This past week’s conversations with a few people seemed to take me down a road that none of us are prepared for:

PARENTHOOD

One friend is the parent having a tough time getting their kid to understand they don’t need to do something that would cost them tons of money - classic case of “kid knows better than the parent.” Another friend is the child who is so angry with his parents and how they treated him. Both friends are valid in their feelings - Frustration: why won’t they listen to my wisdom? and Anger: why did they do that?

I had nothing to say to help either of them because I’m going through some stuff with my son right now and dealing with BOTH sides my friends individually presented me with. My son is angry with me and hasn’t spoken to me in a well over a month; I hadn’t seen him for almost a month. He lives in my house, so for that to happen, he’s pretty mad at me. I don’t know why, because he won’t talk to me. If we did talk about why he’s so mad at me, it wouldn’t necessarily make me change my mind about how the situation started, nor my stance on said situation, but at least I would understand from his viewpoint, and we could discuss it from a place of mature adults rather than parent and child.

Which is hard to do as a parent sometimes. Us parents are so protective of our children and we want the best for them so badly, we forget that our kids are individuals that need to make their own mistakes to learn from them. I was not a very good mom to my son. Why? Because I never let him fail. I either did the work for him or caught him when he fell - both literally and figuratively. I gave him everything I could afford to give him - he never had to earn his money or his keep (until I got married and his step-father decreed). Hell, when he was a teen and he was given a list of chores to do by his step-father because I was working damn near 72 hours straight, I did most of it so Kris wouldn’t go nuclear. Why did I do all that? Why wouldn’t I let my son fail? Why wouldn’t I let him do or not do the chores?

ENTER CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

Because I was taught as a child that the only way for me to receive love from my parents was to do anything and everything they asked and more. I thought because I didn’t do something, they wouldn’t love me and because I wasn’t doing enough, that was why Mom and Dad got divorced. Because I wanted to be “counted on” by my son so it fulfilled that deep-seeded desire to receive his love. If he counted on me to do everything for him, he wouldn’t leave me like my mom did. Hell, when my son moved to West Virginia I was a complete wreck (although I hid it pretty well despite the fact that I was basically living with my boyfriend and subconsciously just transferred those feelings onto him - which is probably why the boyfriend is now the “ex,” but that’s a topic for another time).

It has only been in this last year or so that I’ve come to realize this: I can tell you unequivocally that I love my son. I would step in front of a bullet for him. The decisions I have made since March of 1997 have been what I thought was best for my son - even the decisions based on my ill-conceived thoughts of how to show and receive love. It doesn’t really help MY current situation - can’t talk to someone who doesn’t want to even look at you - but I hope some day he will realize that just as my parents screwed up in how to show and give love to me, I screwed up in how to show and give love to my son. Sometimes the love us parents show our children is what is needed; like, “don’t touch that! Hot!” and you touch it to find out what hot is; and sometimes it’s rooted in whatever nonsense we’ve cooked up in our heads - like my misguided deeds of not letting my son fail thinking I was doing right by him. Both scenarios are based in love, but one is more self-centered than the other.

I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating on why I wouldn’t let my son learn from his mistakes (I hate saying fail because if you learn, it’s not failing) and I had justified it by “the world is shitty enough, why ruin it for him.” Which, in hindsight, was me masking my childhood trauma of abandonment. I felt abandoned by my father when my older sisters came with us to North Carolina. I was abandoned by my mother when she and Dad got divorced - the trauma was amplified when us kids found birthday cards from our mother (that were hidden away by our father and step-mother), but there was none for me. By not letting my son learn as a youngster, I was unknowingly setting him up to be dependent on me - he would never leave me. Which explained why getting him to do chores as a teenager was like pulling chicken teeth. It was a constant battle and it was one I always gave in and gave up - because my son knew what buttons to push to get what he wanted. Get mad at me then give me the silent treatment, which in my eyes means I’m not doing enough to love you and if I don’t do enough, you’ll leave me, so lemme just do all this for you. The problem now is, I know what my triggers are; I know how I react to said triggers - bottle everything up and just do it. No more. I am not going to be manipulated any longer, just as I am not going to manipulate my child. I love my son, and even though he may never speak to me, nor make eye contact with me again, I will always love him.

None of us came with an instruction manual and your parents, my parents, even you, dear reader, are just doing our best with what we know how, no matter how screwed up our thinking is. The key? Understand we are ALL human and NONE of us are perfect, but for those who are trying to understand where they made a left turn at Albuquerque, give them what you felt you weren’t getting; patience, comprehension, grace and most of all do it from a mindset of HEALED love. ‘Cuz Lord knows, unhealed love has fucked this world up worse than a concrete dildo fucked up a porn star.