The Fifth Circle of Hell

Any person that has had children can understand when I say that there comes a time in your child's life that I have come to term "The Fifth Circle of Hell", which is not to be confused with the First Circle of Hell, also known as "The Ex" (which I will describe in another post).
When my first child was born, I was as proud as any father could be. (I was a little concerned when she first appeared because she was blue from the umbilical cord being wrapped around her neck and she looked like a black child and me being the "glow-in-the-dark" kind of caucasian--this concerned me)
I wrapped my child up in my arms and held her close as I cried tears of joy. Which was ironic because from that day forward, she wrapped me around her little finger and I cried tears of sorrow many times.
The first words she uttered were of course "Daddy" and as she grew, we became inseprable. When I went to work, she would and on the chair in front of the window and scream for me to come back. When I came home from work, she would still be standing in that same chair and screaming tears of joy, she would race to meet me at the door.
Before she could walk, I would hold her in the air with my hands extended high above my head. I had a cowl and cape from an Ewok doll that fit her tiny head perfectly and we would play "Superbaby and her pal, The Amazing Daddy-Man" fighting injustice and looking for formula to feed her growing appetite.
After she learned to walk, we would walk all over the neighborhood hand in hand, just a little girl and her adoring daddy. Her mother and I divorced when she was 11 and I was a single parent of two for four years. During the first two years she had been the perfect child. She was very helpful to me in caring for her younger brother and she was the most mannerly child for her age I had ever seen. Then in the summer of 2001, she turned 13 and my adoring, sweet innocent daughter was possessed by the demon child from Hell and was held captive for six long years.
Overnight I went from the "Amazing Daddy-Man" to the Big Dork Daddy--actually she called me another name but this is a family friendly blog. Nothing I did was right and more importantly nothing she did was WRONG!
To make matters worse, her mother and I were not on the most friendly of terms (we rarely spoke without screaming till this one got married) and whatever I did, her mother would do the opposite and my darling little girl realizing the potential, took full advantage. If I grounded her, she would go to Mom's and she was not grounded at Mom's. If I told her she couldn't spend the night with a friend, she decided to spend the night with her mother and wonder of wonders, when I called to wish her good night, she was spending the night with a friend!
Things got really tense when I remarried, five years ago. This daughter was 15, going on 36 and she would no longer be the oldest child. In fact, she and my new wife's daughter were in between two boys. The new sister was two years older and she had been the "baby" to her Dad. So now we had TWO teenage girls, One no longer the baby and one no longer the oldest. Both vying for the crown of the biggest attention getter.
The odd thing was that the girls truly liked each other and called each other "Sis" from the start but when they didn't get their way, they BOTH suddenly forgot familial love and the gloves were off! Tatanya Ali could not have taken either girl in a fight.
The oldest, grudgingly came to tolerate me and over time has accepted me as her mother's husband and as her Step-dad. This seemed to infuriate my youngest more because she no longer got ALL my attention. If I got attention from the oldest, the youngest got mad. The same held true for my wife. If the youngest gave her attention, the oldest got mad. The girls could fight like hellions one minute and the next minute they were on the way to the mall to go shopping.
Things got entirely wacked out when the oldest went to college and the youngest was at home alone. For nearly six months, we had relative peace and the house was a joy to be in. Then she discovered boys, or BOY I should say.
I got her a part-time job the summer of her 16th birthday at the movie theater and she met a boy I could best describe as "not my first choice" for my baby girl. Nothing I could put my finger on--other than the earrings and beaded necklaces--that made me not like him. I guess it was an instance of no boy being good enough for my daughter.
Once the BOY asked her out, we were in for a long two years. When she was with him, she was a different person. I used to joke with my wife that we had two girls living with us--Allie, the nice, sweet loving daughter and Allison, the beligerant, defiant, cruel daughter. It was a crap shoot. Like Forrest Gump said "Ya never quite know what you're gonna get."
It was during one of these times of angst, that while we were arguing she screamed "I wish you would just drive off a cliff and DIE!" I would not have been more shocked if she had rammed a sword into my heart...in fact, that is what it felt like. I was devastated! For weeks, we did not speak unless we had to. Then after a few weeks, she just walked in one day like nothing had ever happened. I joked with my wife that it was like I was still married to her mother.
Last March, this daughter married BOY and asked me to walk her down the aisle. See this post In October she and BOY moved to Missouri where he is stationed in the Air Force. She called me out of the blue last month (actually she calls nearly every day) and was telling me about her new job at the credit union. Suddenly she told me "You know, I was telling my boss that I have the best dad in the world. I really put you through Hell, didn't I?" I teared up as I told her "Hell, yes! You were the demon child from Hell for a while there and I hope you have three just like you!"