It’s one of the most frightening sights a child can bear.
Your mother shopping in the juniors department for herself. Very few people want to see their mother in a shirt with words and sayings such as “My Eyes are Up Here”, “Your Boyfriend is Hot”, or my personal favorite, “Who Needs Brains When You’ve Got These” scrawled across the very bosom that bequeathed you with essential nourishment as an infant.
Perhaps even scarier a sight would be your mother, in one of her special “girls’ nights out” outfits, dancing in a club full of people half her age, drunkenly hitting on barely legal boys who are either horrified and uninterested in her affections, or are boorish enough that they want to do terrible, depraved things to your mother because it’s on their bucket list to bang a MILF.
Typically, a mom like this prides herself in being her daughter/son’s best friend. She’s the mom who in high school buys the beer for you and your underage friends, and tells you that she’s totally cool with you and your boyfriend getting it on in the house, so long as you use condoms.
Which, by the way, she keeps in her nightstand, so don’t be shy!
She’s also the mom who, as you age, refuses to do so herself. She never really was a mom, when you think about it--she never really raised you, she was more of the wizened older friend who could buy you things and who wanted to know everything about you and your life. There were no boundaries, and there were no repercussions to bad behavior. It feels as though she’s just living through you rather than raising you. Sometimes it seems like a cool way to be raised, but sometimes you just wanted a parent.
This can become annoying and frustrating as you grow up and become an adult and she doesn’t. Sometimes this lack of growth on her part can lead to some major problems within the family.
What got me thinking about this was that I was recently reading about the alleged story that Demi Moore’s children are attempting to cut off ties from her. Supposedly, her kids are even considering filing a restraining order against their mother.
This is reportedly due to a number of things, one, the girls are exhausted after having to support their mother during her recent stint in rehab. After her much publicized divorce from Ashton Kutcher last fall, Demi was having a rough time and was looking especially worn out and thin. Several months after the divorce, she had a seizure after smoking a drug called “spice” which is a synthetic marijuana. This prompted Demi checking herself into rehabilitation.
According to a “source” (a note on sources, has anyone ever contemplated that either these supposed “sources” don’t actually exist, or perhaps that it’s just the same person who creeps around celebrities, hiding under their kitchen tables and sleeping in their garbage cans, so rededicated to being the ultimate douche/troll that they’ve abandoned their real name and
instead legally go by the moniker “source”? Think about it. I clearly have.) the girls are also upset because Demi demands that they cut all ties with her ex-husband, who was a major influence on the girls lives.
Whether any of this is true or not remains to be seen, but regardless, it’s a perfect example of the self-destructiveness that can come from the kind of mentality that a woman has when she sees her children as a pathway to stay young and relevant rather than seeing them as people who need to be raised.
After all, why on earth should a woman in her forties be doing a drug so apparently new, that I myself have never heard of anyone using it? And I go to a public University and live in a dorm, so I’m fairly certain that if anyone would hear it, it would be me. Not because I engage in those types of shenanigans, but usually people who do those types of shenanigans can sense my motherly tendencies and thus do what they can to be sure to pass out on my bed in order to receive proper treatment/my attempts to buy make them feel better via buying them baked goods.
Sometimes, when one is desperate for youth, they’ll go to extreme measure to do what they came to reclaim the feelings that they had in that age. For some reason, some hold onto this bizarre notion that youth = recklessness/ignorance and thus throw away everything they’ve ever learned and do something incredibly stupid so as to reclaim their younger days.
But that’s impossible. It’s chasing the dragon. Your youth comes from your, well, being young! It comes from a lack of experience, a naiveté, an innocence. Once those things are gone, it’s really hard to reclaim them. And why on earth would you want to? I sure as hell would never want to reset my brain back to when I was sixteen--dear god, deliver me from that kind of heinous punishment!
You can’t un-experience life--its like those people who preach that you can “reclaim your virginity”. You can’t un-forget your first time (though many of us certainly try) no more than you can forget the millions of mistakes you’ve made and the lessons you’ve learned from them.
To throw those away so as to attempt to reclaim youth is an unhealthy idea. It’s not good for you as a parent to be your kids best friend no more than it is good to hold onto this insane notion that we have as a society, that somehow youth is a the key to fulfillment and happiness.
Last time I checked, fulfillment and happiness comes with living life, learning, a meeting new people, and loving as much as possible. We may use our physical youth along the way, but that doesn’t mean we sacrifice our joy and our vitality as we age. Being a mom or a dad doesn’t make you old--but it does mean you have to become responsible and act as a parent, and not a best friend.
When we try to be what we’re not, we set ourselves up for disappointment rather than what we’re searching for. And in life, we’re always searching for something more than what we have. But I think it does everyone well to do your best and be content wherever you are, because if you can’t be, you’ll just be chasing that dragon--and I don’t know if you’ve heard, but dragons have the tendency to spit fire.
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Like this article? Check out other poignant and hilarious pieces by the always irreverent, Mia Bencivenga:
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