Last dance with Mary Jane

October 29, 2012 2 Comments

Picked up step-daughter and went out to visit oldest girl-child and grand-baby.  It was our first chance to spend time together since she’s moved and my first chance to see her apartment.

I’ve got to say, I wasn’t really expecting much because the street she lives on is pretty much where you live when you have no money or are into “stuff” but my heart kind of sank when I saw the place.  It was filthy and pretty much trashed.  There’s holes in the walls and crap everywhere.  I doubt there was a clean dish in the house since the kitchen was littered with dirty dishes and bits of dried up food stuff.

And then I saw her bedroom and there were bongs everywhere and the place reeked of pot.

Step-daughter had quit smoking dope before she moved in and now she’s back to smoking up everyday.

It really struck me the differences between the two girls.  They have different life experiences but pretty much were in the same place when they both moved in and now they’re so far apart, they’re not even on the same planet.  Buddy-child is pretty much on the typically teenager path of getting her license, applying for post-secondary school, hanging with her boyfriend and going to the occasional party.  Step-daughter works nights, smokes up when she gets home from work, smokes up when she gets up and pretty much has checked back out of life again.

The good news is that step-daughter and I had a good two hours to talk about what was happening with her life and the choices she was making versus where she wanted to be.  It was a good chunk of time to talk.

A while back, I suggested to step-daughter that she start reading the blog I want a dumpster baby since the author had a lot of posts that were like snippets into the mind of step-daughter.  Much to my surprise she’s been actually reading (yay!!).  This gave us a chance to get into some really serious conversations about what she was doing and where it was leading her.  One of the great things about her reading that blog is that she was able to talk about how she is coming to learn that she needs to do it herself and do the work herself.  Sometimes the messages need to come from someone else because the kids just get so used to hearing us tell them all the time.  By the time we returned to town she was committed and excited to give up the drugs again and get back on track.  She’s still in therapy and not ready to give up yet.

We’ll see what she does.  She has done it once so I know she can do it again but whether she has the motivation to work that hard or not – I guess we’ll see.  I wish her luck because she still has so far to go.

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Hope springs eternal

May 21, 2012 2 Comments

I did something today I haven’t done in a very long time.  I spent the day with youngest step-daughter.  Oldest girl child had asked that I paint some stuff on grand-baby’s wall.  Seeing as she was planning on continuing with the whole art-brain mural thing with this baby, who am I to say no?  At the time the idea was formulated, step-daughter was invited to help me paint.  She is also very artistic and has helped me paint a few different walls in the past.  The chance to paint the wall was delayed a couple of times which brings us to today.  I wasn’t comfortable not extending the invitation once again since step-daughter was part of the original plan and not inviting her now just felt wrong.  She knew the deal was she had to stay sober / straight for the day and if she couldn’t do it then don’t come with me.  But, as I mentioned, she came.  Her and oldest girl are very close so oldest girl-child was quite happy with things working out the way they did.

It was probably good for both of us because it gave us oodles of time in the car together to talk things out.  Car rides are so great for having more serious conversations with teenagers sometimes.  It allows both of you to talk without looking directly at each other and still not be rude about it.  For some kids, that’s a little safer.  Actually, for some parents I think that’s a little safer too.

So we talked.  The ride up was a little uncomfortable.  I asked the millions of questions about what she was doing, who she was hanging out with, what is she planning on doing next?  I also offered some feedback on a few things she said.  She has a difficult time getting all the “life is rosey – la, la, la, I’m in denial” answers past me partly because I’ve heard them all before from her and partly because I have too much information about things.  Since we both know this, this does make it easier to cut through the crap and get to actual issues.  We used to be able to really talk about tons of things and even the difficult conversations were still okay.  Things are not quite the same now though.  There is a tension there that didn’t exist before.

In the end, by the time we were driving back, things were starting to once again relax.  Step-daughter made it through the day without getting stoned and seemed quite okay about it.  She claims she isn’t smoking dope every day anymore and I really do want to believe her but I just don’t know.  She didn’t have that addict needing a fix look like she used to.  Or maybe that’s just me doing all the “la, la, la, life is rosey” stuff now.  What we were able to do is set some ground rules for us continuing to have a relationship together.  One of them being that she needs to participate in it and not just put all the responsibility on me to chase her and make her be in my life.  There are times when you kind of need to do that with kids but in this case, step-daughter’s parents interfere so I can’t just do this without her help.  She says this is what she wants but whether or not she can pull it off well, I guess we’ll see.

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