Humiliating

Maybe I shouldn't wash my dirty linen in public, but since most of my readers who know me in real life have experienced some form of this, I don't feel it's inappropriate to use my bully pulpit to gripe about my mother. Yes, I do love her, but sometimes I wonder if I respect her. I obey her - hence the humiliation - but out of duty, not generally because I feel she has great insight into whatever the matter at hand is. And yes, I'm not the greatest son. However, in my own defense, I obey her, as well as my father, religiously. I'm forgetful and sometimes careless, but I can't remember the last time I purposely disobeyed her. I've been blameless on the big things - I never smoked, tried drugs, drank illegally, or so much as kissed a girl.

Sorry - I'm not approaching this logically; I've gone about it all backwards to this point. What I mean to say is this: because I have, for years on end, obeyed my parents and done nothing to give them reason to distrust me, I would logically expect to be trusted. That, however, is not the case. She asked me if there was going to be a chaperone on the Crusade camping trip that I'm involved in planning, and hinted not-so-subtly that she thinks there ought to be one. She said that while she'd never been in one, she'd seen campus Christian groups with very loose standards. OK, I know plenty of people who call themselves Christians and yet act like the rest of the world. But to suggest that of the group that I've been pouring myself into for the last year? Does she think I'm blind? Or does she just not trust me? Does she not realize that I've been on trips with people who get unabashedly drunk - in D.C. last month, I was the only one absent from the drinking party in the "faculty advisor's" room of the hotel!

Now I'm crew for "the Music Man", which is being put on by a Community Theatre group that we've been a part of for three or four years. She wouldn't let me or Polly go out to the Ground Round afterwards! That would have entailed being home at *gasp* midnight, or maybe 12:30. Shudder. Yeah, and it's humiliating to stand in front of my friends and say I can't go out after all, because my Mom won't let me. Their advice? Blow her off. But no, I'm too loyal or obedient, or maybe just too stupid, and I keep coming home when I'm told to, and even when I'm grouchy about it, obeying her day in and day out. Do I win her trust? No, she just complains about my attitude when I'm not cheerful about dropping my homework to help her unload the car.

I need to move out.

But I don't know what to do; I feel unjustly treated, and every time I've tried to ask for more independence, she acts like it's part of a plot to subvert her authority, and her mistrust for me grows. I haven't felt that she's trusted me since I was 12 years old, and I really can't remember before that. But she interprets wanting to make my own decisions as wanting to disobey her. Quite the contrary - on some issues I have even higher standards than she does, and I certainly have had ample opportunity to break every rule I've ever encountered. Nobody in the UNA would resist if I asked to join them drinking or had gone to the strip club with them in D.C., nobody would raise an eyebrow if I started frequenting the party scene and picking up girls.

Aggghh... I can't even write this coherently! I guess the situation is fortunate: I'm living in Beirut over the summer, and then after a short vacation at home I'm off to D.C. for six months where I can begin to live my own life. That's good, but at the same time it's a little melancholy, coming right at the moment that I feel like I've established myself as an active member of Campus Crusade, and just as I've really begun to have friendships with people at NU, Christian and non, after a year and a half of being an extremely disconnected commuter. It's also my best friend's last year and school, and he already seems to be growing up, actually.

Well, this has rambled way off-topic, and I appreciate all the support you guys give me, but at the same time, please don't make it any more difficult on me. Please do encourage me, but do it in the fear of the Lord, keeping in mind that until I'm married or otherwise broken from my family, I'm in submission to my parents.

OK, last item. I need somewhere to go or something to do from June 9th to 23rd. I was pondering working at Camp Maranatha, but after visiting there and seeing how phenomenally dysfunctional that family is (mine really isn't that bad after all!), I just don't think I can pretend things are normal and live a lie up there for any amount of time - I've lost all respect for both my friend and his father. But Maranatha aside, I don't want to be stuck in a small cabin with my family for a month - that'd be a nightmare! Does anybody have an extra bed for a few days or an invitation to visit somewhere for a weekend? I'll probably have access to a car when I need it, but I don't want to spend much, otherwise I'd go on a massive road trip. At this point, I might do anything; doing nothing in a one-and-a-half room cabin with my family for a month out in the suburban woods? HELP!