I hope I have some 'The Office' lovers who read these. Remember when Jim and Dwight are in charge of putting a party together for Kelly's birthday, and Dwight makes her a sign - and that's all it says ' It Is Your Birthday.' No exclamation, just a period. Haha ah, that show kills me. Hands down my favorite show of all time.
I'm changing the tune today, I was going to chat about how I am insanely good ad fucking up relationships but, after the week we've had in this house - we're going to talk about how much I was dreading not only today, but Thursday (my birthday) as well.
Payton and I are almost birthday buddies, I had him three days after my 18th birthday. Every time I talk to someone 'new' and birthdays are discussed its inevitable that someone asks me 'Oh my gosh, do you ever wish you guys had the same birthday?!' = like ... no. No I don't. Typically my answer is no because 'as he got older, I'd want to celebrate together and he would be too cool for me' but that's not true. I just really don't want to share a birthday with him. I love birthdays. Selfishly - I love having 'my' day - its never extravagant or over the top, BUT even at 32 years old I still get to pick dinner and dessert and I freaking love that shit.
This year however, I didn't want to celebrate at all. As you know, if you've caught up on reading, Payton and I struggle. A lot. We butt heads way to often for comfort, and for the love of God - I know that some of it is the age - he's a 13 year old boy. But put a fly cam on the wall of our home for a hot second and you'll quickly realize our issues are more than just an age problem.
For the last several months, we have been struggling with a particular behavior. No, I'm not going to share what it is - I don't think I'll be ready to talk about it until we feel the behavior has been corrected and we're on the up and up, but it makes me sick.
Payton recently has had his Xbox and TV privileges taken away. We allowed him to keep his phone because I have our apple devices set up[ as a 'family' in the 'Settings' icon and I can lock that shit down. That mf-er can't even open google, can't send or receive pictures, cant open a link if its sent to him in a text - nothing. But kids find a way around everything.
Every night, I make Payton leave his phone upstairs because otherwise he would be on Netflix until all hours of the night on school nights and the kid needs sleep. Because I pay for his phone, every now and again I'll click through it to make sure he's not doing anything he shouldn't be doing. Last week, probably on Monday, I went through his messages and photos and found these pictures of a girl I had never seen before, not that I know everyone in his grade, but the gals he talks about - I know what they look like at least or know who their parents are. So he came up for breakfast Monday morning and I asked him 'Who is XYZ?' - 'a girl I met at the summit center' the weekend or couple days before Payton and a buddy had gone to the Summit Center (a gym attached to the high school here) to play basketball. I thought that was suspicious, again because I know who most of the little girls are that are his age - and I've never seen this girl in my life. I also found out that he found a way to receive pictures via AirDrop instead of through a text. This girl had started to send him some photos - one of her side profile in a very fitted outfit (she was a very developed girl) and then one of her ass (she was wearing jeans) but she took the photo from underneath her butt - literally, yuck. So I asked him about those and in true 13 year old boy fashion he 'didn't know why she did that' he 'didn't ask her to do that!' Whatever. Then i noticed that she had a 918 area code. That shit ain't local. So I asked him again - who the hell is this girl?! Story didn't change.
I was on edge all day, I could not figure out where Payton would be meeting this girl and sharing his phone number AND AirDropping a stranger pictures of himself.
Then its Tuesday, I worked at the Pilates studio in the evening so I wasn't going to get home until 7:15p. Right before class starts I get a text from my husband, Mitchell, 'Payton no longer has a phone.' Great. What on earth could have happened? and when Mitchell replied 'same shit' - I knew that somehow Payton had figured out a way to do the thing we were trying to prevent and I literally couldn't think straight and I wanted to be sick. It was probably the worst Pilates class I've ever taught, the only thing I could think about was Payton.
After class I got home and discovered that Payton had somehow conned his friend into letting him have his Oculus - which is like a virtual reality headset, you don't need a phone to run it, essentially just WiFi and it's a computer you wear on your face so you can do whatever you want, and he'd been hiding it in his room for the last three weeks. Essentially the entire time he'd had his electronics taken away. Lovely, we love this.
If Payton and I had a 'normal' relationship - maybe all these things wouldn't be as big of a deal - but we don't. Our relationship is far from normal, far from healthy, far from ... anything good to be completely honest. And this ... shit tainted the entire week. I got home, Payton was asleep in his room because he had nothing to do and all I could do was cry. Woke up the next day, cried - went to work, faked it till I made it, celebrated my 150th Pilates class - got home - cried. Not only because of what had happened but I literally have no idea what the fuck to do. We are out here trying our best to help him, and trying to fight the good fight but for fucks sake - I.Am.Tired.
On Wednesday night, the weather was decent, Payton was out riding his bike and rode his bike to the store and bought me a birthday gift with his own money. He came home and handed it to me, it's a necklace with a couple of little jewels on it. Instead of just saying 'thank you' I'm like 'why did you do this'? In my mind, the kid knows he's in deep shit with me, he hasn't apologized, and it just feels disingenuous - in that moment, I cried (go figure), I took the necklace and said Thank You, but I didn't even want it. How fucked is that?
All these negative thoughts carried over for a second day, to Thursday - my birthday. Mitchell woke up and went to the gym came home with beautiful flowers some of my favorite things, got the girls up, they gave me balloons and tried to make it such a happy morning, but I was just living in my head. I didn't feel like celebrating, I didn't want to pick dinner, I didn't want to have dessert - I didn't want to do shit. We ate dinner together, but I didn't have what everyone else had, I got us ice cream and literally hated every single part of it - I was just so fucking annoyed at life.
On Friday, Payton wanted an opportunity to 'earn some trust back' and asked to stay the night at a friends house. That was a big 'hell no' from me. I'm like 'Dude, you literally just DESTROYED every tiny ounce of trust that remained with the choices you made this week and you think I'm going to let you go over to a friends and stay the night? absolutely not. Then without saying anything about having a chance to earn my trust back I asked him again who the girl was on his phone. The story didn't change. Which is insane, at this point he knew I went through his phone to even see that he was talking to her in the first place. Turns out there's an app called OME TV? or something like that where you can literally just talk to strangers and he gave this girl his phone number or whatever. Lied to my face twice before I got him to admit that so we just let the negativity roll on through the rest of the week.
Today is Payton's 14th birthday. Any other year - I'd have balloons, a happy birthday streamer hung up, special breakfast made - you guys I love birthdays. But I just can't do it, I cannot ... do it. I don't want to celebrate I don't want to do anything. Right now, I'm struggling to even look at him and I'm just supposed to do today like nothing happened this last week - how do you do that? Other parents, moms who read this -- how ... how do you do that?! Why can't I just accept that something bad happened but move on with our lives? And why the fuck is it so hard to do that with Payton?!
We're still going to go to dinner, we're doing cake - but fuck... I cannot do the extra. And it's a Sunday. Sunday's are my worst mental health day of the week - a story for another time because this is already long, and late to be published...
I'm praying for a better day today. Lord, please let today be better.
Xoxo,
Lo
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