Friday, November 13, 2009

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.

8 comments:

jenna's blogs said...

here's to doing 17 at 33! love it. and love YOU!

DanBin said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Amber,

I enjoyed reading your blog and the very difficult road you have traveled with regards to your view or version of christianity. Whoever told us that walking with God was going to be easy or that once you repent and live for Jesus, all is cool, flat out lied. After 25 years of walking with the Lord, I have found that God is more amazing and loving then I could ever imagine, yet at times frustrates me because I don't understand what the hell is going on.
See I too did not get 17 or 5 or a 6 or even 9 in my childhood. I spent roughly 10 years of my youth as an orphan being exposed to all kinds of horrors. My folks were hell raising stoners that listened to Led Zeppelin and hung out with red neck bikers from the South. I could never understand my mothers obsession with alcohol or dating loser biker dudes that beat the crap out of her and that she would call him the next day all black and blue. For years I carried this major rage in my heart and pushed people away. It was like I was this porcupine that wanted love and acceptance but felt odd and outcast, like I did not deserve to be loved. I allowed myself to mire in my crap and develop a bad attitude that life and sure as hell God owed me an explanation for my shitty childhood. But you know the sad thing about shitty childhoods? It does not stop adulthood from coming. So as an adult I became extremely narcistic even paranoid. My relationship with my mother was heated and strained most of my twenties. I pushed and demanded that she explain to me why she drank her problems away instead of loving her son and offering a safe home environment, but she never had an answer, just excuses. Yet what I failed to understand is that the more I hated my mother for her faults the more I became like her. The apple rarely falls far from the tree.
Then one day a close friend of mine asked me a powerful question..What is keeping you from having a great life? What are you waiting for? I guess it never occured to me that my unwillingness to extend grace to my mother was holding me back. But also I failed to extend grace to myself and ask my mother to forgive me for my anger towards her. One day I called her and told her that I was sorry for all the years of rage and anger and I had forgiven her for the past as well. And you know,,it was like a load of bricks were taken off my shoulders. I did not have to carry the burden of anger and rage any longer. That I was free to pursue my dreams and goals of finishing college and having a loving marriage someday. So at 27 years old, I enrolled back in college and finished my BA in Social Work. After that I took a job as a Social Worker for LA County DCFS, bought a home, nice car, bought a business, moved to Tennessee, got married, became a father of two great boys, and am about to hit 40 next summer. Yet none of this would have been possible had I not forgiven my mother. And when she became ill and had days to live, I was at her side holding her with no regrets of unresolved issues or crap but only love and acceptance. That her very last words to me were "Larry I love you" then she passed..

Whats the moral here? Life does not owe any of us explanations or reasons why things go wrong, it just does.
And that one day all our being pissed off at those who screwed us over will not matter. Because frankly, who wants to listen to a 50 year old talk about all thier regrets and why the kids never call anymore.
And finally, I have just as much reason to be mad at the world, my parents, for the lost childhood I will never get back. But whats worse? A messed up childhood or an adulthood filled with mistakes you may take to the grave and shatter the lives of those around you?

I choose love and life....
Larry W. Smith

Anonymous said...

Amber, I was raised in church as well and although I did enjoy it for the most part I did feel for several years a little like it had been chosen "for" me. In my early 20's I met a friend who taught me about having a "personal" relationship with God. My christianity wasn't about how much I attended church or what groups I belonged to, who my bff's were; it was about the relationship I had with God (only God) and how He worked in my life individually. As christians we are supposed to strive to be Christlike. When we fall or act like our human selves He doesn't throw us to the curb (even though some mislead Christians unfortunately might). Instead He loves us through it all and teaches us valuable life lessons and helps us to grow. He is our Daddy and allows us to make our own choices. When we stray or fall or crumble He picks us up, dusts us off and is ready with open arms. You are on a journey and none of us have the right to judge or tell you which way to turn. Just know that wether you ultimately choose to follow the Lord in your journey that He is still beside you and loves YOU, his beautiful, precious child.

Unknown said...

Hey, write something already, would ya! You're too good at it not to.

As you may have guessed, my experience has been the opposite: by the time we met in college I had slept with (just about) everybody I wanted to, smoked plenty of crack and dropped lots of acid—and pot was equivalent to a cigarette, etc., etc.

Ah, well.

The Momma Giraffe said...

I love you Amber! I enjoyed your most recent post! You are right...you can't just skip a stage.

Anonymous said...

I went to school with you and somehow stumbled upon your blog- I too have experienced everything you went through and except I was married at 22 a step mother to a spoiled little girl who hated me from the beginning and by 26 had my own daughter- never drank or lived like a 17 year old til last year- at 32 got divorced and slept with 4 different men in a matter of months! it's so different to revert but I finally feel like I haven't missed out like I am finally living- thanks for your transparency- Love It!

Jeff said...

Hey Amber, thanks for the post! I too can relate to much of what you're saying. After a few years of living it up I found life to be even more empty than my church going days. I've come to the conclusion that it all boils down to a personal relationship with God. When my relationship is going well I am at peace, when my relationship is barely existent, no peace. Right now it's on a down trend, which is my fault because I let sin creep in. I'll learn some tough lesson and the trend will reverse. Such is life as a Christian I guess. Stop by my blog sometime. evilneversleeps.blogspot.com Thanks again for the good read and I hope you find what you're looking for.
Jeff