Grace

Last night I watched some fireworks with some friends and saw my baby sis Grace called me. She called about an issue and she vented about it. The issue is not important, what was important was talking with my baby sis Gracie.

We got into how our parents are CRAZY. HAHAHA.

It was the moment when Grace started in on how our mother is always asking her what the plan is and what she is doing and and and... That is when I realized they are doing the same things to her that they used to do it me.

She was crying, I started laughing because of the irony. She told me how uncool she felt and how she cannot catch a break. It is ruining her teenage years! I told her yeah pretty much it ruined mine too.

It ruined mine in some sense. I was the uncool kid because I could not do things like just go and hang out, or just be a kid. I was not a bad kid, I just wanted to go and be a kid. She is doing similar things too, like hanging with friends. My parents think she is just going off and drinking at parties and doing what they think are "bad things." They are afraid of Grace growing up. I do agree there are somethings she should wait for and be innocent, I mean she is only fifteen. They are also doing it because they LOVE her.

The sad thing about this is they do not trust Grace will not do the bad things. They do not trust that Grace has the mental capacity to say no, or hell if she says yes, to be smart about it. My parents always think that one bad thing means she is dead in a ditch and worry so much about her dieing in a fiery car crash. The thing about that is kids are supposed to fall down and get bruises and scars. Kids are supposed to hurt, move past them and be protected in some sense. I do not want my sister to die in a fiery car crash. I do want her to learn something though. I do want her to figure it out a bit so she does not end up like my sister and I. I think parents should guide not shelter. When you shelter things we just end up being rebellious and then well we wander the earth always looking for something, and rebelling.

It is like my tattoos and piercings, they are there for reasons, they are my rebellious scars of my past. There is a story behind each one they are my scars and memories of a time in my life, and some are there for people I love. The tattoos will forever be reminders of them the piercings can go away. When I am an old hag I can tell my grand kids what they meant, and have some stories. Just like I have stories for Grace.

Instead of letting us getting to the point of "what did you learn" it was always "we are just protecting you from," "and because I SAID SO." I do not have the answers for this nor do I know what is the right answer but I do know that when you are always protecting, you are alienating and removing a lot of social connections kids just want to make. High school is about how to make connections and what they mean. It is about growing into what you want to be in college. Grace is feeling like she is being held back a bit. I feel for my baby sis, I do at the same time there is nothing she can do about it. I know though in the end she will be OK. I also told her there is a time and a place for everything and that is college (thank you South Park). I just kept listening to her and saying "yup sounds about right." I also became really scared, they are going to turn her into me. Into what I became the first time around. I can see it starting now. They are destroying her self-esteem like they did mine when I was that age. I do not blame them but I see the pattern emerging. It sucks, but I wish they could just let it be.

They just want what is best, even though it is not what seems like it is what is best now. I understand that and it hurts to tell my baby sis that. There is a lot more to life than having friends and being the cool kid. Grace will realize this ten years from now, I hope that I can guide her through it and be there before she gets to that point I did when I was her age. They were thinking I was always doing something bad like cutting myself or doing drugs. I was just sleeping in my room being a teenager, who was not allowed to even go to a friends house to hang out, even after I found Jesus, and trying to prove to my parents I was being a good kid. So not even my friends could accept me. I could not accept me. Nothing was ever good enough to prove I was good, because they always thought I was bad. There was no trust. I was doing good, thier's was just paranoia, I was being bad. Even when I was being good, it did not matter because I was bad in their eyes.

I hope Grace can realize things before she is twenty-five and forever searching for how to be something to please them and just please herself. I know a few things, I am not who I was when I was fifteen, or twenty, or twenty-two, or twenty-four, hell or the person I was when I turned twenty-five. I hope Grace can see that really in the grand scheme of things it does not matter in the end and this too shall pass. I told her it does not get any easier.

Grace did say one thing. As unstable and crazy as I feel like my life is, and no matter how much of a failure as I feel my life is sometimes, when your baby sis tells you, "You taught me a lot" makes you feel like you can take on the world. It also makes you love her more than you already do.