A horrible feeling.

[nwhiker]

Anne-Chloe turns 21 on Friday. We haven't seen her in a few months, as she's been living with Dipshit and doesn't give a fuck about us any longer. She has volunteered to come visit the day after her birthday.

The horrible feeling? I don't really want to see her, with Dipshit in tow. I so deeply hate how much she's changed since getting together with him that the thought of seeing her just makes me sick. Watching my bright, driven daughter gets transformed into Dispshit's scolding mommy, laughingly chiding him for his little boy "pushing the limits" bs makes me want to retch. Seeing as she changes her life to conform to his loserdom, watching as she makes decisions that are already reducing what she can do with her future fills me with both disgust and rage.

I wonder where we went wrong.

It's a frightening thing, so a see a driven, type A young women fall into the mommy-to-the-bf trap. Going from Dean's list to barely passing her classes. Giving up opportunities.

She'd had so many plans. She was going to get an internship this summer, and had planned on going to Europe or maybe even a study abroad thing this year. Instead she worked at a stupid-making minimum wage job so she could afford to live with him.

What do you say when you find out that she comes home, after 12+ hour days working to jobs to find Dipshit and their other roommates playing video games, so she gets to clean up the mess they left and make dinner? How do you not look at the piece of scum who is dragging your daughter down into the same shit his parents modelled and not want to scream?

I expect her to drop out of school at some point soon. It's hard to mommy and drive your boyfriend to and from school when you're attempting to go yourself.

Someone I know just announced his son's engagement. They adore the young man's fiancée and are looking forward to have her as part of their family. I can't imagine that. I see Dipshit and I see the end of any potential for a good life for my daughter and I wish she'd never met him.

So I'm not looking forward to seeing them. And I hate that. I miss the young woman my daughter was.

Comments

[siamese1]

If it helps any, I was with a total loser when I was 21. It wasn't very long after that I woke up and dumped his loser ass. :D

[camelsamba]

obviously i'm not the mom here, but I'm curious: do you remember what helped you wake up? was it prompting from someone else, or totally of your own doing? It's hard to know what to do as the worried parent!

[siamese1]

I finally decided I was tired of being taken for granted. He just assumed I'd go along with whatever he wanted, never asking my feelings on it. Plus a better one came along. That one turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. (We celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary a couple months ago.) ;)

[camelsamba]

Thanks for the info. Here's hoping AC has a similar "aha!!" moment. And congratulations on finding a good match!

[nwhiker]

I'm hoping AC does as well, and yes, siamese1's dh is awesome.... well in the "type" of your dh and mine, camelsamba, ya know? Not just all the other nice stuff, but fundamentally decent, kind human beings.

[camelsamba]

{{hugs}} - my almost-21yo went from "i'm going to stay another year and get a master's degree!" to "i dunno about that master's degree, maybe i'll look for a job". Not the same level of lost drive or initiative, but there was an awful lot of video game playing during the 3 weeks they were home in August... It was just vaguely worrisome. It's hard to watch when someone seems to abandon everything they'd seemed so confident about before.

[nwhiker]

I hear you on the vaguely worrisome, especially since yours was also so confident on path as well.

UGH. Why did I ever thing the terrible twos were difficult?!!!!!!!