Eighteen

What a crazy year!

I can't believe I made it and succeeded in raising a good daughter! Sure, we had moments of eye-rolling and heavy sighing. There was the occasional stomping off and door slam. I mean, perfection isn't possible when raising kids! I tally my successes differently. She never did what I used to do. Which also turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. By that, I mean the "good" things I did, she didn't do. The "bad" things I did, she also didn't do. But there's a middle ground we both share: caring too much for others, and not enough for ourselves, that we end up being used by those we help. Unfortunately, I still fall prey to, as my mom puts it, "having a big heart". Maybe it's our nature. We give people more chances than they deserve. I always hope that people will see the errors they've made, without having to be told out right, a kind of self-realization that seems, glaringly apparent now, elusive to most people. We'll never learn, we just keep hoping. There are rare occasions, where we realize we're just too damned accommodating, that we'll tell ourselves enough is enough and the next person to "use" us, gets the boot. Bridge burned. No going back. Then we feel bad. Maybe if we'd given that person, after a dozen chances already, one more chance... what suckers we are.

Let's go back to my awesome daughter! Unlike me, she's has never snuck out of the house and she's never even run out of the house in a fit of rage! She's always been where she says she's going to be (GPS verified, unknown to her, or maybe she did know?) and she's home when she's supposed to be. I don't really tell my daughter when to be home when she goes out with friends, she gives me a time and she sticks to it. All I've ever asked her to do was tell me where she was going and who she was going to be with. I'd just ask her to be careful and to make the right choices. I made no calls to parents to verify, no texts every ten minutes to check up... she's been very responsible. I dunno if it's because she has a developmental disability (or, as I suspect, Asperger's) but she seems incapable of lying. I used to lie to my parents all the time, especially where I was going and who I'd be with. Growing up where I did (population less than five HUNDRED), you had to have a solid story and means to cover your tracks or the town gossip would have you plastered all over her small town paper column in a heartbeat. She had eyes (nearly) everywhere! It also didn't help that I lived right next door to her best friend, so I had to get incredibly creative! Maybe it's not that my daughter is incapable of lying, it's that she's incapable of being a good liar, at least to me. No... that's not it. She's very blunt and honest. Which many people take the wrong way because she doesn't spare feelings, one of the main reasons I believe she's an Aspie, she doesn't really have empathy for others. Think Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, that would be how my daughter is.

Up until about a year ago, I felt I hadn't bonded with her. This greatly distressed me and I had no idea how to handle it. All I could do was continue to be there when she needed me and be the one who would teach her about personal responsibility. Then, she started dating a kid from school. I was relieved that she had found someone to "feel" something for but as time went by, I noticed it wasn't so much about "feeling" as it was the "age-appropriate thing to do". Afterall, most of the girls she knew, not necessarily her friends, had boyfriends. I'd had "the talk" with her a long time ago and thought it'd be a good time for a refresher course. Things snowballed from there, in a bittersweet way. She was getting sexually suggestive texts from her boyfriend that she didn't know how to respond to. She brought them to me and I was like a deer in the headlights. She was actually asking for my advice! Instead of telling her what to do, I told her to think about it. Think about what she wanted to do, how she felt and wanted to respond. I nervously waited. Days went by and I wanted to ask her what she did and get all up in her business. Then it came, she ended the relationship. Yes, she cried. A sign her dad took as her being heartbroken. But I knew my daughter, she wasn't sad. When I went in to talk to her, she was all smiles and her eyes said it all. All that frustration she'd been holding in, because of her boyfriend, had finally been released. She cried more out of relief than sadness. She wasn't ready for sex and wasn't comfortable being pushed in that direction by her boyfriend. Making the right, for her, choices. She'd done it! She'd faced a major teen hurdle and overcome it herself. She's been a lot more open since then.

I'd never had that with my mom. My mother is from another country, where customs are different and she refused to learn new things unless an adult she knew told her something. I never got the "sex talk" from my mom. My parents let the school deal with that by signing a permission slip to attend "Sex Ed". These days, now that I'm almost 40, my mom is reaching out, but in the way you would to a teenage girl. It's rather silly how she tries to explain to me how to handle life and its ups and downs. Too little, too late. I vowed to never be that distant to me kids while they're growing up. And I can proudly say, I've not turned in to my mother!

(drafted post I forgot about and I'm just now posting LOL oooops!)