Jenerally Speaking

Well, tonight was the final night of Meg’s middle school drama performance in the Adventures of a Comic Book Artist. She played the role of a Minuto – one of the evil minions to the villain, Doctor Shock Clock. This was a much bigger role than she had in the play last year and she is asking to take some acting classes so that she might qualify for an even better role for the play in the spring. It’s kind of fun having a daughter who enjoys the things I was too shy to do when I was her age.

I know she had a lot of fun doing the play, but I am glad (for her sake) that it has come to an end. I have been noticing that her overall stress has reached a critical level. I think the daily drama rehearsals until 5PM, the Saturday morning rehearsals, social pressures, and the workload of her advanced classes has her completely frazzled. Lately I have been dealing with her daily crying spells, an overall lack of energy and focus, bouts of severe sadness, feelings of worthlessness…I am sugar-coating it a little, but suffice it to say that her behavior is completely and utterly heartbreaking. I have never seen her act this way and it’s like I have a completely different daughter this school year. I definitely want to spend the next few months trying to pinpoint where the stress is coming from and hopefully point her in the right direction.
Her guidance counselor and I have a few places to start…beginning with her three best friends from last year who betrayed Meghan by secretly vandalizing her locker. The basic story is that they pretended to still be her closest friends…coming over our house every week, sitting together at lunch, sleepovers, phone calls, chatting online, etc. Then, Meg found a forum they had joined and she read all their posts about how much they hated her and how funny it was when they messed up her locker without her knowing it was them. This truly crushed her. Meghan was blindsided. She never had a single clue that they could do that to her. She didn’t even know what she had done wrong. Afterwards, the girls didn’t even give a real reason as to why they did it – they just thought she was changing and drifting away from them and they didn’t like it.

Because of this, Meghan is afraid to do anything wrong. She is afraid something like this will happen again. She has a bunch of new friends now (and made tentative amends with 2 of the 3 friends from last year), but Meghan just isn’t the same trusting, carefree girl she was last year. Nothing is worse than being a parent and watching your child hurt and not being able to snap our fingers and take the pain away. I’m just thankful that Meghan is still talking to me about how she feels…she is open about how stressed she is and how lost she feels and how much she hurts. Lots of prayers, hugs, honesty, patience, counseling…that is what our lives are going to be revolve around for the next few months.