Daughtering Through Teenage-hood

Daughtering

Through Teenage-hood.

“The great thing about having teenagers is that you get to see what a lovely person they are, how sweet they are; to everybody, but you.”

I had to smile when I read this as someones status on social media. “Yup!” I commented.

But, that night; while my four year old was having an inconsolable meltdown because she accidentally hit her friend in the face with a play coffee pot during her first sleepover, I knew who could take the “in” out of the word inconsolable. It’s her. My teenage daughter.

So, I called her downstairs, and didn’t have to say a word with anything but my eyes. She pulled my panic attack, shame ridden daughter who felt so embarrassed by her mistake that she couldn’t regulate, out of my arms, and within a minute, her crying stopped.

No, this wasn’t me not being able to console my child. This was me, intuitively as a mother, knowing exactly what she needed, and offering it to her. In that moment, for whatever reason, she needed a sisters love, not a mothers.

I didn’t grow up with siblings in this way, so I can’t relate, but what I see in them, is what I longed for for me.

When it was over a minute later, the youngsters went back to play, and my teenager, walked upstairs with a thumbs up and an accomplished grin, to retreat to her bedroom that on most days whoever walks in, she screams at to get out.

Teenagehood is a mixed bag. So is motherhood. She’s a rock solid angel, but some days her demons come out to wrestle with my own.

As she walked upstairs, I flashed back with humbled tears streaming down my face, to a time, just like this, when I understood her rock solid angel role, holding down the fort in our family. Never did I want to raise a teenager to feel the pressure of such weight, but here she is, and I know she does.

If you’ve read Imperfectly Sane, this sentiment feels a bit fraudulent and embarrassing to me, but its real, so face it I must.

I swore, I’d never have a seizure again at the age of 17 after an entire life of grand mal seizures.

For seventeen years, I willed myself not to glitch out. I’m quite acquainted with the aura of my seizures, so each time I felt one coming on, I’d been able to self regulate for almost two decades.

But then, in a gazebo at a horse farm, with my mother and three children, the nitrous-high-like, “wha wha wha” kicked in while my kids voices echoed far to far into my ear.

I scolded “shhhhhhh! I’m gonna have a seizure!” leaned toward my mother to catch me, and bam, fell right onto my two year old daughter, convulsed for two minutes, turned blue, pissed myself, and became alert but unable to access my body while my mother was screaming “Call 911,” to the owners of the farm while a slew of strangers gathered around to watch me lay in my urine, smacking my face on the ground repeatedly for minutes. 911 is an odd call for my mother to make as she’d seen me seize my whole life; but this time, took far longer for my heart to restart than ever before. My seizures are vagal induced, and they stop my heart. They aren’t neurological. It’s not a brain glitch, it’s a nervous system glitch that tells my heart to stop as a mode of self protection.

This isn’t the part I want to tell you about. What I want to tell you about is other-worldly, literally.

For the first time in my life, when I came out of that seizure; just like being reminded of a dream later in the day on any given day, I recalled the access to consciousness I was given while I was “in” my seizure. It went like this.

I was driving a car on a highway, on a blindingly sunny day. The light was shining in my eyes, and I realized I didn’t have access to my body so a crash was inevitable if I didn’t do something instantly. I telepathically called my mom in a beg like I’ve never begged in my whole life, “I’m stroking out and I can’t pull over the car. The kids are in the car! Mom! I can’t pull over the car! The kids! My kids! Please!” My mother was screaming telepathically “Pull over the god damn car Stacy!!! Pull over the god damn car!”

I couldn’t and we both knew I was out of control, when I averted my eyes from the sun and looked to my teenage daughter who was in the front seat staring at me, with a steady transmission that even though I knew she didn’t know how, I, we, needed her to take control despite not knowing how to drive.

Helplessly, I knew she couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t communicate that I needed her to while life as we knew it was dangerously about to slip away.

God, just looking at her made me feel safer because she looked back with a “you’ve got this” face, despite that I definitely did not have it. My other two kids were in the backseat, also looking to her to be rock solid for all of us. And then, I awoke.

What was happening in the external world while this filtered through my consciousness as I convulsed, blue, heart stopped, on the ground, was my mother was screaming “Come out of it Stac! You’ve gotta come out of it!!!” I could smell her fear as close to my heart as I could smell the aura of the seizure coming on, with less time than I’d ever been given, to self regulate before I went in. My twelve year old daughter (at the time) had whisked up my two year old who was crying because I’d just fallen on her, and knocked her over, while all three of my children watched my mother, try to resuscitate their mother in a desperation they’d never seen from either of us. I didn’t see my kids until later, but the second I saw my daughters face, I knew she was the one in that moment, who’d energetically held down the fort for all of us. And I know that role like that back of my hand in a family system because, it was mine.

I felt terrible, as if I’d relinquished myself of that role and passed it onto her. Never did I want her to have to be that. But there she was, and here we are.

She’s fourteen now. Mouthy AF. She pushes away hard, and then pulls in at her own convenience which triggers the shit out of me. She’s meanest to the people who love her the most. She bitches if I ask her to do anything, and does most things she does, with a rebellious sense of superiority and resentment that she’s being asked to be responsible. But she goes out in the world, and faces being responsible for herself, with discomforts I’ll never know about. She’s a straight A student in eighth grade taking high school level courses. She’s also the most thoughtful friend in the world, always gifting her friends handmade, heart felt projects made just for them, by her.

As I said, teenage hood is a mixed bag. She’s not any one of these things; she’s everything.

Then there’s the role of her being the one who energetically holds down the fort; which I wished my whole life to release her of any duties of; because I know the weight of them. But, she’s in it, and I’ve had to reconcile with what this means about my own parenting. I suppose what it comes down to is this.

I raised a rock solid angel, who fights her own demons every day, and when she comes home, she externalizes that fight symbolized by the faces of the people who love her the most, so they’ll hurt her the least. This is healthy sublimation because she’s not kicking the bully who pushed her down a few weeks ago in his nuts (which I admit, I definitely suggested, almost even demanded).

Being a teenager is hard. All of a sudden, roles change, the body changes, social circles change, everything changes, and without fair warning.

As much as we as parents want to say our children are assholes during this chapter, we release them to a world every single day which beats them up, pushes them down, lights their nerves on fire, stresses their psychic desires for perfection, and we’re the only constant in this change. Maybe though, as these roles change for all of us, they’re the only constant in ours; and that can be a tad scary when they’re demonically screaming at us to get the fuck out.

It’s not true that she’s always the rock, holding down the fort for the family, as I fear. But it is true that when a rock is called for, she solidifies for the occasion, and that doesn’t mean I’m relinquishing a role she’s too young to play; it means, she’s stepped up to the play, when my role is compromised. This isn’t means for my defeat, or me to punish myself for not always being the rock.

When she’s the river, I’m the rock, and when I’m the river, she’s the rock. This isn’t bad, or wrong, it’s balance; and we have it.

A large part of me wants her to never feel responsibility for anything; because responsibility to me was soooo heavy; but she’s the most responsible teenager I know, despite being in a chapter called “kind of an asshole” not because I pressed that upon her, but because responsibility is her way of pressing upon the world.

Daughters become mothers, and mothers become grandmothers, and each transition, requires a variation of a role that’s required to balance out the system. The change of these roles is confusing, turbulent, and often infuriating, but they’re always, always, always, necessary.

If it weren’t for that seizure, I wouldn’t see my daughters energetic role in our family system for what it truly is. I’d just see her as kind of an asshole in this chapter. But being kind of an asshole, is called for on occasion, and for her, teenage hood is an occasion that we must move through together like rocks in a river, until we collectively blend into the infinite ocean when we leave this place.

Things are never what they appear. Ever. There’s always a foundational underneath that we often miss while we’re focused on the surface.

There’s always more than meets the eye, and less, than meets the heart. If all I can see is the discomfort of each of us, in this scared time of necessary change, I miss the heart of the matter; which is; she might bounce out when things are less than dramatic, but when necessary, she bounces right in to regulate a system that she’s a spoke in the wheel of, and when I look at it from afar, she’s rock solid in her ability to know when, and just how to bounce.

I’d like to credit our asshole teenagers, with facing us, and facing the world simultaneously as they leave us a little every day on their road to adulthood. When up until now, they’ve been asked to face one thing which is us, now they’re asked to navigate also facing the world without us. That’s a tall order and one that comes with many falls. This is a time in which some days they will catch us, and some days, they will need to be caught, and as a mother who never wanted her to have to catch me, I now realize there’s a time and place for both and to not give her the opportunity to receive the catch is to not give her the opportunity to know her arm strength and dexterity in life. To not catch her when she needs to be caught, because she “should” be more responsible, or kinder, or whatever, negates my own opportunity for the same.

Roles change. Forms change. Minds change. But hearts, they don’t change. And heart to heart, is a pulse only her and I know like the back of our hands. It is here, in which I will look.

It’s there; in heart, not here, in form, in which infinity lives in us.

To teenage hood, mother hood, facing the world, and facing ourselves. To every mother of every teen who fears their kid is turning into a stranger and an asshole; remember the pulse of heart to heart, womb under ribcage. That’s the signature that no matter what changes; will forever, and always, stay the same. They’re still in there, and they always will be. Let’s not forget them at a time it’s easy for them, to forget themselves.