Friday, October 3, 2008

Lupron Doom

Lupron has never really affected me before. No hot flashes, no headaches. I can usually even manage to leave only the teensiet dot at the injection site.

Maybe this time is only different because I am already dealing with a really difficult and emotionally draining situation on top of this, but I am a complete wreck. I am pretty much moments from tears at all times. And I have no control of it at all, no "not now" face to put on to at least get through the day before collapsing into a disastrous heap at home.

I never really wanted to write about my daughter in this blog. Not because I don't think she is actually the most fascinating part of my life, but because she is old enough to want to have her life to herself. But I should say that as much as I have hoped for another child, this one is the perfect one for me. She is usually described as "old-fashioned" or "an old soul", and she doesn't participate in most of the manufactured tween culture that girls her age tend to get caught up in. She does love to read the fug girls, and she has an ipod full of music - but it's Blondie and Abba and the Go-Gos, which most other kids have never heard of. And of course, that's the problem.

It's just so hard for her to find kids she really relates to. I think all parents start out thinking that kids should be allowed to be themselves and not get sucked into a clique mentality. But the bottom line is that if kids have a natural clique - the sporty kids, or the game-boy nintendo kids, or the miley montana wannabes, or the horse-riding girls, etc - then they have a group that more or less forms itself and becomes a circle of friends. Kids who watch Alton Brown and want to be Shakespeare for Halloween are just nerds who get left alone - unless they find their nerd people and then they can spend lunchtime rewriting their math book in iambic pentameter.

My daughter is in a class this year with only four other girls in her grade (in a mixed grade classroom). Those four are two sets of best friends who have known each other since preschool. Because she has already skipped a grade, the older girls are really two years older than her, at an age where two years makes a big difference. The teacher tells me that she is really quiet and withdrawn, that she goes through the day just waiting for PE, when she can be with her friends, who were all put in the other class. I tell you, it is just not natural for the nerdy child to desperately look forward to gym class!

I know I'm not the most objective observer, but it's not as if there's anything wrong with her. She doesn't pick her nose or smell weird. She has great clothes, she is unbelievable funny. When she's with her real friends she's animated and silly and happy. I can't figure out why they ever thought it was a good idea to organize the class placement in this way. My poor kid is basically doomed to a year of loneliness. This is a small school, so there is no reason that this couldn't have been foreseen. But the thing is, I can't even call the teacher back because I can't stop bursting into tears.

Even though I know that I am so wildly overreactive, that it's all about the pill and the Lupron and the pressure of the do-or-die cycle, I am really unable to function like a regular human being. Maybe I can pull it together over the weekend, invite some of the other nerdly children over to play, and stop feeling that everything is so unfair.

4 comments:

Midlife Mommy said...

Sorry to hear about the Lupron this time. I'm like you; it usually doesn't cause me any problems except for the occasional hot flash.

Sorry to hear about your daughter. I remember what it feels like to be the odd person out. I didn't have many friends in school either (until I got involved with the wrong crowd in high school, they I had plenty -- but they weren't real friends).

Maybe an after school activity with kids her age who share her interest? It won't help during the day, but it might give her something to look forward to.

When I think back to what I wish someone would have told me back then, I wish that it would have been that this isn't the real world, school doesn't last forever, and the people who are the coolest in school are the ones who usually aren't very successful. But that last one wouldn't have had much of an impact on me at the time.

Hugs to you both.

Evergreen said...

Oh, your post brought back memories of school. I feel for your daughter, and I can relate too. I'm sorry the Lupron is so hard this time. It's tough to be the calm, wise mother conversing with the school teacher when you burst into tears for any reason.

Paula Keller said...

My first year of teaching I had a class of 12 and only three were girls, and yours totally reminded me of one of them. I think what really helped her were the extra things her parents got her involved in-like clubs and cheerleading.

I know that's hard to watch though.

Occaisionally my school will move a kid into another class. That's not unheard of.

She sound phenominal!!! Alton Brown and Shakespeare!!! Wow!

Good luck this cycle and thanks for all of your kind comments. It means so much.

Sky said...

Lorraine, I feel for your daughter, truly. I am one of the few people who has said that I "hated high school" when other girlfriends gush saying it was the best time of their lives. I was just "different" and that "difference" has absolutely led me down a remarkably better path. I was the Hispanic girl with curly/frizzy hair and no siblings amongst blond haired, blue eyed "perfect cheerleaders."

Well, about 6 years ago I ran into one of those cheerleaders who'd gained a ton, had dirty kids with her, a beaten up old car and looked like she'd had a very very very hard life.

I thought to myself - hmmm....now that's poetic justice. The popular cheerleaders would never have had lunch with someone like me and yet, there I was being told at least once a week "have you ever been told you look like Angelina Jolie" and I had a great advertising job with a big company and no shortage of potential dates.

Yeah, I like telling that story (and stroking my own ego) because I grew up looking painfully thin, awkward, messed up hair, dirt poor and with only a friend here and there. I could never have had a party because no one would have come.

So don't worry about your daughter too much - things have a funny way......