My dad and older brother both feel that one is not an adult unless she’s had sex… meaning I may never be considered “grown up” by them, because I feel (right now) an equal pull to a consecrated single life vocation as I do to a married state.
Your dad and brother are both wrong, and you of course know that. Selfish, abusive men get no say in your life-- ignore them.
At the same time, when I needed my dad’s encouragment or help or whatever after some guys had attacked my friends and I, he told me at fifteen that I was already an adult and thus expected to deal with the horrible experience alone.
I am very sorry your father has treated you this way. That is a real shame. I hope that you will find adult mentors in your church-- a married couple perhaps, or since you are considering a vocation find some sisters to correspond with-- who can help guide you with real advice and real concern.
Please just know that your father is not normal-- he may have mental problems or an addiction that clouds his thinking.
My mother treats me like an adult when she comes to me with her relationship issues and seeks my advice in raising my siblings or breaking up with yet another abusive man…
It’s a shame that your mother is so messed up that she puts responsibility on your shoulders that does not belong there at 15.
Sometimes circumstances force us to grow up before we would like to or should have to. That is the case here. Fifteen is not an adult. But, you have taken on adult responsibilities and worries.
and she treats me like a child in how she responds to the job I am working in currently, in how she worries about me and worries me with her worries about me. she also believes that a girl is not an adult until she has given birth to a child.
Well, I’m 40 and my mom still worries about me. So, some things never change. Moms will always worry about their daughters.
Your mother is wrong regarding adulthood. I have never had a child-- so does that mean that at 40 I am not an adult? Siilly.
my RCIA sponsor treats me both like a kid and an adult as well; she says she is in awe that a kid, or a person as young as I, could have saught out faith and formed such devotion… she also constantly says that I am an adult, that I have my own control in my life.
That is likely due to your poor home situation. You have taken on many adult-like qualities to cope and to survive. But, emotionally, physically, socially you are 15 and still growing and learning.
It is normal during the years 15-18 to feel grown up sometimes, and feel like a child sometimes. It is normal for people to treat you with mixed signals. There is a natural period of growing independence, glimpses of the adult you will be and glimpses of the young teen you still are.
It’s a compliment, not an insut. Try to bear with it.
my spiritual director tells me (I like his advice the best, btw) that I should be trying to be an adult where-ever I can be, as society expects it, but that I am also still a child in some areas and can be expected to be growing for the rest of my life - along with the rest of the world.
Yes, your spiritual director is right!
so really, I don’t know where I stand… sometimes I “feel” more like a young woman (though perhaps those times are my most childish moments), and most of the times I “feel” like just a scared :crying: kid, trying so hard to be the grown up I am expected to be and expect myself to be - like a ten year old child trying to mother her own mother, as well as her siblings - as I once was, before I left home.
Join the club-- I’m forty and I still feel that way sometimes!
Seriously, it’s a lifelong process-- you don’t magically wake up on morning as an “adult”. It’s a process that takes years (and I know some guys who are still in the process even in their 30s… ha ha).
Seriously, you sound like a fine young lady on her way to adulthood. Don’t sweat the rest! It only matters what
you think regarding adulthood, really. Not what your mom or dad or anyone else thinks.
Your emotions are completely normal.
Is it possible that a person can go from being a premature adult to being a post-mature child - or, in other words, experience childhood as a young adult, having been denied fair opportunity to do so as a child?
love,
Saoirse
