It kills me that she never sees any of those things. Never remembers...only creates something totally different in her mind...
What does it matter, really, what she thinks?
She is entitled to believe and feel anything she wants. She does not even require a special diagnosis for this. By being an independent adult, she qualifies.
Her life is her own. Yours is your own. There it is in a nutshell.
Many of us had dreams that are unfulfilled. We can dream new ones. Ones that we control, and can fulfill, without heartache, only joy.
I would try to look to myself, and ask myself what the win is to keep the ball and chain to her.
She is your adult daughter. You are an adult. You are now equals. You bear no responsibility for her. There is no more room for guilt, if you choose to let it go.
If you feel devastated by her apparent lack of love for you, or loving kindness towards you, perhaps there is something in your earlier life with your family that you would like to explore.
Join us on the FOO threads, if you would like to.
There is nothing to say that our parenting will serve to successfully launch our children or that they will even love us once we have raised them. I am asking myself where I got the idea that my child would be there for me. He is not. For me to be there for him, he needs to raise the bar a bit. I have no control over whether he does or does not. Sad but true.
I was raised in the Doctor Spock generation, as in Benjamin. Maybe that was where I got the idea that there would be this perpetual bond. Maybe I can blame Dr. Spock.
Or maybe I can just catch a clue. My despair and abject misery for anything to do with how my son lives is absolutely wasted emotion and wasted life-force.
I am sorry I sound harsh. It is not that I lack empathy. On the contrary. I think our situations call for decisive action. Realizing that we are more free than we realize and that we can demand of ourselves that we consciously choose freedom and joy. And let our kids choose as they wish.
Let your daughter be free to feel and do exactly what she chooses. Let her attitudes and bad attitudes be her own. Ask for civility from her and nothing more. Be free.
Our children do not need to like us or love us or want to be with us. What they do need to do is to treat us with civility and respect. I think she had a lot of balls asking you to pay for anything. Even worse to have an attitude about it.
COPA
PS Any of you who have read my recent thread about my son returning to my town may believe me to be a hypocrite. Because those readers will know how much I struggle with these very issues I so stridently advocate.
I must be clear: I do not anymore care if my son loves me or not or treats me in the way I feel I deserve. I have gotten that far. The rest of it, I am not so clear about.
The part I struggle with is my responsibility to help him to learn to live better, given the cost to myself. I get ill. My significant other, M, faults himself because he did not stop me when I kicked my son out 4 years ago. M believes that had he been a better man, at that time, he would have opposed me and insisted that my son stay, so that he could teach him to live better.
The way I see that is that hindsight is 20-20. There is no way of knowing what would have been the costs to us at that time. And how receptive if at all my son would have been. It is also not clear if my son would have been better served by this, or whether he was better served by choosing his own road these past 4 years. A road that included intermittent homelessness, a lot of marijuana, depending upon anybody who would put him up and ask nothing, almost no work at all and SSI.
Now, 4 years later, our relationship, mine and M's, is stronger. M is stronger. I, not so much. We will be able to survive whatever comes in any interaction with my son, that may get ugly.
The question is whether it is the right thing for my son, or for us, to allow my son to again be a component of our life together. For M, helping my son, is the right thing. For M. It is the kind of man he is.
For me, I am not so sure. I think I would like to believe I could act as I advocate to Seeking. I have been trying.
But if the truth be told, when I secretly believe I can do something...that will bring my son and I closer, some intervention that will trigger my son to grow up, to become a real man, a responsible and productive person...
I feel happy. A little kernel of joy inside me lights up like a little fire. A very fragile, tiny fire, that very soon dies. Because I am so worn out by this all, so wanting to hide...that I cannot find the fuel in myself to nurture that flame.
My son is so impossible. So impossible for me to be around. I am so defended from him. This once most loving of mothers, is in a big green tank with 3 feet wide tires, and guns at the ready. And I am ready to roll. As far away from him as I can get.
So now you have the truth of it. I talk big, but it is bluster. I am hiding in my tank.
So I am the hypocrite you may think I am.
COPA
