Inside Gigi's World

I remember when puberty started.

Wasn’t that a bitch?

Because being over weight and the poor kid in school wasn’t enough, let’s just add acne, a terrible sense in fashion, an even worse haircut and enough preteen angst that it could suffocate an elephant.

The only hope that I had was that I would eventually get through those awful, awful days. And knowing eventually I would be able to handle myself, the acne would eventually stop and I would eventually grow tall enough to be able to reach my things on the top shelf without a step stool. Literally, all of those were delusions of a misguided 11 year old girl who, after the age of 12, stopped growing completely, except her ass. That just kept growing and growing. Thank you Flintstones chewable multivitamins.

I went to school in a small town where everyone knew everyone. You were either “cool” or you weren’t and around those stuck up jocks, I tended to fall in the later category. It was only after being bullied for years that I eventually started walking around with my middle finger erect and not caring what all those super “cool” people thought of me did I finally feel empowered.

Middle school, 5th through 7th grade were the absolute worse years of my life. My lifeline were the group of friends that I hung on to for dear life and the foul, sarcastic sense of humor that most of you have grown to find part of my charm. I couldn’t stand the drama, even then, and I would have rather been by myself then to be around people.

Now here we are, all over again. Puberty, you filthy bastard.

I guess denial has always been a great way of getting through life. I assumed when I had children that they would always be as sweet as candy, small as good as rain on a summer’s day and always be so loveable and so happy that we would go happily into the abyss of a fantastic parent /child relationship and it would be as easy as breathing.

Who the fuck was I kidding?

I knew what it was when it reared it’s ugly head, when J. started crying all the time, over nothing and everything. The mood swings, Oh the mood swings. One minute she loves you and wants to share her candy bar with you. The next, she is ready to eat you alive because you touched her candy bar. There has been no in between.

She throws a fit if she gets woken up before she is ready, I think she is going to be our coffee drinker someday. And she will wear nothing I buy her for cloths, I guess having a mother buy you new cloths is not as cool as hand me downs from your friends and older cousins that your mother wouldn’t let you leave the house in to begin with.

These past few days have been some of the most trying of my life and I am sure she isn’t feeling all that great either.

What do you do when your child crosses the line? There needs to be boundaries, there needs to be accountability and there needs to be consequences.

And although I try my hardest to be as sympathetic as I can be sometimes life gets the best of you.

I am pretty sure, eventually, one day, she will emerge from this trapped feeling. At least that was how I felt when I was going through it. She will be strong and full of tenacity, I know this because she comes from a long line of bright, strong women who have gone through the same things as she did well before she was even a thought. I think someday she may even set the world on fire, just hopefully she doesn’t set me on fire first.

Here’s to the 11 year old in all of us, the 11 year olds of times past, all of us living with them now and all the moms and kids just trying to get through it.

For your viewing pleasure, me as a middle schooler. I hope you find as much humor in this as I do.