The Tyranny of Teenagers
And empty-nesting...
First things first. I have two teens and I teach full-time in a challenging inner-London secondary school. Tyrannical teens? I’ve got it covered.
My daughter, the eldest of two, disappeared off to a university 60 miles away for the first time 6 weeks ago. At which point the bathroom sink became much cleaner, I am no longer forever collecting up tiny black, sticky spider-legs of eyelashes from the floor nor transferring empty cans of diet coke from the bin to the recycling (HOW many times have I told you!?).
Did you ever have a terrible flatmate? Messy, dirty, argumentative, rude, anti-social. Also, lazy and belligerent, refusing to do (their own) washing up. The list feels infinite. Having teenagers can feel as though you are living with an annoying, messy, angry flatmate who you just don’t like very much.
I am a very tidy person. I believe this is because my mind is not always ordered and I therefore desperately crave order in all things. Depending on how well I am looking after and nourishing my mental and physical health, my brain can unfortunately feel like a ‘bad’ neighbourhood - full of fear and threat. On a ‘good’ day my mind wanders the ancient well-manicured streets of a cotswold village, Victorian novel under my arm, birds tweeting and a gentle breeze in my hair. On a bad day i’m riding the 1980’s New York subway at midnight, drunk and terrified having lost my keys, broken stiletto heel in hand. So it is, for this reason, that my home and my life need to be ordered. A place for everything and everything in its place as my mum would say.
Almost every day of the now distant summer holiday, she or someone else would wake up/come downstairs - exactly 5 mins after everything was clean and gleaming and proceed to cause utter havoc. I almost had to stop myself checking the house for secret cameras - how do they KNOW? At times it feels like an evil conspiracy. Are they trying to send me mad?
If like me, you’re a person of a certain age, then you probably don’t share your living space with strangers any more. Which is good - because it’s bad enough sharing with the people I love. You will have though, you’ll have done the awkward dance of sharing a home with people you do not share a bed or a familial bond with. Some of whom you may not have liked. You may even have actively disliked them at times. That is what it’s like to live with teenagers.
Even child no 2 - who says “good morning” when he wakes up, rather than “WHAT?what are you looking at?” (insert door slam here), requires gentle daily and hourly cajoling to pick up his socks, do his laundry - shower!
I live in a house of noise. It’s like Zippos circus are in town, but every.single.day. Even when I was a party girl - I was never as noisy as my family can be - the volume is always turned up to 10 and of course the incessant ringing and pinging from all of the myriad of devices everywhere…help!
And then. Just like that, She was gone.
In-between the cleaning and the arguing, I spent the summer writing lists, ordering railcards and student ID cards and taking trips to Ikea and B&M Home Bargains. Because, if I over organised and micro managed everything I didn’t have to think about how much I would miss her sometimes miserable face. I didn’t have to think about missing her lying, slug-like on the sofa for up to 10 hours a day watching series 850 of Gossip Girl (again), all while managing 15 different conversations on snapchat. I suppose it’s to be admired really.
But here’s the thing. I do miss her. I miss her terribly.
And why oh why I must navigate all of this grief and stress while horrendously depleted of hormones and all the other joyful things menopause is sending my way is beyond me. Except to say that God, if he exists? Definitely a man.
We FaceTime almost every day. It’s not even me that always initiates the call, which is surprising and refreshing. Is it possible that she misses me too?
We have many friends with older children. Many of their offspring now in their twenties and leading successful, productive lives. Said friends insisted that once they disappear to uni they change, they grow, they stop being terrible flatmates and become rounded humans, less ego, more selfless, less mess. They might even become people you would want to share a home with - who knew? This is all new to me. During half term she visited home for the weekend and took me to have my nails done. She paid. Bonkers. I almost cried. It was lovely. I think they may have been right. It’s annoying, and also a relief and encouraging.
To be perfectly honest - I am rather enjoying my first foray into empty-nesting. I appreciate that I still have one not too tyrannical teen at home, but the house is cleaner, there is less friction between the three of us that remain full time and I have more time to myself. I think one of the problems with ‘empty-nesting’ and the fact that it happens during a time of immense change in a woman’s life is that we feel less useful. And when that happens during a time of enormous change regarding how we view and feel about ourselves both physically and mentally - it can be tremendously difficult. When our identities have been so connected to these children for so long, then they selfishly grow up and leave and we are left with our confusing bodies and minds and a significant part of what ‘made’ us goes with them - it’s bloody hard and weird. I am fortunate, I still have the clown section of the circus at home and I have 1400 other peoples teenagers to contend with from Monday to Friday.
But they DO still need us and I am really proud of the fact that she did well enough in her exams and is confident enough to have been able to head off and navigate University, in part, because I am her mum and we as a family provided her with space and support to do that. This was brought into sharp focus last Sunday as I sat marking essays early in the morning. She rang. It was early, so it was inevitable that something was up. My heart skipped a beat and my brain pictured all sorted of horrible things. I’m not going to go into the details - It’s not my story to tell and she’s completely fine now, but she was having a crisis of sorts.
My point is, she called me.
Me, the annoying nagging mum who she literally could not wait to get away from and enjoyed telling me as such day after day. She chose to call me when she was in crisis and I helped and we even laughed about it after. We sorted it together. She’ll be back soon, for the ridiculously long Christmas holidays, driving me nuts and raising my blood-pressure… the full Circus will be back in town and, despite how much I like like to complain, I know how incredibly lucky I am.
What I have been enjoying this week:
Well, certainly not the US election and what that means for women and marginalised people everywhere.
I have been re-reading the wonderful The Wheel of The Year by Rebecca Beattie. I created my own Samhain ritual too. It was lovely.
I so enjoyed this x
Karen you actually made me cry with this one! Well done for being a great mum and thanks for the socks and porridge x