Many have likened difficulty journeys to a roller coaster. A roller coaster ride lasts four minutes -or less. Almost anyone can endure that.
Our daughter left the safety of our house, and chose to spend her nights with a rough crowd.
She said she just wanted to have fun.
We are not fun.
In her mind’s eye, joy and danger lived across a valley from each other.
She couldn’t see the thread that ran between them, or the rock slide that would heap one atop the other.
We became scared.
The police couldn’t bring her back.
But then she did come back . . . in a harmful rage.
Then the police took her away.
She was safe for eighteen days, and I finally slept.
But, still I couldn't cry.
My mom came.
Our remarkable family pulled together.
I called upon a village of women to stand beside me, and they did—even thought their own shit came up.
Reaching out for help is not my modus operandi, especially during intense personal relationship struggle. I generally buckle myself in, scream and cry, and hope like hell that it doesn't last very long.
This is different.
What do you do when parenting requires something of you that you either aren’t willing or aren’t able to give? How can I get beyond this state of mind that keeps telling me I can’t do it, I shouldn’t do it, I don’t need to do it…that this is basically bullshit. How can I lift myself up when I have so fully fallen on my face? How can I be successful in one area of my life and such a floundering lunatic in another? And why are there so many questions, and so few answers?
