The Weight
Second guessing the past and the future.
When looking back over my daughter’s tumultuous life, I tell myself that I can’t feel guilt about any of my actions. We do the best we can with the information we have at the time, I say. I try to have no regrets; that’s one of my life principles. We can’t change the past, but we can act now and affect the future. We only have this moment. This is what I say to myself when I see where Molly has been and where she is now. But sometimes I slip up, and start going through all the things we could have done differently, and wondering.
What if?
If we had been more strict. If we’d gotten therapy when she was little and first started having “anger issues.” If we’d listened to friends who were a few years farther on the same path. If we’d really listened to her saying she had ADHD and anxiety when she was in elementary school, instead of believing it was another of her “characters.” If we’d gone into our retirement money to get a consultant or a self paid school or wilderness camp, instead of using only the places covered by our HMO.
If I had made myself have real conversations with her instead of sometimes being relieved she was holed up in her room avoiding us, because conversations that started fine could turn into attacks.
If I’d followed through with keeping her phone, with grounding her, instead of caving after ten straight hours of her screaming on the floor in the middle of the dining room, where we all had to walk over her to get anywhere in the house. She has always needed to be around people; she literally can’t manage when alone. I was not able to handle the pain in my head and the fear that the neighbors would fear the worst. But what if I had followed through?
If we’d somehow found a way to keep her safe and healthy at home instead of sending her to so many residential treatments, therapeutic boarding school, calling the ambulance when she was punching holes in the walls and throwing things.
Who knows? Maybe if we’d done things differently in some crucial way, she’d be a happy well adjusted young adult right now instead of being in pain and confused about what she can do next with her life.
Even if I didn’t have that little nagging internal voice telling me certain decisions were not the best, all I have to do is listen to my daughter, when she’s dysregulated or in a manic episode, and the accusations she makes. She knows what to say to stab me in my heart. Not sure how she knows, except that I’m prone in certain relationships to confiding too much and then hearing my inner fears thrown back at me to hurt. She’s told me she wishes I’d succeeded in killing myself. She’s called me a failed abortion. She’s called me cold and unloving. She’s told me I have always wanted to get rid of her.
I tell myself she doesn’t mean it, that she’s sick and not thinking straight. I think this works. Later she will apologize and tell me she loves me more than anything. and I know she does, and I love her more than anything too. No matter what.
I know we can’t change the past, and regrets do no good. I know that there is no blame, that this is just the way things are. But I feel a heavy weight on me nonetheless knowing that where we are is not where we expected to be. The decisions of the past are what they are, but there are decisions ahead and I don’t want to think of the impact they could have.