Life on the Run

My daughter has spent her entire life being spoiled.  A baby girl is fun to dress up. I was a young single mother and worked hard to provide for her. When she was a toddler I worked two jobs. After I was with my now ex-husband I worked nights and then later babysat out of our house. When we split up when I wasn't working I was busy trying to make up for the upheaval in both of my kids lives. The spoiling went above and beyond that though. She is the only granddaughter on my side of the family. Just as she is now still the only granddaughter on my side of the family as well as on my husbands side. There have been those in the family who have encouraged the thought process of entitlement. That rules were beneath her. She deserved things just for being alive. My husband and I have tried to teacher her that things are luxuries that are there out of kindness and our desire for her to have them. That everyone is bound by rules throughout life. People make mistakes, and that's ok BUT you have to pay a price for them. That accidents happen, but that you still have to own up to being the cause of it and do your best to fix it.However, so often, people have  been willing to make excuses for her mistakes, and try to wash them away with an "It's ok" or "That's typical behavior" or something of a like nature. That is not teaching her any lessons. That mind set is not doing her any favors. 

Spoiled was the beginning of the foundation for problems. The entitled attitude was very annoying. What could be worse? What has always worried me most about my daughter? Peer pressure. She has always had a strong desire to avoid conflict. She wants desperately for people to like her. She has always been willing to do most anything for acceptance. However, in the past, I never worried about peer pressure reaching her within the walls of our home. Had kids gotten her to do something not so smart in school? Yeah. I never in a million years thought they could get to her at home. Which was a mistake on my part, and I paid the price for it.

The foundation has been laied. It wasn't the foundation I dreamed of her having. Everyone has an enherit predisposition that can be fed or starved. Hers has been fed. She's a good kid. I can't relate to her. On any level it seems. I do my best though. I'm not proud of not being able to relate to her, but I can admit to it. In large, I suppose, the reason I struggle to connect with her is, because she has a good life, is mostly a cheery kid, but likes to imagine that her life totally sucks, and that every person she knows is a bad person. So, I had found that she had a fake facebook account where she was living out this dark life with people whom she had met online. I thought that was taking it way over the line. So we confiscated her laptop. Then instead of working on gaining her laptop back she started talking to these people on her cell. They told her that it was her god given rights to have that laptop and we were clearly abusing her.

o.O This is something that my husband and I have discussed before. The idea that first off that minor children have any rights at all. They don't. That's why their parents are held responsible for them. If the child breaks a law, it is the parents that have to pay the penalty unless the crime is of great weight and the child is of sufficient age to try them 
as an....adult. Secondly...the internet is not a right. A laptop is not a right. A cell phone is not a right. It's against the law to harm them...that's not right.

Not the place for a pampered princess.

So, they told her to run. They told her to hide. They told her they would "help" her. They told me they knew my daughter better than anyone. I couldn't help but see the humor in their delusion. Seriously? You think you know my kid? How far from the truth this would turn out to be. They told my daughter to trust them. They promised my daughter that if we found her that we would kill her. They, for a time, erased a life times worth of experience that told her contrary to what they were telling her. I know what they told her, because after getting her back I read through the text messages. Some of the texts were clearly not my daughter, as I know her. Others though....She repeatedly expressed how scared she was. That she was hungry. They insisted that she would be fine. Just hide. Some kids are capable of handling themselves on the street. She is far from being one of those kids. In the few hours she was gone....She went down into a creek to hide as instructed. She fell, repeatedly. She ran through a rose bush. She tore up my sneakers. She came home covered in bruises, soaking wet, scratched up from one end to the next,....and all in all just looked like someone who had been on the streets for days.

She came in and asked for her mommy to fix her up. She then curled up into me on the couch. They swore they knew my daughter so well. They didn't know or care that she was incapable of taking care of herself. I have been through some scary, rough, and hard times in my life, but never have I been as terrified as I was those hours she was gone. She made 
a mistake. A very big one. She now has to pay the price of that mistake. It does not make her a bad person. It does not mean that she's a danger. She's not going to do something stupid while babysitting. As I try to teach my kids, everyone, and I mean every.single.person.ever. makes mistakes and makes bad choices sometimes. What matters is where you go from
there.

So what's life like post trauma? Lots of trust problems. Lots of attitude being thrown around as if the distrust wasn't earned. Lots of not sleeping. Lots of worry. Is she...she? Is the she that she was for those kids lurking underneath? Did she really learn anything from this? Only time has the answer to those questions, and time is always slow at giving the answers.