I come home from work to find my teen daughter crying on her bed. She is 16, a high school junior, a virtual replica of myself at that age, both in looks and demeanor. The tears rolling down her face are hot and angry. When I try to hug her, I can feel the way every muscle in her body is taut, and my mind immediately thinks of a snake, coiled and backed into a corner, ready to strike defensively at the slightest provocation.
Her group of friends, her core of besties, as far as I can tell, is falling apart. A disagreement among them has caused a decisive crack in the façade. Angry words have been exchanged.
She is my fourth child, and I’m faced with the task of comforting her in her own unique anguish, even though I’ve been expecting this day for a while. Each of my children, one by one, has faced this awful reckoning at this tender age, when a group of teen friends begin to slowly shift, growing at different rates and in different directions. This is akin to those dreams of witnessing a car crash just about to happen, but you’re submerged in a gelatinous substance that makes it impossible to yell out to warn the others. Instead, it keeps you trapped and immobile, forced to helplessly watch the crash unfold.
(Sidenote: My reputation for catastrophic anxiety dreams is well-documented.)
Of course, as I listen to my daughter, I am unequivocally on her side, because she is my daughter. But I also realize that this same scene may be playing out at the homes of the other teens in the group, at home with their mothers, and the pain and anguish they are spilling out onto tear-stained pillows is just as valid, just as real.
Each stage of parenthood has its own challenges, but these late teen years are exceptionally brutal. You try your hardest to protect and defend your kids from the world’s sharp edges. You hope that a kiss to the forehead and the weight of your arms encircling them will be enough. But by the time the kids are 16, you long for the days when an Elmo band aid and a popsicle worked wonders. The wounds of 16 can be so deep; too deep for even Elmo.
My daughter wails and her voice cracks from fatigue. All I can do is sit and listen. The refrain echoes over and over in my head: I know. I know. I know.
I don’t have the solution, but I know. I know the way life can be painful. I know that good friends can be cruel. Anger can betray you and make you say things you later regret. I know that sometimes the sting of rejection is so great that it immobilizes you —— like the metaphoric gelatinous blob that keeps you from reacting in real-time. I know that sometimes your tired body demands rest, and you have to decide to put the hurt and the pain aside so that you can fall into a troubled sleep, and try to face it again the next morning. Hope that some clarity will come in a dream, or maybe in the first weak rays of morning light.
I wish I didn’t know, but I know, I know, I know.
There are so many things I can’t say to her right now. This moment is for sitting, nodding, and listening. I will pour the tea, pass the Kleenex. Just call me Chief Commiserator. I’m the sounding board, the big, gelatinous cushion to absorb the impact as best I can.
Later, I will tell her: This world will break your heart over and over again. Things will happen to you and around you that will hurt so deeply that there won’t be words to describe it.
You will not get used to it. It will sting each and every time. But, if you can keep your head above water, with a little luck and practice, you will learn to take the hurt and anger and redirect it elsewhere. Beneath the Elmo band aid, the wound will heal and in its place, tough scar tissue emerges. It will remind you that this cruel, heartbreaking world has just as much beauty and kindness —— it may just take a little digging and brushing off the dust to uncover it. Hopefully, you will become a source of that beauty and kindness, or a kind of forager, searching for bits and pieces along the broken path so you can gather them up and take them home. Keep them on a sunny windowsill to remind you.
But, my dear daughter, build up that scar tissue everywhere except your heart. Keep your heart tender and open, and know that when you find people and relationships that surround you with mutual love and trust, it makes you both better —— and that is a rare and precious thing indeed. Maybe that’s why the heartbreak is there in the first place: to shine a light on the delicate good around us, to remind us to feed and cherish and protect our tender hearts.
