Living with Maria is not easy. Living with any 17 year old girl is not easy, unless maybe you're a 20 year old guy. And even then, Maria will always present certain challenges.She has her good points, don't get me wrong. She is smart, strong-minded, beautiful, driven, and sociable. She has experienced drinking and some of the lighter drugs, and chosen against them. She was just accepted to her university of choice for this coming Fall. In so many ways I am extremely proud of who she is.
I'd like to take partial credit, but I can't get past the fact that she hates me.
No one in my life has ever said such hurtful things to me as Maria has. I desperately want to understand her, but her mind works so differently from mine. How helpless I feel as a mother who cannot connect to her daughter to help her find the way.
Maria and I recently had another big blowout. This is a recurring cycle for us beginning, and ending, with this high volume explosion approx every 3 months. Again it'll be quiet for awhile, then it will slowly escalate into her irritation with me, followed by rude comments, then defiant behavior. You get the gist. Ugly indeed and probably all too common in houses with teenagers.
In this last blowout Maria brought out all her usual ammunition. She accused me of being happy when she's so unhappy. Of being happy because she's unhappy. I have ruined her life. And Dad's. She doesn't have a family anymore. Since I wasn't being physically abused I should have just stayed. Kids are supposed to come first. That's what mothers do. She says she really needs a mother, that now she has no mother. She hates me. She hates Rob. He's creepy/quiet/unfriendly (actually he's the exact opposite, but she's never around to see it). I am selfish, I only think of myself and don't care how it affects other people. She hates how everyone thinks I'm so nice, but they can't see what I'm really like inside. That I don't really care about her at all. That she's so messed up and a failure at everything.
These blowouts always happen at night. As a woman, I know that emotions grow more fragile the later the day gets. And that's when she lets it rip. She is still loud (the volume never went down from those crying baby days). She fires accusations at me one after the other, and I cannot get a word in. She has so much pent up inside her, she wails it all at me to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes it seems she's evolved little from her toddler days. But I no longer restrain her by force.
Most of the time I let her get it out and I try to listen and understand her feelings. Never do we resolve anything in these moments. At some point I have to declare it over for the night, that I will no longer be abused (and sworn at) and I have to walk away. Or she walks away, and destroys something on her way to her room or out the door.
The next morning things are very quiet. Sometimes we talk a little about what happened. Once in a while she apologizes, but mostly she sees it as my fault completely. We have not found a solution that works. And it just happens again in time. It's not getting better. I feel like we are just biding our time until she is old enough to move out. That saddens me. Remember the first paragraph of Part 1 of this blog?
In the past 2 years I've taken her to 2 different counselors. She refuses to go back. She says they're stupid and they keep telling her to try things that won't work. I've talked with her as much as I could on my own and answered all her questions honestly. She will occasionally talk about her feelings, but insists that she should be able to yell because that's the only way I'll know how she really feels. I suggested we write to each other to avoid the yelling situation but she says that's ridiculous and refuses. I've read books on "reaching out" to teenagers and tried many of the suggestions. I've tried to show empathy, I've tried to give her freedom. I've tried to come down hard on her, I've tried to stand my ground and live my life. I've never stopped providing for her. I helped her create a resume, coached her on getting a job, taught her how to drive, comforted her when she was sick, scared, or when her boyfriends broke up with her. I am the one she calls in times of crisis. Yet I am the one she hates.
And still, on this day I cry.
She is holding on tight to her anger towards me and is not ready to let it go. She admits it. Until she lets it go, we don't have a chance at a good relationship. It hurts to see her suffer like this. She's so strong on the outside, but inside she's a lost little puppy and I am helpless. She's holding a huge burden for some reason I do not understand.The only thing I can do is come to terms with my own feelings and feel right about my position. I will seek counseling of my own. I will continue to offer her my support and take care of Mom-ly things, but basically we have to keep our distance in order for life to flow in this house. I miss her so much.
I need a happy outcome. For her and for me. I have invested so much love and energy in Maria. What has happened? I don't want to miss out on all the milestones in her life--her graduation, her wedding, being a grandmother. I deserve to experience the good things. But I feel like I am close to being shut out.
1 comment:
The anger that she has is obviously not from you or from any other being other than herself. She has clearly had these anger issues (anger, selfishness, "You owe me" attitude) by the stories you have told.
My sister (the older of the two youngest siblings) is very similar to this, but knows I still love her. She has taken to the same techniques to target others, myself included, but knows that I "won't take her shit." She explodes like you describe. If I've within the blast-zone, I look at her and she knows that I don't approve. She gets mad and does not talk to me. Eventually she comes and apologizes.
This young girl of yours is not much younger than her (about 2 years). Although she is my sibling, she is 10 years my junior. This places some very different dynamics onto her (I changed her diapers, woke her up for school, protected her from an abusive father, etc.). She is as much my child as she is my sister in many respects... But alas, she knows that she cannot treat me the way your daughter treats you and thus does not.
Don't get me wrong, periodically she will blow up... But not so often as she used to and knowing full well that I'm not going to hold her attitude and what she says against how I feel because she's the one who's hurting and doing these things.
Perhaps that too is the course you should take... Let her know that you respect that she is hurt and that she will only be able to get over that hurt in her own way and her own time, but that you will not hold yourself responsible any longer for her actions. That she is responsible for her own actions and that you are not her punching bag.
The big problem is going to be sticking with it. It's not a matter of meeting force with force. It's a matter of meeting fiction with fact. She has this image of who you are in her head. She uses all of her tools to exploit this to her advantage because she knows it will work against you.
My advice: Stay firm, reinforce respectful boundaries for BOTH SIDES and stick to your guns. Eventually she'll pull her head out of her ass and if she doesn't, she will be better off for it because you are expectant of a respectful relationship between the two of you. If she cannot respect you then she needs to move along.
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