It’s the circle of life and there is no escaping it. Least of all for me. Because I, the Coastal Single Mom, put my mother through h-e-l-l.
Not on purpose of course. I knew, saw and felt how hard she had it as a single mom, but I was a kid, and life was my candy store. I was too smart for my own good, incredibly curious, wildly experimental and a rebel James Dean would have been proud of. Teenage Me pushed the envelope, crossed boundaries and challenged authority.
My poor mom had her hands full. But it was in my little puberty-stricken adolescent love life that I truly shined. Fiercely unwilling to listen to her advice to not “move so fast and fall so hard”, I did. Over and over. Getting my little heart broken and sending me into never ending spirals of euphoria and despair, floating like a butterfly one moment, and the next spending hours in my room crying into my pillow like I will never meet another boy to love.
I love how teenage emotions are paired with so many dramatics. Literally every single thing is ‘the end of the world’.
Which brings me to my universe now. Adult me is a far cry from the girl who cried into her pillow (save a few moments where my soul really did get ripped apart) and I managed to raise my boys, macho-man Troll 1 and quirky-crazy Troll 2, to be the coolest teenage cats one could ever imagine.
The Trolls are smart, independent and strong. But what I love most about them, is how stable they are emotionally. My kids are not easily fazed. They take the good times for what they are, and they take the bad times on the chin.
In fact, if I had to count the emotional outbursts they’ve subjected me to, I wouldn’t even be able to fill a hand.
For all the bad luck life has handed me, being mom to The Trolls was God’s way of saying “hush child, the best is yet to come”.
So, imagine my surprise when suddenly this year, my first-born son, 17-year-old Troll 1, decided to turn my happily ever after upside down by not only pushing the envelope, not only bushing the boundary, not only challenging my authority… but actually going (against my expressed wishes, I might add!) and falling in goddam love.
Even after I told him “chores before whores” and “bros before hos”. Even after I told him “girls are stupid, avoid them at all costs” and “don’t fall for the first girl you meet, you have your entire life ahead of you”.
Even after I did the unspeakable… and started sounding like my mother.
Even after I met the little girlfriend and made her cry.
Even after I started sulking and didn’t speak to him for a week.
My son still went and fell in goddam love.
So, now I have two options. I can either go full-scale loco and push him even further into the vixen’s claws – as my mother did, or I could pour the biggest glass of wine I can find, sit down, and strategise on how to deal with my first-born son’s first love.
More next week.
– urbansinglemom@gmail.com
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