I always assumed my mental illness was going to be the death of me, but nope, here I am wishing I had some high-powered edibles, an ECT that would somehow make me forget the next few years or some kind of non-serious illness that would require lots of bed rest and very little stress so I wouldn’t have to face the hormones that taken over my beautiful, kind daughter and replaced her with that vicious sand worm from Beetlejuice.
I was just bragging on her the other day, detailing how good therapy has been for her and that I have seen real positive change. That all the extra time we’ve been hanging out has helped with her positive demeanor and confidence. I could see real change.
Then today I ask her about a couple of math grades, letting her know that I’m here if she feelings like she’s struggling. She’s in 4th grade but is in an accelerated math class so is doing 5th grade math. I told her I don’t care about her math grades much, I just want her happy and healthy, and we can get her help with math if she needs it.
The next thing I know she has locked herself in the bathroom, yelling about the time I told her she was adopted (in jest. To be fair, she asked me like 10 times if she was and finally I said yes). She knew I was joking. Then she brought up another comment I made. And another. Suddenly she’s got an elephant’s memory. Each of these memories we were both teasing each other, but only now she was hurt, even though I had apologized 1,000 times before.
I told her I loved her but we couldn’t do the cool mom/best friend thing if she was going to take me too seriously. How many times was she going to punish me for something I said? When she started the teasing in the first place? From now on, I said, it’s strictly a mother/daughter relationship and we needed to respect those boundaries in order not to hurt each other.
The next thing I know she’s in her room howling and sobbing hysterically. At this point, David doesn’t let me get near her again. That’s not the reaction I was looking for — I’m just tired of joking then apologizing for that joke multiple times, never really being forgiven. Neither of us is mature enough to be in a mom/daughter best friend deal. And that’s fine. We can work on our mother/daughter relationship, making it stronger and defining it how we want it to be.
Not right now though, because that hormonal sand worm thing ain’t a joke.
This really makes me scared for when puberty hits.
