DON’T BLAME ME…. BLAME THE BOYFRIEND.
When my oldest daughter finished high school we were very excited! Her last four years had really been great! We were so proud and excited for all her accomplishments. She was in the top 20 of her class, honor society, French honor society (yes, this is weird but whatever… it’s an accomplishment!), She went to state in DECA, she played varsity volleyball and basketball, she had even been prom queen! She had made some really good friends and she had her first real boyfriend, she seemed to have nothing but greatness ahead of her. As excited and proud as we were, graduation is a difficult time. There are so many decisions, and big decisions! The kind of decisions that can shape the rest of your life! Everyone is constantly asking, “What’s next?” Where will she go to college? What does she want to be? Those questions are great when you know the answer! When you don’t…. they start to get on your nerves!
So let’s take a step back to “the boyfriend,” I hurried past that, he is important, however after this blog, I will try not to talk about him again. He had a part in this and that is all, a part in this puzzle. I was always confused why boys didn’t talk to my daughter. She is very pretty, funny, smart. But she was shy, but don’t boys like a challenge? What was wrong with these boys? Why didn’t she ever have a date? I started praying for her to meet a boy, someone she could share her senior year with. Someone to make her feel good about herself! Help her to see what a great catch she was! How could I send her to college without ever having a boyfriend? She was 17 years old and had never been kissed. It just felt like time to have that in her life too! There had to be someone at that high school of hers! Well, be careful sometimes what you pray for, because you just might get it. A young man asked her to homecoming. He came to the house with her best friend. He had flowers and a sign, something about “setting” him for a homecoming date? She was the setter on the volleyball team so it was cute. I thought Finally! One of these boys has woken up! She was happy and after that date they continued to see each other throughout the year. It didn’t take long for me to realize I didn’t really like him. He wasn’t very nice to her, her wasn’t nice to her friends. He didn’t seem to care much for us, except for her littlest sister, he was nice to her, oh! And Grandma, my mom, he was very nice to her. She was paying him to help her with her computer so it was benefitting him to be nice to grandma. I wasn’t too worried though, I mean it’s a high school relationship how long can it last?
So we start applying to colleges. Even though she had a lot of high school success, she wasn’t the best tester and did not do well on her ACT exam. Scholarships were difficult to come by but in our state they offer a lottery scholarship to all local students as long as they attend an in state college. So, that narrowed things down to really just three schools. Our local college that is a Division I school, or two others that were just about 3 hours away from home. I started encouraging her to pick the Division II school that was a little bit away from home. I thought it would be a good experience for her to be away but not too far away. It was smaller so the classes would be smaller and less intimidating for the first couple years of school. Especially since she did not know what she wanted to have as her major. They also offered her a small scholarship for academic success. Also…. The boyfriend was staying here to go to school. Perfect! And like she always does, she listened and decided to attend the school I wanted. I thought for sure her and the boyfriend would break it off, long distance never works! But, they didn’t, they stayed together in hopes they could make it work.
I thought I was preparing her appropriately for college. I felt like I was talking to her about all the right things. We found a roommate, one of her friends from high school whom she had played volleyball and basketball with. She was a friend although not one of her very close friends, but I knew her parents and knew they were supportive and knew this young lady well enough I thought they would be a perfect fit. She is very outgoing, while my daughter is more shy, I thought it might help her to get out and meet more people. The school is small and has a very small Greek system but my sorority was one of them so I was excited about that as a possibility. We attended the church there and found people that we had known from long ago and felt it would be a nice place for her to attend. I talked to her about never going to parties alone and always being aware of her surroundings. And of course we warned her greatly about the dangers of the “freshman 15!” I mean she had been an athlete, she was used to regular workouts, she would be quick to gain weight if she wasn’t careful! Dorm food isn’t always healthy! The kids will want to go for fast food runs late at night, you better watch it! I have to be honest, of all the things we need to prepare for in college I’m pretty sure the thing we talked about the most was gaining the freshman 15. As if gaining weight would somehow change her as a person! As if a silly 15 pounds would make us love her less. If I had known then what I know now….. Of course we learn from our experiences but it is funny (not funny Ha Ha! But odd) to me how important that seemed at the time.
Her first semester went well enough. She joined my sorority and my sister in law and I went to initiation. It was fun and she seemed happy. I was pleased because she was looking great! I think she had lost a little bit of weight! Not that she needed to lose weight she was a perfect weight for her height but to not be gaining the dreaded freshman 15! Way to go kiddo! I praised her greatly! She was having some trouble with the boyfriend though. He was mad at her for going away and was constantly telling her to come back home and even from 300 miles away, he was telling her what to do and who to do it with. I pleaded with her to break it off. She agreed and did, but he fought back. He called her over and over again. Threatened to harm himself if she broke it off. Promised to change and not be so controlling, and support her more. We were sitting in church together and her phone was vibrating every minute. I was furious, but it worked and she got back together with him. I started protesting more and more about how I felt about him over the next few months, and then she came home for Thanksgiving with a diamond ring on her left ring finger!! He had gone to visit her in October and had given her the ring. She did not tell me, I just saw it on her finger. I tried not to panic but I felt panicked. I needed a new plan, change of action! Telling her we didn’t approve was not working, so we did a 180 and went with full approval. The boyfriend had decided he was going to transfer to her school in January. So over Christmas break we were super welcoming. We invited him for Christmas and New Year’s, bought him presents, clothes with the colleges letters, the whole nine yards! And then out of nowhere, the night before they were supposed to leave for school he told her he had lost his scholarship due to his first semester grades and could not go with her to school. We were all shocked. She left the next day on her own for the second semester of school. After just a few days back she broke up with the boyfriend. He didn’t fight as much this time, I think he knew it wouldn’t work. I was pleased! More than pleased really, I thought finally she could be at college and just have fun like she should have been doing from the start! But little did I know this was going to be a spark, something that ignited a demon, a monster that was lurking inside my daughter that I had no idea existed. This horrible thing would take over so quickly, so fiercely, that we wouldn’t even recognize it when it was staring us directly in the face. It was a sneaky demon, full of tricks and isolation and lies. We fell for its lies hook line and sinker. We made excuses for it, convinced ourselves it wasn’t really there. I thought I had prepared my daughter for all the things college could throw at her, I thought I had done all a mother should be doing to protect her, and give her the skills to get through school. But I was wrong, so wrong that we could have lost her forever.
Supermom? 