Nobody warns you what it is like raising teenagers; you literally go from having cute, angelic children who go to bed mostly on time, wear what you lay out for them, and hang off your every word, putting you on a pedestal, thinking you are the most amazing and important person in their life, to hating you overnight. They went to bed as a child and woke up as a teenager with body hair, a funny smell, and an attitude to boot. I don’t see people podcasting or writing inspirational Instagram quotes on how you cope with this, and as a cruel twist of fate, just to make sure you have absolutely no control at all over this teenage hormonal surge, you are probably knee deep in a hormonal crisis yourself, navigating the 50 new symptoms a week of the gift that keeps on giving that is Perimenopause.
Life has a funny way of grounding you when you need it most, and by that, I mean just when you naively think things are going well, and your head is above water, along comes a universal humungous wrecking ball and crashes into your spreading middle, swiping you straight of your feet. I have three older children, who have all surpassed the early teenage years, and aside from a few tears, some hormonal ache and the odd grunt, I couldn’t see what the big fuss was about; I thought our older three kids as teenagers were pretty easy, I enjoyed the new found friendship/parent relationship, the deeper conversations, doing more mutually enjoyable things together – I especially enjoyed the part of the teenagers years when they wouldn’t be seen dead with me, and wanted nothing to do with me – to be honest, this was when I was at my most peaceful in life. So when the youngest turned into a teenager, I wasn’t one bit worried; how bad could it be? I had survived three children before him, and I was well versed in the teenage ways – and it is at this smug point in life that the wrecking ball likes to come and literally bowl into your sagging tits and turn your world upside down.
The poor youngest child – the one the school thinks we gave up parenting, has hit the jackpot as my Perimenopause is in full swing. Currently, rage is my most used emotion, uncontrollable rage for no reason over minor things, mostly I rage over everything that turdburger does. So it comes as no surprise that last week, Alfie decided to have the most epic hormonally surged breakdown of his entire life; he lost his mind so bad, I could hear him punching things and slamming things, of course, I handled this in a way that the soft parenting books would tell you not to – and equally lost my entire mind and stormed full pelt from the kitchen and was hell-bent of giving it him the old school way – and being sure I was going to give him a reason to cry (great 80’s parenting style) I leap up off my kitchen chair, like a banshe, I fly through the kitchen and hallway, probably kicked the dog in the process, but nothing was stopping me – I was on my way to dangle that child, by his ankles out of his bedroom window, I got to the bottom of the staircase, I still hear banging and throw myself at the stairs trying to run two steps at a time. Fortunately for Alf, I am one middle-aged, unfit and broken woman. I made it all the way to the 11th step before my left lung collapsed and gave me such a sharp stabbing pain I had to bend over, in the process pulling my lower back, sending it into spasm.
I was stuck on the stairs, and fortunately again for that boy, the brain fog had kicked in alongside the pain and I had forgotten what I throwing myself up the stairs for; all i could think about in that moment was if I should slide down the stairs or crawl up the last two – neither was looking likely with my pain. Just as I navigated these thoughts, Alf emerged from his room, red-faced and holding his mouth with his hands, looking like he had caused himself some pain. (I won’t even pretend at this point I was looking smug again, thinking it served him right) That was until he told me he had just headbutted the floor in frustration / anger and had managed to chip his teeth – the teeth we had spent 3k fixing and still hadn’t paid off.
Words don’t fail me often, but at that moment, I had lost all hope. Finally, the 4th child turning into a teenager had broken me – and his tooth. I was lost for words. I am now off to sell a kidney because my lung is already broken from the stairs gate, and nobody would take my liver in the hope that I can trade it on the black market to raise the funds to fix his broken tooth.
