I sit, almost paralyzed, as I watch my youngest daughter make decision after decision that only takes her farther and farther down a path akin to self destruction. Naturally, at just fifteen years old, this is all in the name of some high school “friends”. She made the decision long before she even entered through that big metal door, back in September, that the kids she met would be the suns her world would orbit. We, her parents, saw the scary potential in that. This sweet, tender hearted, compassionate and impressionable freshman girl was ready to live for whomever gave her the time of day and agreed to fill that fantasy shaped hole within her.
Over the months, since September, a few of these kids have changed a little. We’ve also seen that not all of her choices have been bad ones. She’s not a bad girl, but she has been willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of a few minutes being connected to popularity, no matter the cost. Fortunately, to my knowledge the cost hasn’t been grave. Yet. Of course, as with all school aged stuff, the drama is strong and nauseating.
Sadly, my husband and I stand on this threshold of our lives now and realize the end result we feared is upon us. While she isn’t pregnant, or a drug addict, or anything severely as blatant as that, she has traveled far down a negative path and has made it clear that her “friends” are the only people she cares about, and obviously they are the only ones who care about her… (Now, these friends do fit within those categories, sadly)
We’ve tried to talk to her. We’ve spoken in illustration, metaphor, love, reward, discipline, consequence and any other language we could dream up- but it became clear that to our audience we may as well have been Charlie Brown parents, Wah- Wah- Wahing our way through desperately trying to reason with a child who is sadly cast in the part of her own worst enemy.
The last real conversation we had about this, prior to leaving for vacation, was that in a heartbeat she would choose her “friends” over us. I wanted so badly for her to understand what happens with those high school friendships most of the time…
My freshman and sophomore reality was that I had friends which my own world also revolved around, in a deeply intimate and tragic way. Unlike her tale, I did not have a family in my corner, nor did the majority of my friends, and so we sort of became that for each other. It was often destructive and unhealthy, but it met needs, soothed the soul and made us feel tethered where nothing else did. I had shoe boxes filled to the brim with heavy on emotion, co-dependent notes and drawings. I often made my own reckless and self destructive decisions to please these people who were my everything. In the end, my experience may not be so different to other freshman/sophomore years.
At one point, {I don’t remember why} All of my friends wrote notes and sketches to me on this giant piece of uncut blue matting. Even as friendships changed and my then-boyfriend and I eventually broke up, that board become this sort of totem for me. Regardless of where I was, or what was happening in life, it somehow symbolized that I did have some worth and a place in this world. Even as I maneuvered through adulthood, the majority of those friendships long gone, the blue board remained pristine and unscarred. Should a corner get bent or nicked, I’d be devastated.
In time, the Blue Board’s power over me faded some but it still held some magic, well into my thirties. Then, the blue “wall” of Facebook emerged and faces behind those words and signatures friended me. At first it was this amazing exercise, but with it eventually came a lot of silly drama and petty childishness that I realized my life had no place (or interest) for. The very first time I saw the effects of this bleed into my family life, specifically my marriage, it was a no-brain decision to unfriend a whole bunch of people and accept the fact that I was an adult, and happy to be one.
The funny thing was, about a year and a half later, when we packed up our house to move across the country, I stumbled across that blue board in my attic. Would you believe seeing it brought a small smile to my lips, a slice of gratitude to my heart that I’d had some love in my youth, and then I myself folded that giant thing into a small square and packed it in my memorabilia box.
I hope someday she’ll see on her own that she is worth more than what some kids who only seem to want to encourage and bring out the worst in her, believe she is worth. I hope somehow she will begin to realize the bigger picture beyond the “fun” of the right now bad decisions before it further negatively affects her future. In the meantime, whether she likes it or not, I’ll keep on believing in her, loving her, and wah-wah-wahing until my face turns blue too.
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