Alone, lonely

Posted on July 11, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I was at a restaurant once and a husband and wife were there with their two young children. The mom needed to go to the restroom. The dad was left in charge of the children while my mom was away. The children were fine for about a minute and then they started to lose their minds.

The children started crying and wailing inconsolably. They wanted their mother and their mother had simply gone to the bathroom. There was nothing that dad could do to make them happy. It was as if they had never ever been on their own and they didn’t know how to take care of themselves. It was as if they didn’t know how to live without their mother right next to them taking care of everything for them.

This isn’t limited just to children.

I know a guy whose wife has died recently. She was sick for year with cancer. They didn’t expect her to die. In a way, though, it was an expected death because it wasn’t an accident like a car crash or a tornado. They only knew each other for three years, and she was only 42. It is all very sad.

He’s had all the leave that his workplace can give him, but that never is enough. Five days isn’t enough to process a death, even if you’ve had some time to warm up to the fact that it might happen.

He forgot to eat for three days. His clothes started to smell and are rumpled. His hair isn’t combed.

He reminds me of those children. It’s as if he doesn’t know how to exist without her right next to him. Surely he knew how to feed himself and take care of himself before they ever met. But now he’s forgotten.

I’ve heard many stories of husbands dying or remarrying less than a year after their wife dies. Interestingly, the same isn’t true for wives.

All of his friends and coworkers are looking out for him, but he has to pull himself out of this and start taking care of himself. We can’t rescue him from his grief.

It reminds me of baby birds. Sometimes they can’t make it on their own. Sometimes they don’t have the strength to fly. Sometimes they die. Is it fair to them to rescue them, when they don’t have the ability to take care of themselves? That is only a sort of half-life.

Adulthood – being independent versus being an “adult child”.

Posted on July 5, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I saw a Facebook post recently that I really liked. It said “I think you should pay for your own mortgage, birth control, college loans, food, and cell phones. This isn’t because I’m a Conservative. It is because I’m an adult.”

If you have to have someone else pay for these things, whether it is your parents or the government, you aren’t an adult.

I’ve never identified as a Conservative, but I agree with this.

I feel that people need to take care of themselves, and the more that we do for them, the more we are harming them. The more we let people take care of us, the more we are stunting our own growth.

Remember the phrase “Age is just a number”? That is usually used to say that it is never too late to play. It goes along with “You are only as old as you feel”. These are meant to be inspiring. These are meant to encourage you to follow your dreams and to be yourself.

But they have another side to them. You can be 40, even 60, years old and still dependent. You can be technically an adult and still act like a child – expecting everybody else to take care of you and clean up after you. You can be an adult legally, but a child emotionally.

Now, is that your fault, or the fault of the people who rescue you? If nobody rescued you, you’d have to take care of yourself.

Some important words here –
Codependency.
Enabling.

I know too many “adult children” who use their parent’s library cards because they have run up the fines on their own. I know too many “adult children” who blame everybody else for their own problems. I know too many “adult children” who live at home with their parents.

I’ve met many “adult children” who still use their parent’s address as their legal address. They say “Well, your parents are always going to be there, right?”

No, they aren’t.

I’m starting to think that one of the best things my parents ever did for me was to die when I was 25. It made me grow up fast. It made me have to become independent. If things get hard, I can’t just move back in with my parents. I can’t just quit my job or get divorced when things get hard and retreat back to my old room. I can’t call them up and beg for money when there is an emergency.

I have to plan ahead and look out for myself. I had to become an adult.

And I expect everybody else to do the same.

Personal accountability

Posted on April 18, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I knew a guy who joined a gym, and he wanted me to “Make him accountable.” He wanted me to remind him to go, and to ask him if he had gone. I didn’t. I made sure to tell him that I wouldn’t.

That isn’t my job. I’m not his Mom, or his wife, or his boss. And here’s the most amazing thing – even if I was any of those things, it still isn’t my responsibility.

This is the heart of codependence. He was trying to get me to be responsible for his actions, rather than making himself responsible for his own actions.

He has to want to change, and to want to make it happen. If he isn’t motivated enough to do it on his own, he isn’t ready for it yet. If he needs a coworker to remind him, he isn’t ready.

Imagine what would happen if I had said I would remind him, and I didn’t. Then, the fact that he didn’t go would have been my fault. This is the heart of it all.

Blaming other people for your problems is the problem itself.

Once you become an adult you are responsible for everything you do. Nobody gets you up in the morning to go to work. Nobody makes your breakfast. Nobody takes you to work. Nobody does your work for you. It is all you, all the time. Anything less than that and you aren’t an adult.

Being over 21 doesn’t make you an adult. Your actions do. And the core of all of that is being responsible for yourself and not expecting other people to take care of you. Going hand in hand with that is that if you make a mistake, you own up to it.

If you have to have someone else make you do something, then you really didn’t even do it. You can’t take credit for it. The work isn’t really yours.