Llego el mail!
Got a missive that brought me back to my Caribbean roots. Growing up Afro-Latino, I felt like I had the best of both worlds. Awesome food, music, bilingual, melanin etc. I grew up in a household where good grades, docility, abstinence and religion were the "right" path. Take a gander at the note below:
HI SWC,
I am going out of my mind with my parents lately. It seems like I just can't do anything right around them. It's always a fight or a struggle just to do what I want to do. I get good grades and I don't have a bf. I just like hanging out with my friends and listening to music. My mom is always freaking out about what I'm doing and who I'm with. I get she loves me but she's making me crazy. I just want to not be home when she's around. Do you have anything suggestions?
Daughter in Distress
Cue Britney Circa 2001.
I grew up with a Dominican mom which basically means I was raised in a household where loud music on Saturday mornings meant you were going to spend the day cleaning. Where "un ching" ( a little bit ) of food meant you were eating a mountain of rice and beans with half a cow.. My mother would scare me into behaving by telling me: "Keep jumping around because I'm not going to the hospital! Insert weather condition: It's too hot, it's too cold, it's raining too hard, it's too late, it's too early to go to the hospital. A household where a shift of my mother's eye conveyed a whole conversation. A household as the only daughter, I was to never have sex and never get pregnant, go to school and I had to marry up, don't do drugs, don't be a whore and take care of your household.
Not much has changed. Well, except if I'm sick, the first thing my mom suggests is a medical professional and she knows I'm sexually active and is waiting with bated breath for me to announce a grandchild. She'll have to wait a little bit.
You'll always be her baby
But when it comes to over protection, its what moms do. You can't tell them to stop. You're their precious baby and that's never going to change. Especially those formidable late teen years. My mom saw me slipping away and she started freaking out. Like her brain couldn't handle the fact that I was creating my own life in my own way.
I feel you, D.I.D., I never wanted to be home either. I was just chilling with friends but I might as well been "whoring in the streets" as far as my mom was concerned. It took me some time but I realized that her freak outs were just her way of coping with a situation the best way she knew how. They think that nagging you is going to work, when that doesn't, here come the insults. The insinuations, the side eyes, the questioning of your character. She just wanted attention, even if it was bad attention because if I was home fighting with her, I wasn't out "in the streets".
What I'm doing. But my mom thinks I'm at a drug induced orgy.
It's hard, I know. Believe me, I KNOW. But either you get your finances in order and move out, because there is nothing like living in your own place with your own rules. Or you understand that this too shall pass, you won't be there forever. Maybe check in a little more often. Give her a call if you're going to be late. Have your friends over so she can so who is who. She just wants to be involved. Invite her to a movie or brunch, just the two of you.
If she's still bugging out after that....it's time to break out! But only if you truly have a plan. Don't go out there and struggle just because you don't want to talk to your parents. They love you, they care. if they are not physically abusing you and this situation is more annoying than dangerous, grin and bear it. It's all gonna work out in the end.
-xoSqaured