Week Six - Chapters 8 & 9

There were a lot of elements of this weeks readings and watchings that were interesting and touched a nerve with me.   I think the teenage years are so potent for everyone - so many things are going on in the body and the brain and in turn in the burgeoning social life - that it is a period that really sticks with people and attachments made and events occurring during this time are things that really stay with a person for the rest of their life, in a particular way that doesn't occur at later periods of life.  Or at least this is something that I have found personally, but my teenage years were a little different than those experienced by the majority - and I don't mean because I am/was so unique..   ;)

Anyway, after doing the Angel post for this week I found myself thinking about some of the other questions and so I decided to continue a little more with one of them..

Do the elements of adolescent egocentrism reflect what you have seen and/or experienced?  Why or why not?  What are some positives of adolescent egocentrism?

I can easily see the elements of adolescent egocentrism in my adolescent self, and it kind of makes my skin crawl at this point of my life - in fact it has for quite a long time - though I know at the time my attitude and feelings seemed the most normal thing in the world.  When I was 17 my mom was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  She and I were not particularly close to begin with, and I remember the feeling (though I don’t think it was ever a really concrete thought in these exact terms) that this was just so unfair that it was happening to me, disrupting my “life,” and affecting my social environment at the time.  A particular example of this: I was asked by a friend to go away and visit his family out of town – this was a good friend who I was kind of keen on at the time.  Initially my mom had said I could go, but I guess after thinking about the time frame that I would be gone (for almost a week a little after Christmas) she changed her mind.  I was SO angry, feeling like she was destroying my life, I would never recover, I would never get another chance to hang out with this fellow, and I am sure I said some really horrible things to her.  In retrospect I realize she was dying and likely worried I would be out of town when she did die.  Never mind that overall she didn’t have a lot of time left and likely wanted to spend as much time together as was possible.  So how could I be so clueless at the time?? Being a teen and so wrapped up in my own business I didn’t really think past the fact that my trip was being ruined. Honestly at the time it was difficult to even grasp the notion that she would actually die - but that seems a whole other kettle of fish (and really, as a kid who hadn't lost anyone close to them it probably isn't that odd).  In fact if I had gone away she would have died while I was out of town.  What I am trying to get across, I guess, was that there was just such a disconnect between me, what was interesting/important to me, and my home and family - which SHOULD have been much more important than they felt at the time.  I was not one of those kids who was trying to move out and be on my own or anything, things at my house were very lax because the focus of everyone was that my mom was so sick, so essentially I could do what I wanted most of the time. But is the fact that teens seem often to care so little (and that I cared  so little at such an important and scary time of my life) about their own family a method for easing in to the separation of going it on their own?  It seems to make sense but in a lot of ways it is really disturbing...