There are many annoying parts to being a SP, but one of the most annoying is that you have to bit your tongue so often. If not for ST and a few close “tell anything” friends, I might have bitten clear through my tongue long ago.

SD recently turned 18 (Yipee!) and DH and MIL have been planning a family birthday party for the coming weekend. If you want the long saga, feel free to read my previous blogs, but the short story is SD has mostly written off DH and this side of the family due to a blow up about her grades and flunking school. We have hardly seen her for the past 3 years unless it involved gifts for her and even then she would only show up at last minute or after several cancellations. She doesn’t show up for the birthdays or life events of others in the family.

Due to my facebook snooping on SD, I have known for about a month that SD would be out of state for a 3 day rave concert the weekend DH and MIL were planning SD’s party. I also have discovered a much older boyfriend that works at a head shop making glass pipes, evidence of drug use, lots of attendance at rave concerts, and a mysterious house arrest (crime unknown). None of which I have felt I could tell DH or MIL about because often in a SP dynamic, it is the messenger that gets shot.

After a family discussion on Mother’s day, it was finally decided that if DH didn’t get confirmation by Thursday of SD’s attendance, the party was off (thanks in large part to BIL saying he was tired of SD not caring about anyone else and didn’t want to blow his weekend if she couldn’t confirm—love that he can say that but I can’t!). So DH went all out with text, email and calls trying to confirm party. SD finally left a message last night that she can’t make the party because she is going to CA on Thursday and won’t be back until sometime in June.

Gee, I wonder what this means about the her chances for graduation from high school which have been very uncertain since we don’t know if she ever made up the classes she flunked. Kind of hard to miss the last 4 weeks of high school and still graduate… DH is a teacher (in a different district) and has pretty quickly jumped on the fact that this likely means SD is dropping out and not even going to attempt to finish high school. In our state you have to pay child support through normal and expected graduation or 18 whichever is later. I’m not sure if we can get CS terminated now if she drops out, but DH will likely have to arrive at that one on his own because if I suggest it while he is dealing with the fact his daughter is a high school drop out… well the whole messenger getting shot thing kicks in.

Interestingly DH called MIL to tell her the news and what he suspected about SD dropping out. Then asked that I not tell anyone in my family or my circle of friends/coworkers. On one hand I know DH views SD as his personal scarlet letter, the misdeed he can never undo (BM was a few week fling, never married, said she was on BC) and that despite every effort will always be a grain of sand rather than a pearl. SD has become BM: a HS drop out, a moocher and manipulator, selfish, and into a dangerous lifestyle. So I get that he wants to burry that part of himself and not have to show the world his shame, but on the other hand, people in my life know SD exists and when they ask what she is doing or how it is going with her, I’m not going to lie and say everything is sunshine and puppies. I don’t feel the need to take out an ad in the paper proclaiming SD is a drop out, druggie, selfish, manipulating little stinker, but I’m tired of DH expecting me to bury her bad behavior and hide it as he does. When do I get to stop biting my tongue? She is 18, responsible for her own behavior, not some little kid that needs to be coddled. Seriously look what that type of behavior led to. Perhaps if the adults in her life had called her out on bad behavior earlier and made it known, she wouldn’t be heading to CA to ditch school now!