Story 1: Humbled and Rehumbled:
I lived a hard life, full of struggle and lack of gain. Most of the time I don't like talking about my past because then people pity me. I hate pity, Pity feels a whole lot like being worthless. Today's memory is about my parents, and living with them for the last time. This is the time in my life that broke my family off from me.
I was so hungry. But I had spent years trying to survive. And I was starting to go through periods of weakness. I'd lost nearly all concern for my life. But I was never one to give up. I finally let go of my pride and called my mother, and asked to come home. She was so much more than ok with it. She sent me a ticket for me and my current partner. I was so tired I slept nearly the whole way out to her place. I remember seeing trees and green grass for miles, and I cried, because I'd been in Arizona for so long, and I'd missed the pretty green things. It was good to be home.
And it really was, for a few months. Living with my mom and step-dad, my boyfriend and I were fighting constantly, but I was told that's healthy in a relationship. So I did my best for us to get along. The first setback was when my mom told me that he would need to sleep on the couch because she was tired of hearing us doing what couples always do. She forgot the fact that we had to hear them too, but it was their house, and we didn't intend to stay longer than we had to. I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the entryway, after all. Then it started to become about them constantly being suspicious that we were using the shower for our love-making (which we were definitely not, but they refused to fully believe that.)
So we finally found a happy medium again, but it wasn't meant to be. My mom and I came home one day from our daily walk and found my boyfriend packed and standing by the door, waiting for his ride. This was the second setback. I was shocked. Sure, we fought a lot, but it wasn't as bad as some couples. Mom and I were not even fighting anymore. But he refused to say much at all, and his rid came, and he left. I was devastated. What's worse, he ended up stealing many things, the most expensive of which was my first tarot deck, which was given to me by a friend back in Arizona. He also stole many other things, dryer sheets, toilet paper, weird things to steal.
The third setback was when my mom tried to talk to me about keeping her up with my crying. I guess it was ok for me to have a broken heart, as long as I didn't wake anyone up with it. This was the beginning of me feeling very isolated and lonely in my parents' home, and the start of a downhill slide in our relationship.Then conversations about shower lovemaking were replaced with suspicions about shower masturbation. Which, again I wasn't doing... which again they didn't believe. The repetitive behavior they were showing in not believing things I told them was swiftly building a distrust I'd had of them, making it feel as if my words didn't mean anything to them.
At this point, we will skip along the daily life of a woman and her parents, and past the time where we moved into a new house. I missed the old house from the moment we'd left it. It was beautiful and surrounded by woods and had a yard to tend and a garden. My parents had lost their 2 dogs to old age, and they were growing more unhappy all the time. But they were polite, and they let e share the running of the house with them, and I had a computer, and could watch TV, etc.
After some time, my parents became less comfortable with me in their home. Daily conversations often included asking when I'd get a job, as if I could predict the date. It wasn't for lack of trying, I just wasn't having any luck. After I started getting some interviews again, those conversations turned into how my mother will use my income to help pay rent and bills, which would leave me very little to live on, but my mother insisted it was to "Pay my stay" basically. I would always respond how I'd never be able to move out if I didn't have the ability to save money, and then it would blow up into a huge fight. She wanted all my money for her rent and vills, and I wanted to live on my own again.
At this point, I'd been slowly transitioned by my parents to doing all of the house chores or face the passive-aggressive wrath of my parents, pretending I wanted to be lazy and useless all the time. Sometimes those were the exact words I'd use. Nevermind that my step-dad would leave his coke cans around, attracting ants, if I didn't find the can soon enough, or the fact that they would clutter up their space with all manner of unorganized junk and then occasionally tell me to dust (which included me organizing their junk FOR them.) Let's also not mention the fact that they couldn't even rinse a single dish so that I had to scrub a dish for up to 10 minutes sometimes (no exaggeration.) And let's finally not mention the fact that house chores never took a sick day, because if I was feeling too tired or unwell (I had a frequent bout of insomnia), I would have to face the dreaded passive-aggressive attack again.
So I was cleaning the house every day, while looking for a job, while trying to stay out of my parents' way (generally in my room alone was best) to avoid irritating them, still at this point not realizing that something had broken with the relationship. I constantly had to turn music up loud on my headphones to drown out their love-making, because it was their house and if I even hinted at how it made me feel awkward, my mother would start avoiding speaking to, or interacting with, me as much as possible til I'd retract my statement, causing a mini fight every time.
And again, I did my best with my surroundings. Even when my parents started taking away TV time, and unplugging my computer at times to try to encourage me to do even more job hunting (as if that even helped), I really, really tried to make it work. At that point, though, it was clear something was broken. My step-dad starting being more overt about his racism and bigotry, as well as his beginning to assert dominance over me, trying to mute me with intimidation whenever I argued against my mother's constant criticism.
Yet further along my stay with the,. I was angry and frustrated that I was still trapped in that house with my neurotic mother, and bigoted step-dad. They fought all the time now, mostly about a game they often played.Apparently my step-dad was a bit of a flirt. However, I was stuck in the middle. We couldn't leave the house without a fight anymore, or my mother claiming that I embarrass her in public, and she always said the fights were my fault. She started criticizing everything I did, and every way I'd speak, and I couldn't go two minutes without her finding fault in me. I still tried to please her. I still tried to make peace... at least until the day my step-dad charged at my bedroom. I was scared half to death. I thought he was going to kill me. And it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with my mother and me. My mother made him stop while I screamed curses and threats at him, threats that I would leave and call the police and send him to jail forever if he touched me.
He started backing down after that day, and I thought I'd see peace again. But again, that was just an illusion. Shortly after, it became a fight for control over my life. I did as they asked or they would threaten to kick me out. I'd finally had a job, but all my money went into covering needs I couldn't get before. There was no money for her, or for my own home. I can't recall how many times I almost went back to the streets. My step-dad was bitter and evil. He'd lost some of his sight, and his idleness was making him horrible and cruel.
Life continued this way for quite some time. Eventually, I'd met someone at work who invited me out to trivia sometimes, then shortly after, I'd met my boyfriend. Life became tolerable again. And all the time my parents would threaten to use the gun they had to kill themselves whenever anyone fought, I was never that way. I never, in all of my despair, felt the need to end my life. Sometimes I think that was good, because my boyfriend is a godsend. Sometimes I wonder how good it really was, because here I am, no job, no car, no future. I feel like I've achieved almost nothing in my life.
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