maiden name on her ID. She didn't really want to but decided it didn't matter. I don't really get it but my husband did the same thing and so did I, so whatever. Anyway, while we were waiting she told me I had to stand at the counter with her when they called her up. I said, "no I'm not doing that, you're a grownup." We went back and forth about it. She would'nt let it go and I finally agreed. I knew why I didn't want to walk up. I had cried a little bit at her wedding but it didn't really seem real. As we approached the counter I had to suck it up. It felt like this was the moment I was truly giving my daughter away. She was losing our name. She didn't fully belong to us any more. If walking up there with her seemed weird it was bad enough, but I was praying the clerk wouldn't look at my face and see me welling up. And then I realized.....why she wanted me... standing there.
© 2010 All Rights Reserved
When Biggest reached adulthood she wrote us a letter. We had told her that if we made mistakes that contributed to her problems as a teenager we were sorry, we had always done what we thought was best for her. This was her response. It is our single most precious possesion. Besides the girls themselves of course. It was the most emotional moment I had experienced since the night a couple years before when the news began with "It is 10:00 PM, do you know where your children are and who they are with?" And I burst into tears because the answer was Yes.
Following are excerpts from the letter, Don't mind the Ya'll, it was a stage.
"I know I've pulled a lot of stunts and I'm sure I'll have more, but thanx for always being there, and I'm sorry for those stunts. I know I put Ya'll through a lot"
"I know you think you did some things wrong when I was growing up and I guess you felt you had a little to do with my problems-but you didn't, nothing is your fault.
If I aplogize for everything it will take a book so I hope you know all the things I did I'm sorry for and thankful that Ya'll still talk to me, and most of all I love you very much.
"P.S. Mom I broke your nice red pen writing this, for that I am sorry.... I hid it in the couch.(Happy face drawing)" ( Who does this kid take after : )? )
We were young parents but unlike you might suspect, parents who were not responsible enough, we were over responsible. We were crazed "create a perfect environment for our child" parents. Maybe we should have just relaxed and had a few beers.
In retrospect this is our opinion of things we might have handled differently.
What we did wrong:
1.Overprotecting. I don't mean mean not letting her play with others or participate in sports. We sheltered her a great deal when she was little. We were determined to not let modern culture spoil our childs innocence but it caused her to be out of loop in social situations. As an already critically shy child it singled her out and gave other kids ammunition for teasing. In a less shy and more socially confident child it may not have been as big a deal. I still believe in careful monitoring but relaxed my somewhat over the top standards with the other girls, staying involved and drawing lines and discussing things I find inappropriate.
Also really paranoid worry. We did not let her go on out of town field trips with school ( These were school rewards for honor roll and serving as a patrol.) and would not consider letting her go to the Arts magnet schools our other daughters later attended because it would involve a long bus ride into the city. Yeah, that bad. 3 of her best friends from elementary school attended them and excelled. This is almost unforgivable. She not only was separated from good friends with a common interest, she was/is a terrific writer. We were idiots.
That didn't work.
2. Panic: During middle school she did continue to excel but began to have more social problems with the group she belonged to. We were still more strict than most of her friends parents. I will tell specifics of what happened with her in another post but when we first saw signs of real rebellion the 1st year of high school we panicked. This behavior change was so uncharacteristic and extreme and the change so sudden. (Within a period of 3 months) we cracked down hard, all at once. Tightened up more. But, she had learned the game of "Oh, you think that's bad, watch this". So..
That didn't work.
3. Yanking her out of school and sending her to her Grandparents for a couple months, and setting up to homeschool for the next two years to get her away from her new friends worked temporarily. But while it is not illegal for your child to disobey you, walk out or outright run away, It is illegal to imprison them in your home so ultimately......Yeah,
That didn't work.
4. Using bribery to get her to counseling and try to find out what was wrong. That worked long enough for her to play some games, practice manipulation skills and tell them she was fine and explain she didn't believe in using drugs (legal ones anyway) to alter her emotions, and a lot of other bull until she got what she wanted. So really,
That didn't work.
There are many things we did over the years to try to fix the problem. Ultimately, in this case it was a situation that could only fix itself, in time, when she was ready to remember who she was and relax her own standards for herself that she could not live up to, and to use the self confidence she had gained by false means, in a way that was true to her heart and her real nature. She had created an alter ego that was very extreme and fed by substance abuse in order to overcome her fears and find power. There were several different factors. Besides the bullying issues she faced that began the domino effect, in her later teens she was able to identify that she had a real anxiety disorder. Apparently, from what we can tell, her extreme shyness and attachment to me made the normal response of trying to separate from parents and begin to grow on your own turn drastic. She had to violently separate herself from us and all that we stood for. The friends she made reinforced this behavior. She fell in with a group that new all the tricks to causing chaos in a household. ( The funny side, if there is such a thing is "that didn't really work" either. She is still a Mama's & Daddies girl, her poor husband!). Another possible factor was that she had been an eerily good child. We seldom had to discipline her and the natural reward of how people treat you for good behavior made her a little spoiled. When she 1st started having consequences it was almost like she couldn't believe things weren't going her way, she didn't have a correlation and it really made her angry. And we figured out that she also suffered from severe PreMenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. This disorder when mixed with alcohol abuse resulted in her behavior becoming extremely violent and she made verbal threats to kill herself and us. This made it necessary to call in law enforcement for a Baker Act on two occasions. On one of these occasions earlier in the day she actually agreed on me taking her myself rather than call the police. They would not accept her because she said she didn't want to kill herself while she was there. That was a fun weekend. The second time they said she had a .08 alcohol level, that was probably all it was, she needed rehab. They ignored our pleas that she was behaving abnormally while sober too. Rehab only works if you want to be there. She didn't. When I later discussed it with her she saw the correlation between the drinking while having a bad menstrual cycle herself and we all learned to recognize the signs when she was feeling out of control and leaning toward a binge.
In her own words: "I drank because I could talk to people when I was drunk, I wasn't afraid." She still struggles with perfectionism and anxiety when she can't control a situation. She has learned to recognize it for what it is and is working through that.
It is really almost surreal when I think of her change from one person into another, and I do mean a person who did not resemble my child in any way, and then back into the first person.
An illustration of that happened recently. A few years ago this was a girl who ripped the phone out of the wall when we tried to call 911. Once she was walking to a convenience store late at night and was accosted by a man who tried to push her against the wall. She pulled a knife on him, backed him down and told him she was going to kill him, and he left.
The same girl was married recently. She needed to change her name on her ID. She doesn't drive but works a block away from the DMV. She insisted that I drive her there. Her new husband had asked her to keep her middle name instead of her maiden name on her ID. She didn't really want to but decided it didn't matter. I don't really get it but my husband did the same thing and so did I, so whatever. Anyway, while we were waiting she told me I had to stand at the counter with her when they called her up. I said, "no I'm not doing that, you're a grownup." We went back and forth about it. She would'nt let it go and I finally agreed. I knew why I didn't want to walk up. I had cried a little bit at her wedding but it didn't really seem real. As we approached the counter I had to suck it up. It felt like this was the moment I was truly giving my daughter away. She was losing our name. She didn't fully belong to us any more. If walking up there with her seemed weird it was bad enough, but I was praying the clerk wouldn't look at my face and see me welling up. And then I realized.....why she wanted me... standing there.
© 2010 All Rights Reserved
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