I was having a really bad morning.
I'm discouraged with work, I checked our bank balance and we had less than $3.00 in our account, and the thing I'm trying to do in order to make our lives better is not without a huge risk and no guarantee that anything will come of it. Needless to say these past few days have been tough, but for some reason it was even worse (emotionally) for me today.
I dropped Ian off as usual and, on my way to the office, it started to pour. I began to feel really badly about everything so I decided not to work out of the office as usual; instead I came home and work from here. I got a lot done (more than I do at the office, admittedly) and decided to watch an episode of Without a Trace during my lunch break.
Holy crap, I can't stop crying. The show is one that I don't usually watch so I have no idea why I wanted to turn it on, but I'm glad I did. It was an episode about a young boy (middle school aged) who was thought to be kidnapped, but as they progressed in the investigation it turns out that he was considered a 'loser' and the 'popular' kids all ganged up on him, made him look like a fool, and then spread it around the school. The young boy was so distressed that he decided to kill himself rather than continue his life of embarrassment. The FBI ended up saving him at the last minute (he was hanging himself), and his parents arrived on scene at the end...
When does it all happen? When does it begin? Like they said in the show, "These kids have been friends since the second grade!" Yeah? Well now, not four years later, they're saying hateful things to each other, trying to make each others lives miserable... When does it change from loving and caring about everyone to judging? I think back to my own middle school years and can't pinpoint when my friendship with XXX changed from afternoons eating peanut- butter and jelly sandwiches at her house while we played with dolls, to her coming up to me and saying I was fat and ugly and me accepting it as fact.
I'm terrified that I'm not going to be able to teach my children how much they are loved. I remember so well the pain of growing up, of feeling ugly and hated, of hating myself and wanting to die so I wouldn't hurt so much any more... My parents were some of the most loving, caring people on the earth and it still wasn't enough to keep the self-loathing at bay. What if my children face the same demons? What if they get trapped in the same cycle of distress and angst and not know how to get out? What if my loving them isn't enough? What happens if they're faced with that split second decision and they chose the calm that lies beyond, rather than make the choice to live and deal with the pain in order to see what their future holds because my love isn't strong enough to help guide and protect them?
On the flip side of that, how can we teach our children the importance of compassion? How can we show them that being strong in their convictions, even when faced with peer pressure and the possibility of ridicule, may mean the difference in someones life? Is there a way to assure them that life won't always be how it is "now" and that those decisions they make in those instances define who they are for the future? That the future is what they're aiming for, and not the 'now' their living in at the moment? Isn't this our duty as parents? How do we assure that we're doing what we can, and what can we do to make our words and opinions carry more weight than our children's friends?
This blog took an amazing turn. I was going to write about how I didn't care about any of the things that were bothering me before because I have the love of my family... Didn't quite turn out that way, did it?
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