My stepson is leaving for boot camp tomorrow. I was laying in my bed about to go to sleep when I started feeling kind of sad about it and bad for him. It was my husband’s fault. First he woke me up when he came to bed, then he mentioned that the kid was “a bundle of nerves”.
I started thinking about how I would feel if I were leaving home for the first time– and I mean for an extended period of time. I would feel pretty scared. I never really did leave home, go out on my own…okay, maybe for a few months but that is all. I lived with a friend but I was only an hour away from my parents– I still felt pretty homesick. The only thing that saved me was I made my room at my friend’s apartment into a little haven for me but there were times when I was scared and lonely. I can’t imagine going somewhere totally unfamiliar to me. A place that I don’t have control over my space and among a whole set of people I do not know…to have people telling me what to do all day long, to live among strangers in a strange place, and not even be able to get relief with visits home. There is no comfort there.
I didn’t think too much about it before. I thought my stepson wouldn’t really be fazed by anything because joining the military was what he really wanted but now I am not sure; I am worried. I think he will be okay but it is going to be a major adjustment for him. I see how this experience will help him grow, but I also see how it will challenge him. I hope he is ready because even though he is 18 I still see a boy not quite ready to be a man. Oh he wants the responsibilities and the privileges of being a man but he doesn’t seem ready to pay the cost or deal with the some of the downside that goes along with being an adult. Hell, he doesn’t even realize all that adulthood entails. Aren’t we all fools in that way when we are 18? It is hard to explain…perhaps I see him as still wanting to be protected and sheltered but he doesn’t yet realize (not fully) that as an adult you are on your own. This makes me sad…not that he doesn’t realize it but that he soon will. He will have to grow up whether or not he is ready and whether or not I am ready to accept it. I have never really seen the value in growing up too much, or growing all the way up. But that is me– just call me Petra Pan.
Of course, I want to protect and shelter him so I have to deal with that. I have felt bad, and all mixed up lately because I have been going back and forth between wanting to protect but then trying to let go. I feel bad about the times I let go…I should have done more, said more, tried harder, been a better stepmother (like I was able to much in the first place! HA), whatever and etc… I have been feeling guilty over letting go, letting him make his own mistakes and grow. But has he learned, is he ready? I don’t know and all this tentative uncertainty is hard, very hard.
I have felt I have been too cold, too disengaged, especially about him leaving. In this, I suppose I am protecting myself. I was detached and focused too much on myself lately– until tonight. Now what is there to do or say but to let him go and hope that it will be okay.
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