The Weekly Call, Part 1 of 3

My formerly troubled teen daughter (and now clearly confused adult) has put me through some emotional ups and downs in the past few months. She has the ability to make some breakthroughs in her thought process and come up with some spot-on life plans, then something emotional happens and it’s like it never happened.

Since September 2018, she has turned 25 (a milestone), secured a roommate to help pay rent (smart), and lost her job because of her attitude (again?). She, of course, says the business owner had it out for her, but I know her. She has matured in many ways, but she still hasn’t learned to leave her personal problems at the door.

Here come the lies.

Before her birthday in December, she informed me that she was coming home for a visit, but would be spending some time camping. She designated a weekend that she’d be all mine, when she’d stay with me and let me baby her a little. It was the weekend before her big birthday, so I was really looking forward to celebrating it with her. She also told me that she was quitting her job and had an awesome new one lined up that would start right after her vacation.

Coming Back to Her Real Self

I wanted to update my saga with my precious daughter. I thank my lucky stars (I don’t believe in God, so let’s get that straight right now) and whatever other energy is out there, that my daughter is alive and very well. She’s had the same full-time job for more than a year, where they love her and have promoted her three times already. She get excellent job reviews and customer reviews, and is learning a lot about what she's interested in. Unfortunately, it’s not what she went to school for. But that’s OK, most of us do something different at some point; I know I trained as a teacher and haven’t been in front of a group of students in 17 years.

Anyway, she’s doing well at work, and she’s also clean. I think she drinks on weekends, but she’s now 23 and is allowed to. While she used drugs for a time, and hard ones at that, and got in trouble, big trouble—she was never an addict. She chose that lifestyle (who the hell knows why), but she apparently has chosen to not be in it anymore. I’m sure she’s tempted—she tends to be depressed or easily stressed, and doesn’t share her feelings easily. But so far she’s stayed out of that type of trouble for several years, and reaches out to me if she’s in a jam. And by “jam,” I mean her car got dinged or she needs gas money. In the past, she’d lie, keep secrets, steal, sell something I gave her, or for all I know (and I have no proof), sell drugs or possibly herself for money.  That was a very different person at a very different time.

Mom is Still Clueless

I have not seen my daughter since that last time when I realized how skinny she was. I seldom hear from her, and if I call, I don't get a call back. I don’t know what’s going on with her, and I don’t get answers to my questions (you can’t if they don’t talk to you).

She has sent nice text messages telling me how much she loves me and will make up all this lost time. She’ll even go as far as asking to meet up on a Sunday. I’ll be excited for that, and she’ll inevitably blow me off. This past Sunday was a case in point. Her text message said, “u, me, food, Sunday J” so how could I resist? I agreed, of course, but waited until Sunday morning to follow up. I sent a text at 10 a. m. to confirm that we were still on, but never heard back.

I set aside the day (stupidly, but hopefully), but ended up going grocery shopping and taking a nap. Finally, my boyfriend invited me to hike to relieve the stress and that helped a bit. That night I texted again, “Never heard from you. You okay?” A while later I got, “Yeah, sick.” That’s it.

I wrote that she should’ve told me instead of blowing me off once again. It wasn’t until the next day that she responded with an apology, in which her excuse was that she slept the whole day and didn’t even realize the day had come and gone. My response was the I didn’t know what to say, that it wasn’t the first time, and I hoped she was feeling better. I haven’t heard a word since. I left a voicemail yesterday with just a hello, but so far there's been nothing back.