The Devil Lives in My House

My daughter has become Linda Blair.

For those of you too young to remember, Linda Blair played a girl possessed by the devil in the movie "The Exorcist." She would be perfectly normal one minute, then suddenly her head would spin almost completely around and vile things would spew from her mouth. And I don't just mean words. At the time, it was the scariest movie ever.

And now my 15-year-old daughter is channeling her. One minute, perfectly normal human child. And out of nowhere, with NO PROVOCATION WHATSOEVER, her head is spinning around and nasty stuff is spewing out of her mouth. I would understand it better if I knew what precipitated it, say, I'd just told her something horrifying like "you will be responsible for making dinner every night for the next month". But it generally happens after something quite innocent, like "I think it might rain today." Something so totally innocuous that her reaction literally blows me away.

It's so jarring because the rest of the time she is the sweetest, nicest kid. In fact, I call her the anti-teen, because she is so unlike most girls her age. She's not into fashion, doesn't ask to hang at the mall, keeps her phone off, never texts, doesn't Facebook, loves animals and reading and hanging out with her parents. I listen to other mothers rant about how nasty their teen girls are, and I'm generally thinking "whew, dodged that bullet!" But then she'll have a morning like this one, where she's suddenly stomping and slamming and growling, LOUDLY, and I'll think, oh my lord, my daughter's possessed by pure evil. And I can't do a thing about it.

Because as soon as I insert myself, the whole thing escalates, and it becomes even worse. So I cover my ears, hum to myself, and go about my business. My husband, hearing the hullabaloo, will poke his head out of his office and try to do his guy-fix-it thing, and then is shocked, EVERY TIME, when it doesn't work. I tell him "Don't engage the beast; leave it alone and it will go away." He still hasn't learned.

I know this is just teenage years, and I'm sure (well, I THINK, anyway) that it will end, or she'll go off to college and someone else will have to deal with it. But I still wish Linda Blair would leave the building. She's giving me a headache.