Conditional Love: When Parents Give Up

Mine was a semi-normal family, growing up the youngest of four children with two working parents. My siblings are all close in age, but a 6-year gap separates myself and the closest in age to me. I believe my parents meant well, but had little idea what they were doing, not only as parents, but in life.

There was little investment in us as future adults, and we all struggled with making proper decisions as we got older. By the time the older children had moved out and on to begin their adult lives, I was left - with parents who really wanted to be done parenting.

When I was eleven, my dad left my mother after 21 years of marriage to be with the woman he'd been having an affair with, and my mother was reduced to a bitter, broken, tearful, drunken woman. Having moved out of the family home where I'd grown up, my mother and I lived in a small apartment in a not-so-good part of town. She would come home from work and lock herself in her room with the TV and Vodka and orange juice, not to be bothered. Most of the time I didn't go to school, because I didn't want to get out of bed, and my mother didn't have the strength or resolve to challenge me on the issue.
I was left alone much of the time, with TV and myself. I was very isolated, and so was my hurting mother.

During the divorce proceedings, instead of fighting over whose home I'd live in, my mother and father fought over who would have to keep me. Apparently my mother won that fight, and as her job transferred her to another state, my father was stuck with me. At age twelve, my father married his girlfriend, a girlfriend who was not thrilled to have me in her home.
I did have behavior problems at school, and refused to participate in any of it. I was angry, and depressed. Eventually the patience of my dad and stepmom wore out, and they placed me in a psychiatric hospital on a unit with troubled adolescents. I spent four months there, was heavily medicated, then returned to their home. It wasn't long before I overheard an argument my stepmom was having on the phone with my mom, where she said that if my mom didn't take me, they would place me in foster care.

I suppose my mother still had some mercy for me at this point, because the next thing I knew I was on my way to live with her and her new husband.

Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, my poor judgement and decision-making skills only worsened, and I often ended up in various kinds of trouble. I was never a child who would blatantly defy, yell at my parents, or call them names, but I was no less infuriating with my passive-aggressive behavior and refusal to follow rules. I could not be trusted, and brought much grief to our home.

So during the summer that I was fifteen, my mother decided that I should go spend a month visiting Texas, where I had originated and the rest of the family was. I stayed with my sister, who was living her life in such a way that I should have had no part. Needless to say, for a fifteen-year-old not interested in doing the right thinig, it was a lot of fun.

I had traveled from Boston to Texas on a round-trip ticket, the returning flight scheduled a month from the day I'd arrived. The night before I was to go back home, my sister and I were visiting my dad at his home, and he called my mother to coordinate the time of my flight with when she would pick me up from the airport. She informed him at this time that she'd canceled my flight back as soon as I'd left. "Well, she can't stay here," I heard him say. He was hung up on. My father was in a predicament. He had a wife, an ex-wife and a daughter who each needed him to do something different, and he couldn't do the right thing by all of them.

The next day, still not knowing my fate, I was told to pack all my things and my father took me to the airport. As we waited at my gate, he gave me some cash and some traveler's cheques, but could not give me an answer about what to do when I get off the plane in Boston. He had tears in his eyes as he said goodbye to me, which I will never forget. At least I knew he felt bad, that he had a soul.

As I got off the plane in Boston, part of me thought my mother would have to be there. She knew my dad had put me on the plane despite their conversation. But she was not. I was fifteen, alone at Logan airport with my suitcase, cash and traveler's cheques. This was my fault, for being such a frustrating, unpleasant child.

I did not know where to go or who to call. I spent a lot of money on a cab to take me to the town I lived in. I tried to come home, but my mother wouldn't let me. I stayed with various friends and lived out of my suitcase. Eventually, when I wasn't going to school anymore, the Department of Social Services intervened and took custody of me away from my mother, which she did not contest.

Since I had a pretty hefty drinking problem at the time and was very depressed, it was decided that I would be placed in a locked adolescent facility for treatment. My mother also had a very bad drinking problem, and the State had given her guidelines to follow in order to regain custody of me, but she declined to do those things. I went from one facility to another, group homes, rehabs, hospitals for exactly two years. Then, just before I turned 18 I was able to go home finally to live with my mother. That didn't last long, as she wanted me to yet again go back to Texas.

And that is still where I am today at the age of 32.

After years of turmoil and agony from a life not well-lived, I finally was able to become a healthy person and live right. For the last 6 and a half years I've been drug and alcohol-free and was able to purge my anger and resentment toward my parents. I have good relationships with them now, and have forgiven them for what I now realize they did to me then.

Probably the worst part of that experience was being left with the belief that there is a limit after which I will run out of room in the hearts of those who love me. No one should have to believe this, especially not a child.