WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES

It’s five forty-seven in the morning and I cannot sleep.  I decided better than tossing, turning and fretting my time would be better spent at the keyboard.

I figure I can get in a blog in before my breakfast meeting.

Why can’t I sleep? Many reasons; it has been a rocky weekend in Freshman Land and not for any of the obvious reasons.

The immediate explanation for why I can’t sleep is Taylor flew home from Maryland last night and the family rule is when any of us fly we text or call when we land to let the others know we are safe.

Glenn and I do it with each other and since Taylor has been flying alone for years she always does it as well. She did not do it last night because

she thinks we are “rude.”

She also hates this blog except on the days she likes it, much like she hated the documentary until she fell in love with it. Things change. Life is fluid, at five-fifty two am after a sleepless night that is as much comfort as I can muster for myself that, and another cappuccino.

I was thinking yet again on Friday of stopping the blog as Taylor was yelling about it, and then out of the blue I got an email from a woman I have never met; a renowned psychologist who not only reads it, but wants to meet with me and told me to keep on going.  Her specialty is family relationships, if she thought I was being  “rude” or crossing boundaries with my daughter I’m sure she would have told me to stop it or tone it down or something. Instead she was very encouraging and said keep on going. She doesn’t know me, needs nothing from me has nothing to gain, so I can only trust her opinion to be sound.

This week’s blogs are going to deal primarily with mistakes and money.

Two things that not only go hand in hand but cause the ruination of lives and relationships as well as a host of other problems.

But the reality is we cannot live without either.

We cannot live without mistakes because it is impossible to be human and not make them.

We make them from the time we are born until the time we die.

They range anywhere from drinking one too many and getting behind the wheel, to picking the wrong mate for the wrong reasons to not listening to our little voice to someone as self and globally destructive as a Bernie Madoff. And there are a million things in between all of those.

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, in fact if we pay attention to them and learn from them they are the greatest teachers we have.  Mistakes can teach you more than any Ivy League School or graduate program or well-meaning parent trying to cram hard learned life’s lessons down your throat.

School teaches you how to think. Mistakes teach you how to live.

Owning your mistakes, taking responsibility for them and using them as a form of GPS gets you through life. Ignoring them only causes you to make more, usually of the same variety.

If you do not own your mistakes your mistakes end up owning you and ultimately they can end up bringing you down.

People wonder why I don’t speak to my mother – it will come out over the course of this blog.  Not all of it, as there would go my next book, but enough to explain the story; but one of the main reasons I don’t speak to her is she refuses to own her mistakes, they are everyone’s fault but her own. Being an only child and her being single for forty some odd years I am the only place on which she can hang them.

If she had owned her mistakes over the years I think she would have surely found a mate, she would have a good relationship with her family and I think be a happier, healthier person today.

But nobody can own your mistakes for you, they can’t carry them onboard the aircraft in their hand luggage, they can’t take responsibility and they cannot allow them at a certain point to destroy their life as you willingly destroy your own.

Anyone in AA will tell you this.

I know who I will get an email from when he wakes up in fit as a fiddle in fine mood about his Yanks.

But back to topic.  I have made many, many, many mistakes in my life.

I still make them. The only thing age hopefully teaches you is how to make fewer and how to see the habitual ones as the turn they corner and head for your house. If you can do that as my friend Larry says, “progress not perfection.”

I have found I make my biggest mistakes from either two places, either I have programmed my internal GPS on fear mode and it leads me right to that dark place where I make my choices or treat those around me from deepest fears, and that is my fear of abandonment. I am terrified of being abandoned, I wonder why??? But that is for later as well.

When I deal with people or issues from there, I inevitably either fall into my dark hole, piss people off or make a mess of whatever is in front of me.

I am then put in a position where I have to own my issues, make amends and clean up whatever mess or hurt I might have caused those I love or those who might have gotten in the way of my tornado of over-blown, uncontrolled emotion.

I did that two weeks ago with Taylor and the first weekend she was supposed to come home. I made amends. I learned from that and I did not do it the second time when I saw it coming. I have learned as much as I hurt others I hurt myself more and only I can control it is not nor should it be anyone else’s job and quite frankly even if they tried, they couldn’t do it.

Bring irrational and fearful because of old wounds and being disappointed are two different things. One is allowed to be disappointed in life, life is full of disappointments, in fact there are many more disappointments in the average life than there are peak experiences.

I am allowed to be disappointed that Taylor will not be home and we may not see her for a longer period of time but I cannot translate that into my fear mode and make her pay the consequences.  That is needy and controlling and wrong and the part of me I am working on the hardest.

One of the other great life lessons that only mistakes and disappointments can teach you is how to deal with them with a little grace and not to act on your disappointment, as that will usually lead you to wherever your dark hole may be.

One cannot dictate to another to not be disappointed that is denying their feelings and that is not fair. But you can also not always change your course because you might disappoint another. It depends on what the disappointment. Disappointment comes in as many forms as there are molecules. Some forms require adjustment in behavior on the part of the disappointer some on the part of the disappointee; it changes from case to case day to day. Some just have to be acknowledged quietly, filed away under your issues and move on.

Lucy at nine gets disappointed when we go out for dinner, if she is left with a babysitter and no friend to distract her. As disappointment is part of life she had had to get used to the fact that there are nights we will go out and do grown up things where she is not included. But the flip side is I try not to disappoint her more than two nights a week and never three in a row. I respect her feelings, I acknowledge them as they are age appropriate and like most little kids she prefers her parents in the next room. But I can’t let them rule my entire world. She will be disappointed plenty in life, she needs to learn how to adjust to it. But she also needs to know her feelings are real and count.

This morning at six-twenty four I am deeply disappointed in Taylor and not because she did not come home for the three-day weekend like she is telling everyone.

Last Sunday for about two hours I was disappointed about the lack of the three-day weekend, then filed it under my issues and moved on. “Progress, not perfection.”

I am disappointed in her as she has made several large mistakes that instead of owning them and trying to make right with those around her, she retreats, avoids and accuses everyone else of being “rude.”

For some reason when life does not go Taylor’s way it is because someone else is ‘rude. ” It is not because she goofed up as is human and can be forgiven but she prefers to pass the buck in the name of rudeness.

I sometimes feel if I hear the word rude being hurled across the room at Glenn or me one more time I will dive out the window.

For the record this is the definition of rude.” impolite, discourteous, bad-mannered, uncouth, offensive, foul, vulgar, boorish and disrespectful”

In the situation we are dealing with now, none of these apply to us.

We are capable of those things and have at times both behaved that way in our lives sometimes with our kids and sometimes with others. Find me someone who has not behaved that way and I will find you a saint.

But when Taylor finds herself backed up against the wall because she has made a mistake, she jumps into her hole of the world is rude, I’m a victim and I shall punish you for my poor behavior. This is remarkably l like my mother and something I have a very low tolerance for.   Despite the fact she has accumulated eighty-one years of life, my mother is still on many levels an adolescent. I actually had a therapist tell me recently her emotional growth stopped at age three.

So word to Taylor you want end up like my mother keep on going. I don’t think that is what you want. You can change it on a dime, especially at your age. It is harder the older you get.

Since Taylor’s goal like that of most Freshman is to be independent and treated like a  grown-up this kind of behavior is not helping her at all. It only leads you far from the land of the mature and will only serve any freshman who does this to not grow but to spin wheels, piss off others and not ultimately get what you want which is the respect and privileges of a grown up. It will also eventually alienate you from those who love you, get you fired from jobs and pretty much fuck up your life on all fronts.

What is a grown-up? Let’s start with what a grown up is not, having sex does not make you a grown up. As my father says “gophers do it.” Having responsible sex does make indicates grown up behavior.

Drinking does not make you a grown up. Responsible drinking doesn’t make you a grown up either, drinking has really nothing to do with being a grown up. it is by law a grown up privilege and done responsibly comes under the heading of responsible behavior which is a sign of being a grown up. Staying up all night does not make you a grown up. It makes you sleep deprived and unable to function at your peak, but it is a habit teens find hard to pass by and most people drop it by their mid-twenties when they actually start behaving like grown ups.

Spending money irresponsibly, yours or others does not make you a grown up either, it merely makes you irresponsible and often times broke.

Now, in my land of mistakes, and in the name of owning my weaknesses I have always been bad with money, with the money I inherited – too young- I was reckless, foolish and absurd. If I had it to do all over again I would.

Did I learn?  Yeah, when I finally started making it on my own I respected it more and was more careful, but truthfully, it remains one of my weak spots.  It is one of the things I have to wrestle with on a daily basis, I am bad with money, I like to spend it, it seems to have always been there, but it may not always be and at fifty-one it remains an area where I need improvement. I don’t spend what I don’t have and I don’t jeopardize my kid’s tuition for a fur coat, but I could be a bigger saver less indulgent.

The other place where people make a lot of their mistakes in life is in the land of greed, which is a first cousin to immediate gratification, which is also an adolescent issue.

But we all have different strengths and weaknesses. Now my mother for all her emotional immaturity is very good with money. It has always come to her too, but somehow her internal financial compass has always been set in the right direction. She saves, her money has grown and she does not squander it at all. It is an area in her life where she has been remarkably responsible and I admire her for that.

Taylor right now is deep inside her “my parents are rude hole” , not speaking to us and quite frankly today I have no desire not because she went to Maryland not because she didn’t come home but because she abused both her money and without permission ours.

I will end this part now and pick it up when I return from my breakfast meeting.

I want to leave you all with a quote from an extraordinary book I read over the weekend. It is  by a doctor of pyschiatarty who coindidentally teaches at Johns Hopkins. She has written several best sellers on mood disorders. She is worth reading.

The book I read is called  NOTHING WAS THE SAME.

“I have often said to my students who were struggling in the wake of mania or suicidal despair: We are each an island.  It is your task to bring to your own island what you need to live long and well: love, beauty, diversion, friends, work that sustains, a meaningful life. Look at Maui, I would say, everything was brought in by man, insect, bird or wind. It is your life: it is short. Treat your island with regard. Do not let it go to weed: do not give it over to anyone else. Understand the possibilities. Know the dangers. Keep away the ungenerous and the unkind.”

Dr. Kay  Redfield Jamison

I’ be back…

FRESHMAN MOM