Shrieking From Responsibility

I remember arguing with my mother. I do not remember what we were arguing about. Unless it was about me being seventeen. Not much of a position from which I could launch a coherent discussion, but I don't think that was ever the point. 

The real point was that I had done nothing to try and negotiate all the emotional struggles I had accrued in my life up until that point and focused them all one that one moment in time. The sadness. The frustration. The darkness. After years of living in a home filled with love and understanding, I felt that I needed to break down barriers that didn't really exist. 

My poor mother. All that adolescent rage being dumped at her feet after years of sitting down at the kitchen table after school and discussing my day over a glass of Kool-Aid. All the room to grow that I was given, all the freedoms I enjoyed, and I still found something about which to complain.

Loudly. 

I'm a parent now, and I can say with certainty that if I was angling to get at some hidden agenda or unfairness that existed in the way we carried out our business I was coming up empty. Which, upon reflection, may have only added fuel to the nonsensical fire that burned inside of me back then. 

Only it didn't feel like nonsense. Voice raised. Doors slammed. Reason diminished. I was loved and cared for by somehow I had found a switch in my brain that would not allow me to feel it. Except that I knew somewhere in the midst of all this shouting that I was arguing with my own shadow. My mom was standing in for the self that I was loathing. 

Which was unfair to a degree I can only fully appreciate now, after having raised one son, not three, without any of that nonsense. I will confess that I was ready, during his teenage years, for the onslaught. Imagine my chagrin when it never materialized. This left me with the sinking feeling and realization that maybe I had overstepped my youthful bounds. I brought unnecessary levels of tension to our otherwise happy home. 

And maybe this made me a better parent, a better person down the road. Maybe. But I know that my mother was the one who put up with all of that spittle, and I have her to thank for putting up with me. 

Thanks, mom.