Tough Love, Love is Tough (A Very Long Entry) in meh...

The relationship between my daughter and I is a very colorful one. It’s had it’s ups, but mostly our rollercoaster affair has been downs, downs, downs.

She’s been a pistol for a long time and I had a hold on her until I tried to give some of that to her father. He mishandled it and I could never get her back. My share in this is that I was tired of fighting, I had no support, and she had the determination of the bee that keeps bumping into the window thinking they are going to get outside by bumping into that window repeatedly.

As a younger child she was never grateful. She has always been ungrateful. I remember one of my hardest times in life during the Christmas season. I tried with the little money I had to get the kids something. One of her gifts, I can’t remember what it was, but she looked at it, then to me and said, “I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this.” So the next bunch of Christmases she didn’t get anything because she was ungrateful. But she was the ungrateful sort throughout her life.

She was (maybe still is) a thief. Develolped a reputation in the family as a thief. She’s taken money from me, she’s taken perfume, everything. I had a gift on my bed for my best friend. It was there for a long time. When I was going to give it to her, all of a sudden it’s gone. She doesn’t know where it is. Then one day, I was in her room playing with the baby and grabbed a toy monkey. In the zippered bottom of this monkey was the perfume she didn’t know where it was.

And then there’s the baby.

I have a job I have to be at everyday to make sure I’m surviving at the most. I can’t sit on her, handcuff her to me all day. She just wanted to do her own thing. She never obeyed curfew. No matter how much she got spanked, we fought and argued, she never did right. Then she got pregnant. Another unpopular opinion I have is that I’m Pro-situation and if that makes me a Pro-Choice constituent then so be it. But she was 15. I noticed her body. And I asked her if she was pregnant. She said no about a thousand times. Then came home from work one day and told her to sit in the kitchen with me while I cooked. I noticed her body again. I asked her again was she pregnant. This time she cried and said she didn’t know. Thing is she knew. She knew for a long time. So we went to a clinic to see how we can move forward. I had to borrow some money to go half on the first appointment. We get in the ultrasound room. I looked at the screen and my heart sunk. The nurse asked her when her last period was. She then asked if she was sure. I have been pregnant 4 times. A miscarriage and my own visit to the clinic and I have given birth to two babies and I know that what I saw was a full fledged baby, no longer a sexless booger on her uterus. She was near 5 months along. In her grand delusion of self absorbtion, she STILL wanted me to try and go through with a procedure KNOWING after speaking with someone that it would cost.

After I got home, the kids went to their dads/grandmother’s for the weekend. I got some movies and sold them to have so money to pay my friend for gas. I then spent the rest of that time at home alone crying, wondering where I had failed as a mother, chain smoking cigarettes and watching movies until about 5 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. I could barely eat, I was numb, I was drained beyond measure. I was also making a decision. That decision was that this baby was coming into this world whether I wanted it to happen or not. I got a call from Him that afternoon and I told him what was going on. He said to me that I deserve a medal of honor because I was a soldier. I have gone through a lot and I keep fighting. He said he knew me and this baby is blood now and he knows I fight for my blood. He was right. (God, I love Him). He was in town, but he had family obligations and I told him not to worry about me anyway because I was not good company right now. But we talked before he left and he said he would say prayers for us.

I didn’t sleep long. When I woke up I continued watching movies. I didn’t smoke so much because usually I didn’t smoke in the house anyway and I did not want to hear my sons mouth about why it smelled like that when he got home.
When they got home I talked to her in my room and told her she’s going to have to take one for the team and that in spite of, despite all the shit she put me through I will be there for her. As a single parent I know what it’s like to not have support.

She took advantage of that. One day we were fawning over the baby and I suppose it was getting on her nerves and she had the audacity to say, “I’m the reason he’s here.” I almost said, “Bitch that isn’t an achievement. I’m the reason your raggedy ass is here!” But I told her that ain’t shit to be proud of and don’t get flip. Lots of women have put their kids OUT at this stage.

But that was and is the jist of our lives. She treated me like something to be used, her maid, her baby sitter. She started getting more and more wreckless. She use to ask me if she was doing a good job as a mother and at first she was. Then came the weed. Then came her leaving without anyone knowing. She was horrible. I told her she won’t be satisfied until he’s calling me “momma” and he does sometimes.

I would take him to daycare so that she could get to school on time. Then came the moment I found out she wasn’t going to school. I talked to the counselor there and found that she had two more days to miss school and then she would be withdrawn and will be a drop out. I told her to get it together or get out. She decided that she wasn’t going to do either. When I found she didn’t go to school those two days. I told her to pack her shit and leave.

She had no excuse as to why she couldn’t do the basics. She has since been in two, now 3 GED programs, one of which closed down due to funding issues, but all incomplete, the latest she’s doing now. Has not ever had a job for real. She didn’t have to live this way.

Too busy thinking I’m trying to control her life. I just tried to guide her and she decided to take the rocky mountain trails, but when she’s hanging off a cliff that she went to voluntarily, she wants me to save her.

When I moved to where I am now, I told her a year ahead of time to get it together because when I move she’s not coming with me. I’ve been telling her to get herself together since she dropped out of school. She’s so green about life that after she dropped out of school she said, “Well I guess I will go file for unemployment.” I laughed at her and said, “No, sweetie. It doesn’t work that way. You have to have had a job and put money INTO unemployment to receive money for being unemployed.” I walked away thinking who the hell is she talking to and getting information from? Is that why she’s been making all these dumb ass moves??

So she watched me pack. She got a temp job canvassing for the election. Of course that was over after the election. Found another canvassing job slipped and fell in the ice, but those jobs didn’t last. Then she seemed to be trolling for a husband on facebook saying she was a good mother and a good cook. Lies told on facebook are some shit. She was leaving in the middle of the night. I woke up to hear baby crying and he couldn’t get out of the room he was alone. I smacked the shit out of her when she came home. I told her to leave and go to where ever the hell she just came from. It’s funny. She can’t ever seem to stay at home, but she always finds a way to not be home, not take care of her son, and when I tell her to leave, she has nowhere to go. She knew he was her only leverage. Told me I wasn’t taking her son.

So I moved. She moved in with a friend and her family. That’s becoming a rocky situation. It’s been rocky for sometime because she’s doing the same thing there that she was doing with me.

My daughter has a knack for embellishing and exaggerating her situation. It may be bad, but whatever the situation she cannot live with me. I have baby on the lease and she’s making noise about him coming to live with me while she gets her life together. Thing with that is, what about my life? I’m supposed to up end the little life I have to take care of my grandson. I could do it. I love him, but this is her time to stop blaming EVERYONE and start doing something about her situation. She says she’s being threatened on getting put out of their home, she says her friend’s little boy is bullying and hurting my grandson and they are treating him bad. Now mind you, just the other day she was laughing and talking in the background. Now it’s “I’m not allowed to eat what she cooks, and I’m not allowed to cook in the kitchen so me and AK are eating fast food and microwaved stuff.” If she’s not allowed to cook in the kitching it’s probably because she doesn’t clean up after herself. Sounds familiar, no?

I don’t know what to do. My landlords have a strict 3 person occupancy limit on the apartment. No one can live in the basement. It’s not even a liveable space. She’s proven time and again that she can’t live with me.

My heart is breaking because she has to work this out herself. She speaks of shelters, but I know my daughter. She’s looking for somewhere to just post up and think people are supposed to take care of her. She wants something for nothing and life doesn’t work that way. She has to work for what she wants and she can’t get off her ass. She, just like every other human in this generation, have this sense of entitlement that she’s full of shit for thinking work is not required to achieve anything.

So after our textversation last night I was drained. I can’t be sucked into her pity party, but that’s my child. She may be 20, but her mentality isn’t ready for life. I knew that, but she was always so determined to prove me wrong on everything and it just didn’t work. She feels defeated at every turn, but she’s not trying hard enough.

It doesn’t help that when she talks about moving to a shelter, her father tells her it’s nasty at a shelter, yet he’s not trying to provide any for her. He’s never lived with her like I’ve lived with her. Hell, he still lives with his mother. I can’t live the way I did before with her. I’ve been looking at shelters with services that can help her. If I give her this information she may take that as a slight.

I don’t know what to do. I shouldn’t have to figure out what to do. She’s an adult now. But she’s still my child. But I know her and I can’t be suckered in. She lies to me. She steals from me. She take advantage of my kindness. Soon after I show kindness she does something to make me regret it. I can never be nice to her because she makes me regret it. Everytime. I told her once I broke up with her father and never wanted another relationship like that or with him again for a reason, but she makes me relive every moment being with him. The deciet the lies. The I’m sorries and then turns around and does the same thing. Is the lesson mine to learn? I think I’ve learned it.

I let her stay a few days at a time, but it grates my nerves because she’s always sleeping or glued to her phone. You can’t do anything glued to your phone or sleep.

::deep sigh::

And it’s never that I don’t love my daughter. In spite of, despite of everything, I do love her. Love is tough. Tough Love is tough. I’ve never been a recipient because I didn’t need it. I’ve had my own trials and rough patches in life, but nothing that brought her kind of life on me. I saw a problem arise and I rose to meet it. Didn’t always end in the problems defeat, but I’ve had my fair share of victories.

I just want to breath for a while before the next problem happens. With her, it just seems non stop.

wipes burgeoning tears

I pray that she has guidance and motivation, but this is what happens.

I’ve given myself a headache.
Pray for my family, please.
Thank you,
Sister…

Last updated November 12, 2014