Getting Over It
by
Dick Prosapio © 2008
I'm quick to forgive. I don't know if this makes
me a sucker or just a compassionate being, but that's my story. Any
one who has kept track of some of the stuff I've written about our
kids knows we have been through the mill with each of them and with
the advent of some new chaotic event, usually involving cops,
alcohol, drugs, lying. The bottom line has always been that we have
been ready to accept whatever happened meaning death, the outcome of
letting-go-of-the-bicycle-seat reality. But they have all survived,
so far, and so has my love for them survived my, situational anger.
I don't expect that forgiveness will be the
outcome when in the midst of the chaotic event, but it always is, it
is the way I am built. I feel the same way about old girl friends
that is I hold no grudges.
The latest escapade by our middle one is a case in
point; high for weeks on cocaine, losing yet another job, smashing
up yet another car and winding up rehabbing in our home till we can
get her in a drug treatment program, all of that got my "juices"
flowing alright. But, now three weeks have passed and I am hopeful
again that this-time-she-really-got-it and she can be charming when
sober.
Of course I'm not totally convinced by her cover,
though forgiven, she still has to prove to me that she will actually
get on the right path. We await intake calls from treatment
facilities. Meanwhile, enter the second source of chaos, the
youngest one.
Her pattern is to work, make money, spend it,
party till she drops, eat a lot of sugar, drink huge amounts of
alcohol and then explode in a rage over trivialities. The latest
example of this occurred about a week ago, Mother's Day in fact,
when, in the middle of a calm family breakfast she attacked her
older sister with; "You hurt my feelings last week when you said my
shoes didn't go with my shirt and I'd like to throw this Fing cup of
coffee in your Fing face!" all the time banging a watch I'd just
given her so hard on the kitchen table that she dented the surface.
She was so out-of-control I had to force her out of the kitchen just
short of becoming physical in the process.
She's staying with us till she get an apartment,
but now we discover that she has, once again, spent most of the
money she had to get one, re-united with her old crowd, been
partying every night after work, and has continued to create a web
of lies to support it all.
On the surface the answer to all of this seems
simple enough, throw her out. We both have a hard time with this,
but we are nearing the point of self-survival. We have given her The
Ultimatum of course, "You will have to be out of here by (fill in
the blank)!" But will we enforce it?
Both of us are fed up with this ongoing drama of
kid raising. We both know that our parents would have stood for this
from us, so why do we?
Enabling? Can be......if taken too far. If taken
to the point where we are taken advantage of over and over again,
yes, "enabling" is what it would be and that has to be considered
and overcome. We will have to get tough about this situation to be
sure. And, down the line, perhaps way down the line, "Forgiveness"
will be waiting in wings to be called upon once again.
Time passed, not much time really, in fact I had
just stopped writing this piece and gone to town to pick up supplies
and my cell phone rang; (to paraphrase) "Dad, I'm really sorry for
being so crazy the past few weeks. I just started taking my pills
again (over the counter herbals that address much of her OCD caused
behavior) and I feel a lot better and I'm just sorry."
I felt "forgiveness" coming on stage again.
It was inevitable.
