Once when I was a teenager, I snuck out with my boyfriend. I had been doing it for a long time and was pretty darn good at it. Only thing I didn't realize was the more often I did it the closer I was to being caught. See I thought i was the worlds best liar. I had my ducks in a row, i thought: good grades, home on time when asked, did my chores, coached lacrosse, etc. etc. I mean I would go the whole 9 yds. to be able to sneak out. Winter posed a huge problem, snow. So when I arrived home from school that day, I grabbed the dog and chased him in the field next to the house to make foot prints in order to hide the ones I was gonna make later. I pushed it. waited and waited for my parents to go to bed, and cut it close. I had a bad feeling but I was living on the edge and decided to take my chances, not thinking of what I would ever do come I get caught. So i left the house, ran through the field, and hoped in my boyfriends car. As we got to the top of the road I saw a car come around the corner that looked like my dads, hesitated and then decided to go on. We headed to his house in the town south of mine and continued with our evening. At some point in the night my boyfriend wakes up because his dad is calling him from around the corner. They leave to converse and I lazily check my phone (Another intuition....). My parents had gotten me this cell phone a couple weeks before, told me to take it everywhere, and I debated...do i take it when I sneak out or do i leave it? what are the consequences of both. Something was telling me I was busted (did my parents contact his parents? is that why he was coming to talk to his son?) I think it was though I have never asked for the answer. There were a bunch of calls from my parents. I turned stone cold!
"We gotta go!"
We hopped in the car, as I frantically searched my mind for the very best lie. As we arrive in town I tell my boyfriend to go the back way to the dirt roads near the house. A snow was falling lightly from the sky.
"stop the car. (opened the door) I will see you later."
I stepped out into a thin layer of snow and watched him drive away. I waited about 2 minutes and then called my parents.
"I'm alright, come pick me up, I am on Mt. Herman."
They picked me up and brought me home. Here is where my most guilty lie came out. To this day I still get a cringe that I even told it and believed that I was hurting no one. What I didn't realize was, although I had made a pact to dig the deepest grave and come out on the other side of the earth where they could never prove anything, I was going to have to sell my soul and conclusively hurt myself. So i still get sick when I remember. I mean I really get acidity in my stomach, a cold sweat, etc. That is when i went to far in telling a lie to my family.
"I blacked out. Woke up on the bench next to the rock."
The rock was Monument Rock at the base of Mt. Herman, and you have to take a trail there. I have PTSD and have since I was 12 years old. There is no point in going in to details about how but there is an importance to the symptoms I have had in relation to it. one symptom: I used to blackout and find myself functioning somewhere else in town. It was as though I was watching myself on a movie screen from atop a cloud. Stress always triggered it. Whether it be a fight or a nervous conversation or a date or a test coming up. And once I became stressed there was a snowball effect to how much and to what i would stress out over. To this day it still happens. I go to my happy place on the cloud where I am safe and no one can get me, I know I go there because I can feel it and have learned to be able to control it, in most circumstances, to not completely blackout. I won't remember what is said and i go into complete fight mode, like an animal being cornered. I feel like one. Like I am being attacked.
So my parents know about these blackouts because at that time in my life I was working very hard on them to control them and other symptoms. It was a cheap shot to them and to myself. I knew it was my only card and I played it.
"But you're not wet from the snow or cold."
"I don't know what happened I just woke up at the rock."
That is the extent of it. And I pledged to dig the deepest hole so i would never have to tell the truth and get in trouble for it.
I was grounded for 2 weeks while my parents did some gum shoeing. There were other events and they aren't as important as the fact that i got off scott free.....but I had sold my soul. And now I can't lie without a deep sickening feeling.
This is something teenagers haven't figured out. That you can and will hurt yourself if you lie. It is something that as parents we have already learned and we are desperately trying to get our kids to understand.
There are so many things i want to be as a parent. and I will probably post all those things as I go along. But one thing recently. I read that Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia 1930-1974, never showed anger or irritation or nervousness or rage or frustration. "It seemed that he never knew such states" (pg 6, "The Emperor" by Kapuściński). I value this, I want to be this. Just a thought.
Motherhood is a fierce ocean. Where we are just trying to stay afloat, be the calm to the storm. Storm clouds are up over head. but there is a break in the clouds and sun is shining through in the shape of a heart. Amor Vincit Omnia. Love conquers all.
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