Taking my sanity pill...

I tend to work myself up into being upset about some of my oldest son's behavior even though I should by now already be used to it. I think the fact that I can't control my own frustration is unfortunately the main reason for my frustration in the first place. Pretty dumb, huh? I feel like the rain cycle chart that teachers would show us in primary school that displayed how the sun heats up the land and ocean creating water vapor which rises into the sky and which eventually forms clouds of rain that falls down into the land and ocean all over again. What bothers me the most is that I should be grateful enough that the weather is calm at home, and not get upset about what in retrospect are not that big of a deal things, but unfortunately I sometimes can't seem to help myself and still find a way to blow a temporary fuse.

A while back I made several investments to make my son's room more appealing so that he would want to sleep in his room instead of the family room. In that process I made sure that he had to contribute both financially and idea wise so that there would be some form of investment on his end to the buy-in process of what would change in his room. It actually worked and to my relief he finally moved out of my family room allowing me to have a bit of normalcy and cleanliness in that area of our home. Suddenly he is back to falling asleep on the couch in the family room because of its easy access to the outside of the house for smoking. I know, you probably are thinking why do I even allow him to smoke at age 17? Well, I tried to keep him off tobacco for the longest time knowing that his personality would get him addicted almost instantly, but once he started doing it at friend's houses, then it was too late. As far as I can tell, almost anyone that has become addicted to cigarettes began smoking between the ages of 16 and 17. Power, control, words that seem so useful in our vocabulary, yet so lacking in real life when it comes to our parenting of teenagers.

Let's forget about the smoking issue for a moment since that boils down to me not having "control" of someone else and not myself. I would like to re-focus on my inability to be able to "control" my own desires of wanting to choke the alien creature that drives me nuts when he turns part of the house into his private crash pad. I am the adult, this issue really bothers me to the point that I find myself yelling to him to pick up his mess or else! The problem is that my yelling only contributes to creating a larger gap between us and reinforces his mental image of dad being a drag. Don't think for an instant that I have not tried to work around this situation with other techniques. A while back I discontinued giving him any allowance as part of the "no way in hell will I give you money if you are doing drugs" phase we had been under for the past months. Since he now seems to be completely sober I went ahead and started with the typical reinstatement bribe and the contingency of him picking up after himself. If you knew the boy you would understand what a big deal this effort truly is for him. Of course he agreed and did a once over cleaning effort prior to asking for any money, but a new mess reached its peak just as quickly as it had been eliminated originally. My dilemma is simple, if I clean up after him, I at least enjoy the momentary satisfaction of a clean room which helps calm my own nerves and compulsion to live a normal life, but he obviously learns nothing. If I leave it messy for him to clean, this means living in a chaotic environment for the whole week until he decides to do it because he then wants to earn his allowance. If I add the condition that it needs to be clean all the time, there is as much chance as hell freezing over that he will comply, which means chaos still prevails and I am miserable all week looking at the mess. He told me this morning that I was just looking for an excuse to fight with him, to which I replied, "I don't need an excuse, listen clearly so that you are not confused as to why I am upset...you are being completely inconsiderate by keeping the family room in a constant mess which you know drives me nuts. If you don't want me to be upset, do your part and clean after yourself please...otherwise I am going to be angry and don't expect me to be calm."

My mistake, even though you probably disagree with me, is assuming that I am entitled to a normal life. I want something that is not on the menu. I need to accept my reality in which scrambled eggs are my only choice for breakfast even though I am more partial to eggs over easy with white toast and coffee. Trust me when I tell you that 17 years of eating scrambled eggs for breakfast is enough to want to strangle the cook no matter how much he smiles when he serves the food. I bet you can tell I am not having such a great day.

Back to what I might be able to do to make things right and crack a smile today. I breath in, I breath out, I do a little prayer, close my eyes and try to go to a happy place. "It is not that big a deal", I keep telling myself and slowly but steady my mind eases back into a more calm state of conciseness allowing me to relax and let go of the little things that tend to pile up with the passage of time. It really is not that big a deal, and I know this more in my heart than I do in my mind, which of course is the only part of me that can put my situation back into perspective. I tell myself that I am blessed with so many good things in my life that I need to learn to cancel out the few things that put me in a negative mood so that I may enjoy the moment without being in a constant alert to what might come instead.

As I walked up the final stairs that lead into the entrance of the building in which I work, I watched three other much younger guys walking ahead of me on their way in too. All three guys were wearing blue jeans. Two of them were wearing tennis shoes. One of the guys had the bottom of his jeans all torn and ripped from wearing them at a much longer length than he should. Finally one had a rubber band holding his long hair in a pony tail. As they all strolled into the building my mind wandered in thoughts and contemplation as to how care free they seemed by physical appearance. Even though I am pretty sure they are all engineers too, they seemed way to young to be married and much less have any children of their own although I know that looks can be deceiving. There was no judgement on my part about their choice or the condition of their garments, but I could not help myself to wonder if any of them was anything like my own son. Is this totally care free generation linked by any of the multiple characteristics that my son has shown to have in his personality? If so, I can almost understand how little choice I have with regards to accepting so much of his demeanor that I find difficult to handle. In my own father's time, engineers walked around sporting pocket protectors, slide rulers, and always a tie. In what I consider my time, we significantly let go of a lot of the stereotypical appearance and even I love coming to work in a Hawaiian shirt whenever I can get away with it. This newer generation is bound to be different and just like mine, nothing will be able to change its influence on their way to dress, much less the way they think.

I don't necessarily need to accept things the way they are, but it sure does help my outlook of life when I finally do. This is my main reason to fight against my frustration of not being able to let go of the little things that bother me sometimes. I'll tell you what though, taking the time to write about it and share it with you has already given me a way to vent and feel much better. I hope this vaccine for my sanity isn't addicting in itself, that would be a hell of a price to pay since I am sure you as a reader wouldn't appreciate too many posts like this one. Still, I would be more than happy to take a sanity pill if they ever made one.

Dad