music linkup week 22: Carmen

This week's song is another OLD one. It's actually 21 years old, just like my daughter, "Airhead". She's been on my mind a lot lately, especially since she *MIGHT* be coming to our family reunion next week!  It has been almost 4 years since she left. I saw her in town about a year later, and she walked away from me - so technically it's been less than three years since I last "SAW" her.

So, this song is a really sad one.....the line, "The people say, out of all the things she did, the worst one was just leaving, without saying goodbye" really makes me think of my daughter, and how she ran away when she found out I was going to make good on my threat to take away her car if she ditched school again.  In the end, I sold the car to buy her a bus pass (school bussing costs big bucks here) but she took off to her dad's and finished her senior year on home study - JUST TO SPITE ME.  So, if she ever comes back, I still owe her the $1225 from the sale of her car.  We helped her buy it, but she had paid us back by the time we found out she was habitually truant. *sigh*  The line in the song is actually referring to the girl, Carmen, committing suicide, but in a lot of ways, my dear Airhead is dead to us.  Or so she would like to believe.

She haunts me, though.  I am constantly second-guessing myself, wondering what I could/should have done differently to keep her here with me, at least through her high school graduation.  To keep her at least SPEAKING to me.  Through all the reflection, AKA self-torture, I've decided that the only things I would REALLY do differently with her if I had it to do over again is to change two important events: I would NOT let her go stay with her dad when she was 13 and threw that epic tantrum, and I would NOT let her spend that summer with my loser brother in Florida the year she turned 16.  Both of those events contributed to her being the little SNOT that treated me horribly and then broke my heart by taking off the way she did.

If she actually comes to the reunion next week, I know she still will not want anything to do with ME, but it will be so great just to see her, and for her to meet her baby brother, and for the rest of the family to hang out with her.  We had already scheduled to have my photographer friend come down for one day of the reunion to take pictures - I hope Airhead is there on that day, so I can get a good picture of all four of my kids together!

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