I got “Mean Girl’ed” by My Own Daughter

I know adolescence sucks.  I remember trying to be cool and popular and get the boys to like me, even at age 14 when I wasn’t even allowed to have a boyfriend.  I know it sucks starting 9th grade in a new school where you’re the newbie and the seniors scare you, although I honestly don’t remember why.  I do remember it sucked though.  I’m not an antique, YET…  But my husband and I do have rules and while my 14 year old daughter gets pretty much everything she wants, she just wasn’t allowed to start dating 1 on 1 yet.  That was it.  She’s really into sports so I actually believed her when she told me she didn’t yet care about boys.  And, up until this year she was a great student.  So I took her at her word on most things.  Dumb.  Very dumb.

But this Spring insanity overtook our home.  Like something from the depths of Hell, puberty broke loose from it’s normal retraints and my daughter, my beautful, loving daughter starting lying.  And lying, and lying some more and even lying about stuff she didn’t have to lie about!  She would look me straight in the eye and tell me things, like she didn’t have a date to the shool dance and oh how angelic she looked when she did it.  All the while of course she did have a date with some boy I never heard of.  And guess what, if she had come to us and told us the truth, and we met the kid and if they were going in a group, we could have worked it out.  But no…the lie was easier.

Then over the summer she lied about having a “Finsta.”  If you don’t know what that is and you are a parent, find out.  It’s a shadow Instagram account where they post what is “actually” happening in their lives.  Not the account you follow…a secret one.  And it takes some hacking to find.  I found my daughter’s on accident.  I found it because I found her best friend’s Finsta and of course with all the teenage stupidity that comes with the lying, comes my girl’s genius decision to follow her friend’s Finsta with her own Finsta, USING HER REAL NAME.  Well the good news?  There were no naked pictures and and a minimum of foul language, etc.  Somewhat all to be expected I guess.  Result:  She lost her iPhone for a week and cried like we locked her in the dungeon for a month.  But she swore up and down that was it…she would never lie again, especially about something as important as internet safety.  I begged my husband to switch her to an Android so I could sufficiently monitor the phone (iPhones are notoriously hard to mangage…just ask the FBI).  But he felt bad for her.  SuperDad wanted her to have all the cool stuff and he believed her… “she’s a good kid,” he said   “She won’t lie again.”  Can I just say LOL MOFO!!!

Then just this week it all blew up.  Since the start of the school year she’s gone from a straight A student to C’s and some B’s.  So, she lost use of her phone again.  So next, I found her on my younger daughter’s iPad.  Using an app she has been expressly forbidden to use:  SnapChat.  BTW, if you think Finsta’s bad, SnapChat is a parent’s nightmare packaged as a free app.  In that account (again my formerly brilliant child used HER OWN EMAIL ADRESS), I found that my daughter has no less than 3 different guys she “hangs” with, 2 of whom she snatched from her so-called friends who seem to not be willing to do anything about it.  She’s 14 for God’s sake.   I also found out she curses like my Dad who WAS AN ACTUAL TRUCKDRIVER.  And the worst thing of all, for me anyway…in order to get attention from one of these boys, she was bitching about me.  She was saying that because I have PTSD and depression, that I yell at her and take her phone and even though I apologize if I get very upset, it’s all just too much for her to handle.

You see,  I told her all about my illness last winter so in case she started feeling sad or anxious she’d come to me and her dad about it.  Instead I’m reading about it on the app from Hell.  I’m surprised she didn’t take pictures of me when I was being cruel by making her empty the dishwasher, which is her only damned chore.  I love my daughter, but I know depression and anxiety and she doesnt have either.    She does have a huge case of hormones though.  And she used me and my illness to get attention from this boy I never heard of, whom she’s been meeting behind our backs and from God only knows who else. Every Mom in the school probably knows I’m ill.  Given my social anxiety, this is a very bad thing for me.  The idea of spending time with any of these cliquey women (guess what… it’s the same in high school with the Moms as it is with the girls) had always caused me some anxiety but now, I’m getting panic attacks about it.   And all because my daughter is boy crazy…and a Mean Girl apparently. She Mean Girl’ed me into bed for the last few days and I feel like I’m the one in 9th grade.

Without a tear, she apologized for hurting my feelings.  You know when she did cry though?  When she heard she’ll never see that damned iPhone again.  Now I know what really matters.

I’ve Ruined a Rite of Passage for My Beautiful Daughter

Parenting with Depression and Anxiety

I’ve decided this will be a running theme for my page.  How can you be a good parent (or “good-enough” as my therapist keeps insisting as I forever beat myself up), when you are too depressed to be a good anything?  Maybe laying it down here for others to read will make it easier to heed the inner voice telling me not to say and do the crap to my kids that I am constantly hating myself afterwards for doing.   Just this week it happened again.  And lately it seems that it happens despite lengthy conversations with myself about how to handle a given situation properly because I do know how to do what’s right.  I’ve had enough therapy to know that much.  I go in with a plan and I manage to blow it up anyway.

Put simply I ruined my daughter’s “graduation” ceremony from Middle to High-School. She was sooooo excited the whole day and I’m afraid her “rational” exhuberance makes me edgy, to say the least.  It’s hard to be miserable in the face of such unabashed joyfulness.   It bugs me.  I KNOW…I’M AWFUL (apologies to my therapist, but this is some well-deserved self-flagellation).  The truth is, mostly thanks to her Dad, my daughter can be presumptive to say it nicely.  My parents would have called it demanding and self-centered and they were wrong to do so, my broken spirit as a child being the result.  My daughter is expecting that all her needs will be met on most days.  She’s 14!  I think all 14-year old girls are kind of like that, no?  But on the day of her 8th grade graduation, she was feeling particularly like the center of the universe.  And I, as usual, was feeling tired and grouchy and wanting to be left to wallow in my own dark mood.

When she started texting me at 2pm from school if we could go out to dinner for her special day I got annoyed because she wouldn’t take no for an answer.  It was a school night and by the time the ceremony was over it would be 8 or 8:30, I explained.  That was simply way to0 late to be going out for her younger brother and for Dad who has to get up at 5:30 am for work.  I was particularly annoyed because she just broke her iPhone for the 2nd time in three months and she was texting me and arguing with me about it from her friend’s phone.  So now, not only am I mean Mom but it’s all documented on her friend’s cell phone!  This is when I had the self-talk.  I knew she’d be a bit out of control this day and that she didn’t mean to embarrass me and that it was her special day.  I was going to remain cool.  Right. Great plan.

She comes in an hour or so later and starts for the 20th time that month to complain about what is for dinner.  No matter what I say or how much effort it’s taken, she asks if we can have pizza instead.  (Sometimes it’s even worse, that is, when the dreaded macaroni and cheese request is made).  Of course I know she doesn’t mean to hurt me by being dismissive, even though cooking when I’m depressed feels like the equivalent of having a tooth pulled. Then before 10 minutes has passed, she’s berating her brother and sister for not coming to the ceremony.  As if all these 2 young ones want to do is sit in the high school gym for 2 hours and listen to the teachers congratulate themselves and give enlightened speeches to a bunch of rowdy 8th graders who aren’t listening.  Then, moments later, she stopped speaking to her sister for taking the piece of bread that  she  wanted.  I said what I planned on saying earlier…”That’s enough now.  I know you’re excited, but you need to take it easy.”  The cliche “in one ear and out the other,” would certainly apply here.  But then the final straw came.

Twenty minutes before we were to leave I went to change.  I was told I needed to dress up. Had I known I’d have to sit in the bleachers (oh my God they are uncomfortable) I would have refused.  But I went along.  I was steaming from the ears a bit at that point and then she gets me good…she needs her outfit ironed.  Ok, I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal.  It isn’t.  What kind of mother, good, good-enough, not that great even, would complain about ironing her daughter’s outfit for a graduation ceremony.  It just came on the back of 10 other annoyances that hit me when I was in that mood.  And I lost it.  I remembered my self-chat, and I said screw that…it’s all about ME now.  I told her she needs to think about other people once in awhile and not ask me just as I’m about to get dressed to iron (God I hate ironing).  I told her if she asks me for pizza one more time instead of the of dinner I planned I will never buy pizza again.  I told her if she was rude to her younger brother and sister one more time that week, she’d be staying in all weekend.  And I got a million, “Okay’s” in repsonse.  She looked taken aback.  As if I was just completely insane to be mean to her on this day.  She looked hurt.  She, after all, was graduating from 8th grade.  A very huge deal to her and it should have been to me also.  She looked at me like I should have known all this and what the hell was wrong with Mom now….and she was 100% right.

Why is it so damned hard to do what’s right when you know what’s right?  Why does this depression have to make me be my mother?  Why, when you know these things does the illness get the better of you most of the time?  Why can’t I beat it?  If not for me, then for them?   All I can do now is apologize and try again.  I’m forever trying again.  Maybe when she’s my age grading my progress, I’ll get partial credit for effort.  It’s all I can hope for because if she feels about me when she’s my age as I do about my mother…I don’t think I’ll want to exist.  God help me.