Well, life certainly continues to be interesting in the House of Rob.
D15 has been acting down, off and on, for the past couple of months. The last week or two she has seemed really depressed, withdrawing from friends and from me and W, spending lots of time with her head buried in books and her new ipod. This is unusual for her, she's typically very social. She asked us a while ago about getting her a counselor appointment, and we already have one set up for next Monday. Given that she's always struggled with her ADHD, plus seeming to hit the 'teen angst' years, it seemed like a reasonable idea.
Well, last night at bedtime, D15 finally opened up a bit to W and then to me. Heavy teen sh!t going on, with many of her friends. D15 insists she's not in deep doodoo herself, but is reacting to all of these other kids - hope that's really the case.
The biggie: One GF, whose dad is in prison on embezzlement charges for the past several years, just had her mom finalize the D papers against him. Supposedly, this GF had her second unsuccessful suicide attempt earlier this week.
Another GF's mom is STILL trying to D her abusive dad after 6 or 7 years (the judge is an old family friend of the dad and won't recuse himself is what I'm told.) This GF has gone through phases of cutting herself with knives - I guess this is a new 'trend' among teenagers, I had not really clued into it. Yuck! Scary!
A third GF, a really smart and talented kid, is apparently suffering from insecurity over her appearance and panic attacks over any little thing that goes wrong in her life.
And a couple of other friends are into booze and drugs.
Whew! I can see how this is all pretty overwhelming for D15, who's honestly always been a little naive and immature. Welcome to adulthood...
Tonight, W is out of town until late on a day-long biz trip, so I plan to take D15 out to dinner and try to talk her through some things. I figure she saw me drag myself up out of depression last fall, so maybe some of the stuff I can share with her about how to get past this will carry some weight. The trick will be to talk about it without delving into any details of the sitch with her mom and I, which I don't think would be a good idea at all.
Wish me luck!
Thread #10 22 year M, MLC, Piecing since 1/07 Goal: Live with confidence & enthusiasm!
