Thank Your Parents (Because You Were A Shi#)

At times like these, when I am utterly confused about parenting, I feel awful about my parents.

I was a truly bad teen. There isn't much worse than having your child, once precious and pure and precocious, turn into a whirling dervish spewing flaming balls right before your eyes. That was me.

Part of it was being the gazelle child. I've always been tall. When I was in third grade, and I towered over the other kids, the doctors told my parents it was a natural side effect of insulin therapy. Insulin is a pseud0-steroid, you see. My body grew tall because it was trying to avoid growing fat.

Anyway, by the time I hit twelve I looked like a 17 or 18 year old. And that was the beginning of the end.

I am now dealing with the whirlwind of teenage tragedy that is caused by my pseud0-stepdaughter. She's sixteen and lacks knowledge of self, like most sixteen year olds. Her path through this world is unblinking, unseeing....truly unsympathetic.

And I'm reminded how horrific my own whimsy must have been for my parents. What it must have been like to have your 16 year old disappear for four days...then watch her arrive home looking like a sweaty concentration camp survivor, telling tales of "two ten-strips"....

Ugh. This must be karma. Although my pseudo-stepdaughter has yet to eclipse my own misbehavior, I can glimpse it in the future based on her actions from today. And I am afraid.

I'm afraid of caring. I'm afraid of the worry to come. I'm afraid of the incredible, heart-wrenching hurt that comes with loving someone deeply. I'm afraid of the disappointment that naturally arises when you see one's potential fall into the ashes. I'm afraid of the looks of disgust - because someone as old as me surely knows nothing about being a teenager.

Z reminds me that it wasn't that long ago that I was my pseudo-stepdaughters' age. In fact, when you get down to it, the age divide between her and I is less than it is between Z and I. My retort was that when I was 18, I became a 35 year old woman. In a way, I think that is because I did so much hard livin' between 11 and 18. I don't deserve a twenty-something stage.

Bless me buddha for I have sinned. I know not what trespasses I committed against those that loved me. Only now, in this karmic stage of reckoning, will I truly see.

I'm afraid.







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