Frayed Knot

Near the end of last summer, the Boy was really testing my patience. We'd have conversations like this:

Me: Boy? You said you would take out the trash. When are you going to take it out?

Boy: Why are you fighting with me? I've been trying really hard to get along with you today!

Plus I'd been angry with him about a few incidents in Europe. They weren't worth discussing after the fact, but it did change some things. Suffice it to say, he won't be going on any more vacations with us. I look forward to vacations too much, and they are too expensive to waste time being angry.

So I knew that there were problems, but it just seemed like a normal part of his growing up. But somewhere along the way I came to realize that he really has a problem with ME. Not BOTH of his parents, but me in particular.

So being a terrible curious snoop, I found something he had written about me. I found out that he's been telling his friends that altho he loves me, he doesn't really LIKE me as a person! And this particular rant went on to describe a fight that happened in Paris, and how it illustrates all that he hates about my personality.

Well, of course I was upset and my feelings were hurt. I hate the unfairness of it all - that his father could fight with him about basketball his last 2 years of high school, and he ends up angry with ME. And to think I tried to shield him from his father's pressure, which seems terribly disrespectful to my husband now in retrospect. Yet another thing he's made me regret doing for him.

But I tried to look at it all rationally. I've tried to tell him many times that altho I will try to respect his wish for information when he asks me "why?", I won't always be able to do so. Sometimes I'm under stress, in a hurry,
etc. Sometimes I only have a vague idea in my head of what I'm trying to make happen, so I don't even have a plan that I;ve verbalized to myself. But I always have a reason, and I wish he would just trust me.

But he seems to have decided in his head that I just make things up to mess with him, and just make decisions willy nilly because I'm mad and drunk with power!

Plus there's this whole thing about once you tell someone WHY you want to do something a certain way, that opens the door for them to decide for themselves whether or not they think your reason is worthy. Sometimes you don't want to open that door, you would just like things to go the way you are trying to make them.

By the way, this was all about sandwiches that I had made for everyone, and he wanted to eat early. I wanted to wait until we got to Notre Dame, and he asked me why. I was already feeling unappreciated for making these stupid sandwiches that people took for granted, so I just told him it was because I had made them. I thought I had the right to make that call because I had made the stupid sandwiches! I thought even in some kind of playground rules that making the sandwich should give me the decision-making power over them. So maybe I didn't articulate how nice it would be to sit down and eat them as a family, but I don't think he would have agreed that it was a good reason anyway.

Anyway, I know I'm not perfect. For instance, I'm an incurable snoop. I have a temper, but I don't beat my children (like I was) or verbally abuse them (like I was.) But here I am, thinking I have a fine life and how much I've overcome the bad temperment I grew up with, blah, blah, blah, and life slapped me in the face and said, "Your life is not what you think it is!"

One of my favorite movies is Another Woman by Woody Allen, where a woman finds out that her life is nothing that she thought it was. It was such a good movie, but it sucks when that is YOUR life, and you're completely surprised to find out it's not what you thought it was!

So anyway, I'm glad I got this out of my system before the holidays, because I knew I had to forgive him before Thanksgiving. I decided that he's still just a kid, looking at things from his kidlike point of view. I realized that I'm STILL very hard on my parents, and feel fully aware of their flaws even today. And all of our feelings are normal I guess.

I realized that a lot of the things I say discipline wise may seem funny to me, but not everyone thinks they're funny or no big deal. It's strange to me that as much as my kids seem to ignore me, on the other hand some of the things I say seem to loom so large for them, and have way more importance to them than I thought.

I remember once when I was little I told my mother I hated her, and she looked SO hurt! I remember thinking that she shouldn't take it so seriously, I was just a kid after all. So I try to remember that and rise above it to be an adult.

So anyway, I'm glad I was able to get over it so that I could be nice to him on Thanksgiving break. And for this kid anyway, my snooping days are over. I definitely got what I deserved!