Life in Reverse.

I was a really odd teenager. I was terrified of drugs and alcohol. I was horrified at the idea of my parents being upset with me. I was even more worried about God not liking me and so the naughtiest thing I ever did was let my boyfriend touch my boobs under a houseboat on a family vacation to Lake Mead. And boy, did I feel awful about that. A good few weeks of repentant prayer, I'll tell you what.

I was really, really responsible. I studied hard and late into the night. I was in honors courses and took AP English. I was in the student body government for 3 out of the 4 years in high school. I took my job as a Christian very, very seriously and went through devotional books like it was some sort of spiritual porn. I prayed for those who didn't know the Lord, and I prayed for my friend, Amber Rady, who I found out had recently starting smoking cigarettes and who smelled like them after senior lunch last week. I prayed that I would always be focused on God, that I would honor him, that I would continue to grow closer and closer to him.

College wasn't much different. It didn't take long for me to become involved in the student ministries at my school and to be singing with the worship band in chapel. My 21st birthday went by without so much as getting tipsy and I created an accountability group to help rein in my crazy impulses to get naked with my boyfriend. When I walked across that stage and moved the tassel from one side to the other I had never been drunk, never had sex, never watched a porno, never smoked a cigarette, never smoked a joint, and never hung out with someone who was not a Christian. And I had never, ever, believed that it was okay to think for myself.

At 21 years old, I moved into a residential treatment facility for children who were victims of abuse and neglect to work as a houseparent. In short, I spent three years being a full-time mom to 10 boys who were in institutionalized foster care. At the age of 24, I became a licensed foster parent to raise one of these kids who I felt very connected to and whom I loved very deeply. My boyfriend and his two toddlers moved into my first apartment with my foster son and me and- literally overnight- I had become a wife and mother of three. By the age of 25, I had my first panic attack.

The weight of the responsibilities that I had borne were so overwhelming that I drove to a bar at one a.m. and drank 5 shots in a row, just before closing. When I called my boyfriend, I had no idea where I was. What I did know was that I felt like a little girl trying to take care of everyone around her. I was buckling.

The term "over-responsible" was new to me when I read about it in my graduate school studies a few years later. When I saw the word, it was as if it leaped off of the page and stamped itself on my forehead. I knew exactly what it meant. I knew without having to read about it that I would be defined in the sentences that followed afterword. And I knew immediately how it had set itself up in my consciousness.

My dad was a speaker and a writer for youth ministers around the world. He's kinda famous in the whole Christian subculture of America. As a kid and as a teenager, I spent a great deal of time at youth ministry seminars and conventions, surrounded by youth pastors and people like Tony Campolo, Duffy Robbins, Rich Van Pelt, and Mike Yaconelli. It was not uncommon for me to go to conventions like DC/LA or CHIC and have a staff pass so I could eat lunch with the guys from Jars of Clay or The Newsboys, or to have reserved seats with my name on them for the front row. Being my dad's daughter literally gave me a back-stage pass to the world of adults who make a living shaping teenagers into good Christian adults, and I found out really quick that I was hugely rewarded if I showed up as this uber responsible, well spoken, overly-devout, highly moral and on-fire-for-the-Lord teenager. These guys couldn't get enough of it! They would stroke me with compliments to my "maturity" and to my "heart for the Lord." They would soon realize that I was not like most teenagers who only care about sex and getting high and being angsty and hormonal.... no, I was one of them. I was this strange but amazing anomoly in the world of American teens. I was an adult in a teenager's body, not prone to the desires of the flesh but who's eyes were on the prize.

Now I know that the prize I was always seeking was approval from these men and women who were the leaders and celebrities of my culture. And I am also sadly aware that their attention and approval were filling in the space that was laid vacant by the perception that my own father did not see me or acknowledge me. To be seen and to be known, to be stroked and praised, to be acknowledged and recognized by these icons was an addictive salve for the wounded one inside. And so I became who they wanted me to be. I became the miniature adult, shirking the things of youth and vanity and play. I took in the sick and the wounded and the poor. I did mission trips and service projects and made it a point to sit next to the nerds and the weirdos at lunch, even if it meant social suicide. Jesus would have done it. Duffy definitely would have. The devotional I read last night said that I should.

In other words, I didn't have an adolescence. I didn't take any risky behaviors. I didn't experiment with drugs or multiple identities. I didn't get angry at my parents and tell them they didn't understand. I didn't become brooding and hormonal and lock mself away in my bedroom. In fact, I distanced myself away from all things adolescent and held a view of these behaviors as somehow weak, immature, and to be conquered. I didn't belong out there in the audience with the rest of the teenagers. I belonged backstage, here with the adults who were conspiring to wipe out the nasty adolescent bug that lurked in the hearts of the youth of America.

The effect is that I've lived life in reverse. I was a foster mother to teenagers in my early twenties, a stepmother to toddler/schoolaged girls in my midtwenties, and had a baby in my late twenties. And now, in my early 30's, I am finally doing the adolescence that I never had. Its a bit awkward, doing 17 at age 33, but as any psychology 101 student knows... one must complete and master each one of life's age stages. If not now, then you'll have to do it later.

I believe that this dynamic would be happening for me even if I didn't live with my parents in my childhood home, but the fact that I am living here makes everything just oh-so-much-more authentic. Like the fact that my parents walked in on me and a boy. Like how I just want them to leave me alone and pretend I don't exist. Like how I spend as much time as possible now locked inside my bedroom, listening to my music and watching my shows. Like how I hate that they want to know where I've been and where I'm going. Like how everything about them can drive me absolutely fucking nuts, like the way their breathing sounds or the way they scrape their fork across the plate. I want to sneak out every night. I want to punish them with a bad mood.

I find myself daydreaming and fantasizing about the day I can move out and be on my own, as if I didn't do that for 10+ years already. But to me, its as if I have traveled back in time to the Amber at 17 who drove away for college and never really came back until now. My relationship with my parent's didn't age even though I aged. I left at 17 and I am now back at 17, but this time feeling like the annoying, angsty, sex-crazed, wanna-get-high teenager in the audience who is just here to check out the boys.

My parents don't know what to think of me. I think they're worried. They see me taking risks and dating 22 year old boys and getting into trouble and having a bad attitude and they want to know what happened to their responsible, God-fearing daughter. I'm finally doing 17, that's what. Oddly, doing 17 at 33 makes sense to me. I think it actually makes more sense to do 17 at age 33. I can get into bars. I have a job and money. I have a car and can pass as an adult if I need to. But they won't understand that. Parents just don't understand.