Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Refusal

As expected, Friday, the day of Jme’s interview with the military academy, came and went and she never approached us about it. It never came up. The night before, the night of Thanksgiving, she left to stay over at her sister’s house. We reminded her of her appointment, but she just kind of blew us off.

Jme’s school counselor, Ms. Ross., sent an email to Wifey and me this morning to tell us that Jme had come to talk with her this morning in school. Her email said that Jme had come in specifically to ask if there was any way she could enroll in the military academy without talking to the two of us about it. When Ms. Ross told her that there was not way to do this, Jme joked with her about running away. Ms. Ross closed her email by inviting Wifey and me to meet with her in the afternoon to talk in more detail.

So this afternoon, Wifey and I went up to Jme’s school to meet with Ms. Ross in person. Ms. Ross told us a number of things that we already know: Jme is a great kid and very sharp; that this year she started out fine but that something had changed in the last few months; that she wants to chart her own course, even if it is a destructive one. She also told us some things that we did not know: that Jme had apparently gone to her appointment with the military academy recruiter without our knowledge, but that she had been turned away since she didn’t have the completed application with a signed permission slip; that Jme had said that she was “very unhappy” living with us, and that she wanted to go to the military academy in order to protect herself from her own bad choices that might result from her current unhappiness; and that she could not, and would not, talk to us about any of this.

My thinking continues to be that if she is not mature enough to come to us and have a conversation about what she would like to change in her life and why, then this is evidence that is not yet mature enough to make these kinds of life changing decisions on her own. If she cannot tell us why she wants a change, or that she wants a change at all, then what cause would we ever have to make any change, much less the one she might want? This is endlessly frustrating.

I am feeling very hurt by this. And frustrated. And angry. And rejected. Part of me wants to send her on her way and be done with the responsibility of her. But the larger part of me loves her too much and knows that we cannot simply give up on her and abandon her to wherever her own choices might lead. Even if that is what she wishes. I think she is feeling some of the normal exertion-of-independence feelings that teenagers have when they are on the cusp of adulthood. For her, perhaps some of her other life issues are exaggerating this.

I tell Stephanie all the time that we must be the adults, we must remain in control of our emotions, we must not let her choices get us too emotionally riled. It’s easier said than done, and I am often the one who needs to keep my emotions in check. Jme swings wide between being upbeat one moment, to being sullen and angry then next, and then suddenly back to wildly animated.

When she emerges from her room and from a bout of what I’ve come to call “mystery pissed,” it really bothers me see her bounce around here being all chipper (and fake?), telling overly animated stories of her friends or something that happened that day to someone at school, when apparently she is feeling a fundamental unhappiness at the direction her life is going, the directions we have helped to steer her. If she won’t share what’s going on with herself, I don’t really want to hear about some crazy thing she saw while driving home.

We have chosen her. We have made the decision to love her. And as we’ve told her, we will never leave her. We will never sever our relationship with her. If she wants it severed, she will have to take that initiative and sever it herself. Maybe this is what she is trying to do, but without her telling us about it, even that is a mystery.

We have tried so hard to make her a part of our family, but we may never be a part of hers.