I have spent my entire life pushing myself to be a better version of my initial destiny. I have rollercoastered in and out of the gutter but have pulled myself up by my boot-straps to be more than I thought I would ever be - even 5 years ago. I am a work in progress. I struggle with parenting most of all. I am a self professed control freak, I like things the way I like them. Children aren't really good at living within a specific box - the unexpected is the normal.
Unlike my children, I did not know childhood. I was 2 when my parents split, 4 when I moved away from my father across the country to CA (never to see him again - he passed when I was 12), and 5 when my mother and I (after moving approx 15 times since our move to CA about a year earlier) wound up living in a homeless shelter.
I have woken up in places where rats were scurrying across my feet, where roaches the size of silver dollars were tiny. I know what it's like to be hungry (really really hungry). I have lived in places where school days were cancelled due to shootings and investigations on campus. My mother being clinically crazy, made life unpredictable: one moment happy and smiling, the next chasing me around the house with a butcher knife. My childhood was chaos, so I learned to control what I could.
I controlled my grades, with no help from my batshitcrazy mother: I was on the honor roll from the getgo. I controlled my household from approximately 7 years old on: I knew our budget, paid our utility bills, grocery shopped, and did my mother's tax returns. I didn't have many friends because I hated the unexpected. Girls are hormonal and obnoxious, especially at a young age, and I had no patience for them. Living in an area where bullies (read gangs) were quite prevalent, it worked to my advantage that I towered over everyone by at least a head until high school (6ft tall by 12). I never had an issue with fighting or bullying. I kept my head low, minded my own business, and did what I could to suck in as much knowledge as possible. Everything I read and heard had shown me that knowledge was the ticket out of this place!
Now that I am out of the ghetto, living in suburbia - 2 kids, 2 cars, a nice home, nice things, always food on the table, trips taken periodically throughout the year - I find that my controlling ways have manifested into other things. I can't just go and be free and ignore the little things that bug me. This is my new New Years resolution: to let things slide off my back a bit more, to let other people take the wheel - no matter how much it irks me.
But I digress, the largest manifestation of my struggle with control is in parenting - it's less about the structure and rules required for kids to be guided into adulthood (STRUCTURE? I am great at that shit!) and more about letting go, being fun and creative. My childhood being filled with so many adult issues at such a young age left me with little to no imagination for easy and fun activities to do with my kids. I don't remember being a child, most of it blocked, but much of it just wasn't childish. Jameson Whiskey (my husband) on the otherhand, remembers his childhood vividly. He is creative with the kids and can think of awesome, silly games at the drop of a hat. I envy that. I want to enjoy tickle-wrestling with my kids, or a game of hide and seek, or running around the culdesac dancing and singing and being silly, but I really don't. Is there something wrong with me?
As my kids get older, I know a change is needed. I don't want them to grow up before they have to nor am I jaded into thinking they will never grow up. Being raised poorly really only gives me the picture of what I don't want for my kids, but leaves so much unanswered as to what is right and wrong. My goal this year is to let go - in every aspect of my life, including with my kids. I don't want them to remember me as the mom who couldn't have fun.
Granted we DO plenty of fun things - but rarely am I actually in the mix. In a few weeks we are revisiting a local indoor water park resort (a trip paid for by the hotel due to issues with our last stay), I am looking forward to letting go, riding many-a slide, and acting altogether silly - I see a lot of xanax in my future!
Here's to a fabulous fancy-free New Year! I'll drink to that! - Mimosa, M.D.
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