I’m not a rule breaker. I recognize that many rules were created because they worked well for somebody else, but still, I feel this enormous pressure to do what they did.
I am so focused on my daughter’s college or not college decision (yes college or not) because of what it would have meant to me when I was her age. I knew what I wanted then, but I didn’t know that I knew, and therefore I was easily shaken of all confidence once I got there. I don’t want that for her.
I want her to go to college, but I want more that she knows what she wants and acts on it with conviction. I want her to say, “fuck you dad, only I know what’s right for me.”
I wish I had said that, but to who? Probably myself. “Fuck you self. You don’t know what I want.”
She and I, still (it’s never too late, is it?), need to do what we know is right for each of us. We need to say “fuck you,” to the world, “you’re not the boss of me.”
I honestly don’t know what’s right for her. If I thought I did it would make it harder to back off. It’s hard anyway. I’m scared to seem like I am encouraging either choice. But I find myself needing to tell her that it is ok to decide on the less conventional, and that feels like an encouragement. I even showed her the Robert Frost poem.
And she is not the type that has always yearned for freedom the way Robert Frost and I have, or is she? Isn’t everyone? Who doesn’t want to be free?
Admit it 