I'm back for a while

[ClingingToHope]

Oh the emotional roller coaster. Thursday is my night with the girls, which I cherish but is also a challenge because the other household comes up.

D11 and D14 were talking about the weekend. XW asked for it so she can take them to a campground Harley guy goes to for a Halloween thing. The girls are taking friends so it's not just them and the other family.

Smart -- and I'm jealous as h*ll. And my my mind spun and at times I found peace by saying to myself, just let it go. The goal is to live my best life and let the chips fall where they may.

D14 had theater practice from 7 to 9 p.m. She's Lady MacBeth in the freshman-sophomore play.

When I picked her up you could tell she was upset. She was mad at the director. She's not getting the part right. She's mad at her friends. There's all this drama and she snaps at them and then doesn't understand why they DON'T UNDERSTAND her.

I listened. When we got home she snapped at D11 twice and without justification. At that point I told her she was wrong and D11 had done nothing wrong.

So she yells at me to get out and I leave to let her stew. Instead, I hear her venting on her phone and it can only be to XW.

XW then sends me a text instructing me how to handle her.

I have less than zero respect for XW and her parenting skills right now. It's a good thing she didn't call.

Instead, I texted back that I will handle D14 in my own way.

After a while, I went back in and we started talking.

It was up and down, at one point she said if she doesn't get out of this town and become an Oscar winning actress then she might as well kill herself.

Oh the drama. I asked her if my life was worthless. When I was her age I just KNEW, just KNEW I'd be a major league baseball player. After all, I was the best player in my city.

I didn't come close. And I still haven't gotten out of this town. But I asked her if that meant I was nothing, that I had no value, that I wasn't contributing?

I want her to have big dreams, big ambitions, but I don't want her to continue to chase happiness. If she's not happy with herself then she'll never be happy with anything.

After a while, we got down to the fear behind the anger. The boy who took her to homecoming has stopped texting her and isn't hanging out with her in the hall. It looks like this relationship has run its course and she's feeling again like no one will ever think of her as "the total package."

It all comes back to wanting to feel loved.

I told her that's a feeling that never goes away and the end of relationships almost always hurt.