I find myself writing again on the eve of Lent, when last year at this time was very nearly the last time I wrote a blog post. I write because my mind is full of thoughts for a very dear friend whom I have known for a very short time, and who has a daughter who is very troubled, and who seems to be making all of the wrong decisions with her life. For some reason, I am drawn to think about this daughter--because my friend seems so little to deserve the treatment she has received, perhaps, but also because there are things that my friend has said about the daughter that draw me to her. She is very creative, and has been her whole life. She imagines herself in scenarios that cause her panic--something with which I can relate, and which I think is also a symptom of that creative, artistic temperament. This daughter is on a very self-destructive path, living away from home in another state with strangers whom she met online; seeking only interracial relationships almost as a way of marking herself--of "Othering" herself, as my academic side would say--because she desires mixed babies. I look at my friend, and I see it tearing her apart.
And I look at myself, and I think about what has put me on my present path. I feel like I want to say to my friend, had things gone differently, I have gone down a path that was not too dissimilar. I was a poet in college and romanticized a bohemian lifestyle. I was what I can only call agnostic, though I wouldn't have called it that since I was always nominally Christian-esque. Sexual experimentation--and I mean more promiscuous and more out of the ordinary--would not have been too far away, had I had someone so inclined whom I felt I could trust (friend or romantic other). I would have pierced *something* hidden had I not been living at home, where such a thing might have been discovered. I was riddled with responsibility for my family, and once escaping that responsibility, there is no telling where I would have wound up.
I see my friend's daughter as not escaping responsibility--she hasn't had much. Rather, I think she is imagining a lifestyle for herself that is opposed to what she has had--sort of like my bohemianism. She is imagining herself being the "Other" with whom she, for whatever reason, is identifying right now. She feels like she wants to be apart. That she is the person oppressed. And so she seeks communion with that oppressed "Other" who, she imagines, is like her. I don't know this, of course. I only suspect.
I think of what happened in my case. Apparently, God saw fit to send me my soulmate--and an unplanned, unwed pregnancy, lest I think about screwing up the best thing that had ever come my way. I may never have been married otherwise, so He sent me what no mother wishes for her child. And we made the best of that curveball. I have made a life for which I am so grateful. It didn't have to work out for the best, but somehow, I managed to cooperate with Grace.
I don't know what to say to my friend. I guess what I am mainly thinking is that her daughter has not strayed far from a path on which I could have seen myself. My self-destruction would have been more literary and educated--grad school was always part of the equation. But it would have still had its self-destructive--and even self-loathing elements, though I never would have seen that. And, well, I survived that inclination, so perhaps there is hope? It may be weak. But perhaps someone or something will step in her daughter's path, and things will work out for her. Good, smart people can make poor choices, and are sometimes saved by what seems like chance. I guess all I can say is that I will be praying for this girl--this young woman who is like the girl I was at 17--during Lent. And also for my friend, who is hurting inside.
