One of my best lifelong friends and I were having a conversation about being in relationships and trying to raise teenaged children when we basically raised ourselves and don’t have any sort of healthy relationships to model. Honestly, we still don’t. When it comes down to it, everything I know about being in relationships and raising children has come from television or trial and error. We are simply just a generation that is missing tools from our tool box, or maybe we are not able to read the schematics. Maybe it is outdated technology. I don’t know.
Recently, I feel I have learned a lot from my studies, as far as theories and developmental stages; relationship dynamics and the like. But honestly, it’s all been practice. Hopefully, my kids aren’t as effed up as I think I am sometimes. It seems that I try very hard to balance being a friend and an authoritarian with being nurturing and not trying to make them be anything but themselves. I want them to question authority and the status quo, but do what I say, when I say it. Cause I said it. Meh. Sometimes it works. More often than not, someone ends up mad, sad, or both.
The first 10 years of each of my kids lives were relatively easy. I believe it’s a combination of hormones, theirs and mine plus the additional stresses of a regular life plus graduate school that have led to our mutual frustration. But all in all, I think they have it pretty good. Me on the other hand, I feel like a nutcase most of the time. I over think everything and vacillate between being a tyrant, a mama bear and a big sister as my parenting role. Perhaps it comes from my combining Roseanne Conner, Charlie Salinger, and Benny Lopez. If I had to describe my parenting style, it would definitely be like a big sister. Which if you subscribe to the idea that we learn more from our siblings than our parents, great. But if not….
And then there is romantic relationships. Oy. I really, really suck at them. It’s true. Some days I just feel that relationships are a tool themselves to learn from, other times I feel like that is a rationalization of someone who sucks at relationships. I have control problems and get in relationships with people for all the wrong reasons and don’t give things time to develop. I know this. Plus, I am constantly evolving and becoming a different person it seems. Now, this may sound like the rantings of a borderline personality issue, but I have explored that. It’s really not. It’s simply a matter of the fact that I am just starting to get a grip on who I am and who I want to be as an adult.
I grew up really fast and skipped some steps; it left me a completely developed underdeveloped adult. 🙂 And now that I am going back and reexamining and reprocessing those pieces I had to put off in order to survive and adapt, I am finding myself drawn to things and becoming a person I would have argued with you about 16 years ago. C’est La vie.
So what’s the score? How do you cope? Do you just keep on keeping on and let the chips fall where they may? Sigh. Usually I try to be pretty upbeat, funny or proactive about my posts and life in general, but sometimes I am just soooo fucking tired. It’s been a long life.
From one Pisces fish to you.... 
When we have been abandoned by our biological family before we knew to expect things from them, we create for ourselves a system. As we grow older we refine the system, and learn how we use others as mirrors. Then we get to a point where we must decide to transcend the dysfunction we did not even know we were emulating…..which is hard because we have created a world reflective of what we perceived to be right through everyone else’s eyes. Maybe
That is so much more eloquently put. I just kept seeing the tub scene from fight club in my head
I think I know what you mean… It’s only in the last few years I’ve worked out how to be an adult me. I grew up parenting myself a little too much. Once I started the process I found myself drawn to things a few years ago would have scared me silly. Now I’m like oh yeah that’s me 🙂
You sound like you’re finding the core of who you are. That can only be a good thing.