Approaching Adulthood

Kat starts high school next week.  I'm the parent of a high school teenager!  The last thirteen (almost fourteen, now) years have been quite a ride, I must say.  I don't imagine what it's like to have more than one child.  For me, one has been quite enough, thank you very much.

It's not that Kat is difficult.  She's sometimes frustratingly incommunicative (at least towards me), but I have the feeling that that's true for most children in and around their teenage years, when they're figuring out who they are and who they want to be.  Whether they figure out either during that period varies.  Whatever they decide is likely to change as they continue to grow, anyway, so I don't want to ask her incessantly what she wants to do/be when she "grows up."

Ha ha.

Here I am, asking her about growing up!  Peter told me something a couple of times, and I think my position in life does not encourage confidence in my response as of yet.  He said, "The thing about having kids is that it forces you to become an adult."

I thought I was grown-up when I was yet in my early twenties!  Old enough to know I wanted to have a stable, if not magnificent, career in architecture, that I'd find a suitable, if not perfect, lover/partner with whom I'd share the remainder of my days and nights.  I actually thought more about being a mother (to a daughter) more than I thought about any future love life that would involve a man (or woman, for that matter).

I was not concerned, terribly, with longevity, but I think that's my depressive nature creeping forward.  I've never been manic.  I'd oft thought that it might have been fun to be bipolar because when you're up, you're feeling REALLY, REALLY UP.  I had just received the curse of the downslides into depths out of which I'd felt helpless to crawl, much less climb.  It was something beyond teenage angst.  Beyond "blues."  Something had been keeping me consistently down.  Turned out to be chemical.

Indeed, it's a hole, and I hope never to fall or slide back into it.  I recognize that I could never have survived in the not-too-distant past, because I would have been restricted to an asylum for the mentally disturbed, have received one of those godawful lobotomies, or just ended up dead, likely by my own hand.  Instead, I am a fully-engaged member of the society in which I live.  Not anything significant, by many means, but important to the people who are important to me.

It wasn't until what was, at first, a temporary fix, that I found a regimen that enabled me to help myself come out of that bottomless hole that is depression.  I've been on several regimens since then.

Most had side effects that were temporarily acceptable, but in the long run became too deadening.  I could not continue as a eunuch on Prozac.  I did not survive as a slug on Effexor.  Lexapro was a no-go.  It was a long and arduous road I traveled to finally reach a healthy and stable place.

Perhaps I have grown up.  I've taken responsibility for my own health (that's something, isn't it?), produced and am responsible for caring for the physical and mental health of my offspring, whom I love dearly.  I am responsible enough to delegate to good, trustworthy people the well-being of Kat when I'm not available, though I try to be available as much as possible.  I know I will never be omnipresent (and what kid would want that, anyway?).  I'm trying to teach her independence without indifference.  I realize she's a sensitive individual, very much like an amphibian:  her skin is porous and absorbs pollutants quickly from her environment, so she'd be a perfect indicator species for the ecosystem in which she exists.  I am responsible for keeping that environment, as much as I can, a healthy and nurturing one without coddling her into weakness.  At the same, I want to expose her to things that will allow her to develop her physical and mental defenses against attack.

I sometimes wonder if I haven't cursed Kat with the same chemical disposition that I've suffered from.  When she was much younger, I took her to counseling (when we first moved to San Diego) to see how she was developing socially.  She still appears to relate to adults as well as she does with her peers.  There are some facets of aging that are not attractive, and she sees that clearly, through me and through others.  I think she's taken very much an observer's view of things as a writer.  She doesn't oft show me her writing, and I fear that it is out of a fear that I will be too judgmental.  I have only given her logistical, grammatical, spelling corrections before, never commenting on content.  I want her to choose her subjects well, and run with them.  I'm not the style police, nor do I want to be.

Kat's pretty earnest most of the time;  I suppose I was an earnest child, as well.  I remember two kids I knew as a young adolescent said to me, separately, "Gee, Nancy, you're always smiling."  and "Why do you never smile?"  Maybe I was fast-cycling bipolar when I was younger, but I don't, at any time, remember feeling unbreakable, super-confident, or certain (of myself).  The only thing I was sure of was that I did not consistently want to make too much effort to remain alive.

Maybe it was a phase I was going through that just took a very long time for me to grow out of?  All I know is that when I've tried, in the past, to leave the meds behind, I'd relapse.  The lethargy of being unable to do anything was excruciating.

I never made physical preparations for my own demise, but merely (merely?) imagined how well off everyone would be if I no longer existed.  Sure, there might be some temporary sorrow, but there would not be any gaping hole left in anyone's life.  Realistically, though, I don't know how much I'd want to leave such a gaping hole now in anyone's life if I were to cease.  I'd want to be remembered, however.  Once Kat was born, I knew that there was no way I could ever indulge in fantasies of my own demise because now I had someone else to care for.  When she was young, I would think to myself, "How horrible it would be to be brought into the world by someone who then chose to leave it?"  It would be devastating.  I didn't want to put that kind of weight on Kat, when she was an infant, when she was a toddler, when she was a small child, and now, when she's old enough to understand depression and anxiety, at least to a certain extent.

Of course, now that I'm on maintenance meds that keep me stable and somewhat uplifted, I can share in many good pursuits with Kat.  For instance, though there were some very rough spots during Advanced Bakeshop Skills, the class we took together, it was, overall, an enjoyable learning experience (I hope for both of us - it was for me).

I return, now, to the process of becoming an adult, of developing into one's full self.  I'm still pursuing...  something.  I know Kat will pursue her own dreams and desires.  It will be most excellent to watch her and assist her (when needed) in achieving her adult, full self.