Now what?

My daughter is turning 18. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this yet, but time won’t wait for me to figure that out, nor will she.

To celebrate the big event, I planned a weekend retreat at a giant cabin in the middle of no where with all her aunts, uncles, cousins… and my loss of sanity. I stressed and planned and panicked and stressed some more trying to give her a fantastic birthday weekend surrounded by her family (which we rarely see). I hindsight, I am wondering if all that stressing isn’t the root cause of the problem.

Her entire life, I have basically been a single mom. Even during the short time I was married (less than 3 years), I was still doing it all on my own. I simply added an extra road block to my parenting as he sabotaged everything I tried to do and was a bigger child than my own. That’s not my point though…

Her entire life, I have been a single mom. From the beginning, my mother thrived on pointing out how my daughter was lacking, the disservice I was doing by not having a man in her life, and my unending shortcomings as a mother. I wouldn’t say that I bought her things to make myself feel adequate; I couldn’t have afforded that if I had tried. But I did surround her in love.

I wanted her to grow up knowing that no matter where she went, what she did, or who she became, I was always going to be there. I defended her from those who made comments about our family life, our lack of a man, and the dysfunctional family I had grown up in. I wanted better for her. Maybe that’s where I went wrong.

Rather than exposing her to the toxic lifestyles and having conversations about why each person’s behavior was not something to replicate in her own life, I moved us away from them. I worked hard to surround her with people who didn’t model those behaviors. Somehow this made my family Maleficent’s spinning wheel, the Evil Queen’s apple. The thing I wanted her most to avoid became the one thing she desired most. The one person who most modeled every behavior became the one person she most wanted to be like.

So here we are. I am sitting on the porch swing with my cup of tea watching the world wake up around this sleepy lake and realizing that I may have lost. The little girl who wanted mommy’s hand, to always be close to me, to sleep in my bed and battle the world with me hasn’t even looked at me for a week. She is growing and changing and finding herself. I get that. But she also broke all our plans. She has hurt people who once mattered in her life. She cries and says all that matters is one thing and then changes her mind and hurts people to their faces. When it’s pointed out, she says “I don’t care, as long as I get…”

Who is this child? Who is this young lady? She is definitely not the kiddo I knew a few days ago. That kiddo cried when people did this to her and yet she does it without blinking. She gets angry when you point it out to her. She has lost all of the caring I taught her. All that matters is getting her way – but that changes like the breeze and leaves people hurt.

So what do I do? I feel as though she’s being manipulated to turn away from me. They say I raised such a great kid and yet they are creating and encouraging behaviors totally contrary to what I raised her with. All I hear is the promising threat made to me 16 years ago that one day they would turn her against me and take her. They want the one thing in my world that matters most… the one person I would die for. They want my heart and my breath. The more I hurt, the happier they appear to be. And now that she’s 18, I really feel I have lost. My heart is breaking and she laughs.

Do I surrender and let her go knowing full well they will use her and break her and spit her back? Or let her follow that path and become one of them because their life looks so sparkly and perfect? Do I stand back and wait to pick up the pieces hoping for the best? Do I just let go? How do I stand back and watch them change her, knowing what happens and the only two endings possible – neither good ones – and let it happen? Won’t she think I broke my promise and turned my back on her? But I can’t watch this… to see the game they play kills me.

Maybe I need to let them do it… let it cost her more than I can repair. Maybe then she will see what I was trying to do and regain her sanity. Maybe. Or maybe I lose and I go on in this world without her awhile. Maybe I go back to the life without those toxic folks and focus on me for awhile.. that’s something I don’t get to do much.

But for now, I sit here on my porch swing, drinking my tea and crying….