I NEED A NEW PLAYLIST

It’s Friday and Taylor will not be home for the weekend.

I’m fine with that, though it would have been nice to see her. The problem is we haven’t spoken since Tuesday and that is as much if not more my fault than it is hers. In fact it’s ninety-nine percent my fault.

So many knots and problems get started in life because people don’t actually hear what the other is saying. They sometimes hear what they want to hear or they hear an old tape that merely reinforces their worst fears.

What escalated into something of a drama could have been just a normal phase of the life adjustment curve if I had been more mature at the outset.

But I have an iPod in my head where the first playlist is entitled FEAR. I wonder if this is the reason I keep buying new iPods?

When I talked to Taylor on Tuesday, when to her credit she gingerly approached the subject of not coming home in a grown-up and sensitive way, I behaved like a fool. There is no question she knows which one of my buttons to push to get me upset but she also knows which ones to use to not get me upset.

So she said, “I’m not sure, but I may want to stay up here this weekend. It’s only two weeks and no one is going home and I’m getting adjusted.”

Now instead of me having the right response, the mature response, the correct response, the response that actually makes a kid feel like their growth is OK, and their ambivalence normal, the response that makes a kid want to spend time with their parents – did I respond that way? No, not me, not in that moment; my internal iPod immediately shuffled to FEAR – and what I heard was “You’re a terrible mother. I can’t stand the thought of coming home. Two weeks away from you and I realize what a hellhole the last eighteen years have been. Don’t expect to see me until there is a holiday with gifts involved.” That is exactly what I heard. And it is not at all what she said. She said I’m two weeks into college; making friends, nobody else is running home and I want to stay and get used to my life here.

She even said she wasn’t sure would I give her to Wednesday? But the playlist was turned up to maximum volume so I couldn’t be the grown up there either. The correct response would have been, “ Sure, once you decide let me know. I’m glad you are adjusting so well, if not this weekend another.”

But I had to make up the bogus excuse that I needed to know now, in that second. I had to make plans. What plans? I had no plans. But if I was going to be rejected I wanted to know then and now so I could beeline to my dark hole and clamp down the lid as quickly as possible. So I demanded she tell me then. She decided to turn me off and return to her friends who were clearly not being passive –aggressive and needy. OK, PROFFESOR, I hate to do it, but one for you.

Now in the light of three days and time spent back with my old shrink, the super one – not the one that made me feel like I was never as good as she was for the last three years: plus hours of emails with Sheldon and some wise words from Larry, I came to realize she was right. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me either. Not me in that state – not me channeling my own mother, and as if my behavior wasn’t juvenile and regressive enough I decided I would actually not only channel my mother I would act just like her and hang up the phone. I wasn’t getting what I wanted so there – who needs you.

Now, if I had behaved differently the whole set of emails to Taylor.Templeton would not have happened and her response which unfortunately articulated my state of mind – “Stop Emailing me” “Who are you? You’re a jackass. Leave me alone.” If those hadn’t been the first ones of the following day things would have been different. But in waking up to those I climbed further into my oh-so-comfy hole – titled “Anyone I Love Will Eventually Walk Away. “ This is where I feel safe in my misery – I’ve spent so long there I know every nook and cranny. Once I’m deep inside there it takes a bloody crane to get me out.

So Taylor instead of being pissed that I hung up on her and most likely knowing I was disappointed sent me a cheery text when she woke up – “GOOD MORNING.” If I hadn’t been in the hole I would have heard that for what it was: “I still love you. I may not come home Friday, but I’m still here.” But I couldn’t hear that because now I had my playlist with the additional music from Taylor. Templeton running together.
It wasn’t until after the first blog that I figured out about the second Taylor Templeton and I apologized.
The odd thing about my dark hole is I can write from there with great clarity whether I’m living it or not.

But then my Taylor reached out to me again; she called me after classes and did exactly what I had said she wasn’t doing the day before – she told me about her classes, some teachers, and a few societies she joined. She offered up the part of her life I said I wanted to share in. She did what I asked, but I couldn’t hear her from the hole. The fear tape is so loud and been playing for so many years it is sometimes very hard to shut off. So once again when given the chance to behave like the grown up I pretend to be – I behaved like the person I fear the most. I was cold, monosyllabic and generally unreachable. The exact things I accuse her of – wonder where she learned it?

And then even after that, she tried again, she called me an hour later to ask me what she should write a paper on. She was telling me, I may prefer to stay up here this weekend, but I do love you, I do need you and I’m not going anywhere. But despite the fact I was at Michael’s in the middle of lunch I had taken my hole with me so I told her I would call her back.

Did I? Did I call her back and take her outreached hand? No. I went and got botox instead. Frozen forehead to go with frozen emotions.

I was going to punish her. But I had no reason to punish her; she hadn’t done anything wrong. My mother did the wrong stuff. Taylor is just a kid two weeks into college not sure where she fits in at home or in the world and instead of helping I was only making it worse.

When I’m in my hole I want to punish my mother and I can’t, so anyone who triggers off the tape gets it.

By the time I didn’t call her back she had had it and quite frankly who could blame her?

I was asking the impossible, I was asking her to dig me out of a hole someone else had dug decades before she was born and I voluntarily threw myself into when I got frightened.

That’s not a fair position to put anyone in, much less a child. And yes she is 18 and living on her own in that way one does at college. But she is my child and she is still tethered by that nasty thread called money.

But regardless of that it’s not her problem it’s mine.

So the lesson for this week is – Keep buying iPods until you get the right playlist.

I own the stock so it’s a win – win for me……

FRESHMAN MOM

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