They've got to grow up someday

So I haven't posted anything for a few weeks now. Just haven't really had too much to say. Could say that it's because I was so busy being home with the girls now, or I am having such a hard time adjusting, but that's just not the case. I just haven't had anything compelling to write. And now I realize compelling is not what I need. I just need to write. Just need to get it all out, because
Lets face it, this is my therapy. So yeah, I'll admit I skipped out on my therapy sessions for the last three weeks or so. So here I am with something compelling to say. Not really, just something that resurfaced and now I think for some reason, is a good time to just put it out in the universe. 




My mother and I have always been very close. But the communication between us has not always been the best. Partly has to do with upbringing and just the teachings of learning to "swallow your words" or "look the other way." We talk a lot, but sometimes not about the things that really matter.

I was never really given "the talk" and never felt comfortable bringing up those well avoided topics with my parents. It was just the way I was brought up. Those touchy subjects were just nonexistent I guess you could say. It's the way they were brought up. So as a result, I was in a sense pretty innocent and naive growing up.

Now skip forward to the day I left for college. My mom, after much contemplation let me go. To live two hours away.

I remember the day they dropped me off. Soon realizing, this was not going to be a small vacation this was now my life. So there I stood crying for my parents to take me back home and them reassuring me I would be just fine as they themselves cried.

With no friends and no handbook for "your first year away from home." 
I ended up in this program with the school that assigned you your counselor and brought you into this group of first year students who you would spend most of your classes with. I met some life long friends in this group who were in the same boat as me. Innocent, and very easily influenced. It was a few scary ( now looking back) years of growing up. Put myself in terrible situations that would make any mother go insane.

Now I can sit here and say it was all their fault for not talking to me about this crazy world. How could I be upset with them when they themselves had no idea.

They had never moved that far away from home in a city so different from where they were brought up.
 A city with access to anything and everything. A city of endless possibilities, and at the same time a city that wreaks havoc.

 Never in this lifetime could they have known that they would be leaving me in an apartment building where the person living across from me was some big time drug dealer. A drug dealer who later that year would be clubbed in the head  and dragged throughout the complex. No, because they, just like I used to, see only the good in everyone and everything. Never thinking about, worst case scenarios. You know, the what-ifs. 

Hey, what if this complex that is selling this idea of  college students only complex, is not the best idea. And hey guess what, they might even be completely lying to you about your child's safety here so they can make
An extra buck. 

This crazy world I was living in, I got sucked right in. 

I was so lost, but did not want to let my parents think I was anything but good. Because that was who I was. I was in their eyes this perfect daughter who was excelling at everything she did. I did not want to disappoint and did not want to let down. So there I was, living this unfulfilled life, lost and alone. But oh was I so good at hiding it all. Hiding the sadness. I had lost myself. I had forgotten who I was and where I had come from. A strong tight knit family, with a strong religious background. Went to school, and it all went out the door. Everything I had known. Out. The. Door. Just gone. 

So now I sit here, thinking what about the girls. Good thing I've already experienced all of that. Because now I can try and teach them what not to do and what to be prepared for. But I guess in the end, you can never really be fully prepared for life. It is never predictable, and you can always expect the unexpected. 


As I spoke to my mom tonight, it was like, for the first time we both acknowledged that our communication could have been better. For the first time actually talked about my first few years at school. The years where we all pretended like everything was A-ok.  My mom said maybe it was just her parenting. But no, I am not sure what could have made the situation any better. And no I don't have a solution. And that's why I am writing tonight. In hopes that among all of this gibberish that the answer will come so that I will make the right moves and say all of the right things when it comes time to give the girls that talk or contemplate sending them away for school. But no, the answer never seemed so far away. So I guess until then, it's just one of those play it by ear and do your very best kind of things. And just cross your fingers and hope you're always doing the right thing.