Tough Love
I never knew that tough love was the greatest love of all until a couple of years ago. I deeply resented my parents for their divorce and the fact that my mother moved us halfway across the country to her home state. My dad was always traveling for work and she wanted to be close to family. I did not care. I was pissed.
The other girls stared at me at school. So did the boys. My brother and sister were younger than me and neither was in high school. I was a junior and I hated starting in a new school. I heard a prissy cheerleader whisper to her friends and then laugh. I turned beet red. I just knew they were talking about me.
At lunch I looked around and that same cheerleader came up to me and asked if I wanted to join her table. Thinking I had totally misunderstood earlier I said sure. She just looked at me and said “Keep dreaming”. I decided then and there that every movie ever made about rude cheerleaders was based on her.
Someone else came up and asked if I wanted to join her table. She looked a little gothic but she was nice. She invited me to a party that weekend. I started getting high and my own life did not seem so bad.
At first my mom was glad I had made friends but she smelled pot on me one night and threw a fit, forbidding me to leave the house. I was furious and snuck out anyway. I tried crack that night at the party. Sure enough, my mom was waiting for me when I got home. I was busted but good. I turned it around on her, though and told her if she had not divorced my dad and moved us to this crummy town, it never would have happened. She looked crestfallen and sent me to my room. I eventually fell asleep with tears running down my face.
The next day I heard voices outside my room. The crazy part was I could swear one of them was my dad. It was. My mom had called him and he had flown out to help her straighten me out. They united together in tough love and got me into treatment that afternoon.
My parents are still divorced and we still live a ways from my dad but I realized while in treatment that I still have two parents who love me. I have been clean for nearly two years now and I am going to college close to where my dad lives next semester. He was at my graduation, sitting right next to my mom with my brother and sister on either side of them.
Tough love. It is the greatest type of love in the world. I know because I have the parents who cared enough to use it.
