Then It's Given and It's Taken Away

My daughter returned from a week away on a learning expedition. My parents fetched her from the airport. Until recently, my father thought that the ground my daughter walked upon was holy. She was his hope for the future. After raising two daughters...and having each of them turn out to be, well, nutters, MY daughter was to be perfect. Unlike my sister and I.
Now my DD is a teenager. She has the emotions of a teenager. She'd just spent a week far away from home, doing something she'd never done. Her plane had been delayed and her luggage, with all the necessities of teenage life, was not there with her. She was tired. She was grumpy. I'm guessing that the only thing she wanted was a hug and charming words of welcome home. Then bed. Instead she was berated for being so immature as to be upset over a layover and lost luggage. Hadn't her grandfather just had a 36 hour layover just a few weeks before. Did he cry? No he did not. He sucked it up and spent $800 on a hotel and just waited like a good boy. What in the hell was wrong with her. They thought she was better than that. How could she be such an ungrateful and embarrassing wretch! Good lord, they'd spent a fortune to send her on this trip. She should be kissing the soles of their shoes, not whining!
Now when I was a teen, I would have kept silent, maybe let a tear roll (but probably not) , and then when I got home, I would have taken an entire bottle of Excedrin PM (just makes you barf a lot and feel like you are in an even deeper level of hell, for the record). Or maybe burnt myself, or broken a bone by hitting it repeatedly with something hard, or made a nice cut somewhere it couldn't have been seen. Thankfully, my DD is not me. She has learned to fight back. At least for now. She started right back in on them. It didn't end any differently, and she escaped, sans luggage, to her aunts house. There she (with a show of maturity, I feel) calmed down before driving home. My sister called to tell me she was there. My DD called when she was headed home. When she got here, she went to bed. Can't blame her.
I had horrible dreams that she was getting up to the same shit I do. Self injury and all. I so do not want her to ever go there. Especially over something my parents do to her. (The story of why exactly they are allowed to have anything at all to do with her must come later, for I am really not up to it at this point in my life)
I love my daughter. I want her to be happy. I want her to pursue her dreams. I want her to reach her goals. I want her to love, laugh, cry, celebrate, mourn and do every other thing that naturally comes her way.

Anyway......whew. Stress. Why can't people just love for the sake of loving? Give for the sake of giving? Why must there be those people who absolutely HAVE to get something in return? Doesn't that sort of negate the love and make the gift, not a gift, but a loan? A bribe? Is it only love if the product pays off?

Later,
Catiopoea