I Hate My Family

The BBQ Pit
1

Really, I do. Instead of being supportive of my efforts to get myself out of the mess I’m in, they’re bitching at me because they feel that I’m not doing enough. Mind you, I’m working two jobs (spending some 70 hours a week working them), and going to school part-time, but that’s no excuse.

No, no, no, despite the fact that the bank screwed me out of all my savings, and that I’ve had to pare expenses down to the bone, just to make sure that I’m able to keep a roof over my head, until I could get my bank account back into the positive range and my car has died (she is, beyond repair, sadly), I am somehow supposed to whip an elephant out of my ass, and keep a spotless house, buy a new car, and pay every bill that comes in, the instant it arrives in my mailbox.

In their eyes, I’m a colossal failure. I’m getting letters from them telling me how I “should have a plan for life, maintain a positive attitude, and clean whenever possible.” SHIT! Nevermind that anything I want to do with my life is a bad decision in their eyes, or that after spending ten hours working in a fucking foundry, four hours in school, all I want to do is grab four or five hours of sleep before doing it all again tomorrow. Nope, that’s not good enough. I’ve got to hunt through the ads and find a car I can afford (something around $10 at the moment), keep a house so clean that even Martha Stewart would be proud, have a year’s salary in savings, a life plan that’s detailed down to the second, and takes into account every possible way that life could screw me over.

Of course, were I able to do all of that, I’d still be a worthless human being because I’m not married, or some other totally random thing that I have no control over.

Yes, I know I’ve made some stupid mistakes in my life, and done things that I shouldn’t have, but this shit ain’t my fault, goddamnit! The last thing I need right now, is for the people who are supposed to be supportive of me in times of crisis to say, “Well, you know, if you’d only stop being an individual and do exactly what we tell you (ignoring the fact that there’s no way for you to be able to do what we want you to do), when we tell you to do it, you wouldn’t have these problems.”

I really, really hate them. It’s terrible of me to say, but I do. Almost every time that they’ve helped me out in the past, it’s because I’ve kicked, screamed, and raised ten thousand kinds of hell. I don’t have the energy for that anymore. All I want is to sleep, but I can’t do that because they’ve got me so wound up, that if I crawl into bed, all I’ll do is stare at the ceiling.

I don’t even want money from my family. I just want them to stop giving me shit, and let me have the time to fix things. That’s all I want. Just give me a couple of months of no shit, and I can get a car, I can have some savings, and I can have a clean house, but that’s not possible for them.

2

And all I wanted was a Pepsi.

Sorry, Tuckerfan - that’s irrelevant and inappropriate, but it did pop into my head as I read your OP.

I had to pretty much sever connections with my family for a period of years. I went for about 3 years between high school and beyond with no contact with my father and the barest with my mother. I tried to stay in touch with the sibs, somewhat. But it was essentially a family-free chunk of time I had to cut out.

Minimal communications were reestablished when I was about 21 or 22, but they remained minimal, and I didn’t tell them much about what I was doing.

Only when I graduated from college (at 27) did I really let them all back into my life, And it worked out, eventually.

The break was necessary. For me, anyway.

Good luck, pal.

3

Have you considered telling them how you feel?

4

I hate 'em too. Bastards.

5

Haven’t talked to a soul in my family since the day I hung up on my mother over 2 years ago.

6

Ah, family, can’t live with’em and can’t live…nevermind.

7

They really should be helping you out, rather than taking ringside seats at the great criticise-a-thon they’ve got going there, Tuckerfan. By the sounds of it, you have enough on your plate, and you’re doing your best to work things out.

Tune the bleating out, until someone there gets a clue, and offers a helping hand (maybe, help with the cleaning, for example, if it’s that bad).

All the best – hope things improve soon.

8

How did the bank screw you out of all your savings? I’m really curious about this.

And I know people like your family. They are impossible to deal with. My advice is to avoid them at this particular time in your life. It’s easy to kick a man when he’s down, much more difficult to help him to his feet. You already know which it is that they are doing.

9

If you can afford it at all, may I recomend a caller ID. Take a break from it. Decide what is important for you to do with your time and deal with that and let the noise go. There is no way, even without the money troubles to have the spotless house and the two jobs and school. Figure out what gives you the heeby jeebies if it isn’t clean, deal with that and forget ther rest. Other than that let them go till they can be what you need. (Ok that is so easy to say and so hard to do.) The other suggestion I have is a long hot bath once and a while.

10

I have, it doesn’t do any good. They claim they’re just “trying to help.” :rolleyes: (BTW, I dated a gal who was born and raised in Vietnam. After she met my parents a few times, she told me, “I don’t like your parents. They’re not respectful to you.” Pretty telling, considering how she was raised to regard one’s elders.)

Ringo, tried that, but it only seems to work for a while, then they go back to their old ways.

Ice Wolf, having my family clean my place is mondo bad idea. You know all the stuff you bust your ass to find, that has more value to you than any price tag? That’s the first thing they throw out (even if you tell them not to.) The useless crap you haven’t gotten around to getting rid of, and don’t care anything about? That gets cleaned, polished and stuck in a prominant place (where it’s promptly mocked by everyone you know).

Creative_Munster, it’s kind of complicated, but I’ll explain it as best I can. What’s been happening is that if there’s an automatic payment taken out of my bank account (like my trailer note), my paychecks aren’t posted to my account until after the automatic payment hits, even though the paychecks should have posted days before this. The bank makes the payment, then posts my deposits to my account, with a date indicating that they were posted to my account on the proper date (even though checking my account prior to this shows no indication of them being there). What happened was my account got low, because the deposits weren’t showing up, the trailer note hit, that put my account in the minus (by a few dollars), the bank hit me with an insufficent funds fee ($30 the first time, doubling every time thereafter), which meant when my deposits were posted, instead of being $600, it was $565, so I had less money in my account than I thought I did (but I didn’t know what was going on because I wasn’t checking my account daily on-line then and apparently they only send out overdraft notices once a month or something), so thinking that I had $600 in my account, when I really only had $565, I took care of various expenses that would have left me with $30 in the bank (enough to last me until payday). So I ended up getting another overdraft fee (this time $60), and my account was even deeper in the hole (and again, I didn’t know about it), which meant that I had even less money than I thought, so when bills came due, I got more overdraft charges (that I didn’t know about), and it became a vicious cycle.

Mind you, in the past, my bank has had no problems returning a check if there was insufficient funds in my account, but this time, not one of them was bounced, they cleared every one of them, including ATM withdrawls and checkcard purchases. Once I discovered that my account was in the red, I started tracking what was going on with my account. I noticed that the deposits weren’t showing up when bank policy said they should have. (Midnight of the first business day after the deposits were made.) Deposits made via the ATM machine were posting to my account faster than deposits made using a teller or the night deposit (both of which are supposed to be processed before deposits via the ATM machine), the delays were always greater when there was some kind of “pending” charge against my account. (Odd that, since I always busted my ass to get to the bank early the week before the trailer note was to be withdrawn from my account.)

When I pointed it out to an account manager at the bank, he agreed that the situation looked odd. My account having been opened at another branch (I’ve moved some 50 miles from the bank where I originally opened the account), he couldn’t refund my money, and went to get the branch manager. The branch manager said he didn’t give a shit, they weren’t going to do a thing for me. When the account manager said that the overdraft fees were a bit excessive (and that seeing as how I’d been a customer of the bank for ten years, perhaps as a courtesy they could refund a few of the fees), the branch manager again said he didn’t give a shit and he wasn’t going to do anything to help me.

furlibusea, I would, but that means I’d have to clean the tub, and well, it’s hard enough for me to find time to do my laundry…

11

:dubious:

12

Man, I feel for you. My mom’s the same way.

Even tho I actually HAVE a plan (and am well on my way to making it work) that will end up in me owning my own business, and making mightly fine money. Even tho my fiance makes enough money to pay our rent in one week, and we don’t have late bills or anything. Even tho I spend my time at home cleaning and reading intelligent things (I’ve learned more in the year I’ve been unemployed than I did in my 4 years of HS). Even tho I’m engaged to a man I love. Even tho I get out to fight quarterstaff with a group of friends 3-4x a week, except in winter, when we only get together on Sundays. Even tho I’m actually happy (Which I wasn’t for as long as I remember when I lived with her).

She thinks:

My plan will fail.
Cody and I will break up.
I need to be in college.
I need to have a job.
I’m horribly depressed.
I’m ruining my life.

Every time I see her (when she comes up here to visit her parents, or I go down there to visit my friends), she ends up making me cry at least once. She’s the only person I know who can make me feel like a worthless pile of shit.

Sever connections, man. Seriously. When I stopped talking to my mom for a year (avoiding her calls and never visiting her when I only lived 10 minutes away), she finally got the hint. Now, instead of making me cry EVERY time I talk to her, it’s lessened to whenever we’re alone together for more than 3 hours. An . . . improvement.

Seriously. They take the hint when you say, “I just can’t listen to you anymore,” hang up, and don’t speak to them for a few months. It’s hard to do, but sometimes it really needs to be done. And it kinda sounds like you may need to do it.

13

One day, last summer, my father called and had the audacity to yell at me for not being responsible, for being lazy, and for acting like a child. He warned me I needed to grow up or I’d be fucked and nobody would help me.

The whole exchange was interesting for the following reasons:

1)He hadn’t talked to me for months before that point and he literally knew nothing about my life.
2) We always have money to cover our bills. It gets tight in the summer, but we always make it through.
3) During the school year, not only do I take a full load of credits, I work in the tutoring center as a tutor and a center supervisor.

Why he called out of the blue and proceded to put me down and act like a jerk, I’ll never know. I haven’t talked to my father since then, and I don’t plan to again.

14

May I suggest that your own anger is fueling their desire to grind their will into you. If I were you, I would keep the conversations as short as possible. A calm, polite “no”, uttered in a tone that says the matter is closed, may be in order. If they get mad, let’em - and hang up the phone, walk away, or whatever. Your anger robs you of the strength to do that.

15

Ah well, while I feel sorry for you, getting married isn’t exactly something that just randomly happens to you. :slight_smile: At least, I hope it isn’t.

16

Screw 'em. Family has to earn your love and respect, like everyone else. Stay in touch with the nice ones, write the rest of 'em off and just don’t return their phone calls.

You have enough problems without them dragging you down.

17

Don’t share private information with them. They shouldn’t ask about your financial situation and you, under the circumstances, shouldn’t offer the information. There’s one other thing. Cancel the auto payment on your trailer. You don’t need people taking money out of your account before your’re ready to. Pay your bills on the schedule you choose.

Good luck.

18

Tucker, I remember you writing posts way back when when you started on the Dope, and you didn’t have nearly as much shit together then as you do now. Take a good look at how far you’ve come, tell your family to get stuffed, and be good to yourself.

19

Um, I’ll take it! :smiley:

Have a beer. It works for me. :wink:

BCS stands for (illegitimate child) + (crowing rooster) + (Tootsie Pops)

20

I have to throw in my two cents. I had to threaten my parents with calling the police, they were so on my case. They insisted that I be shipped back to India and be married to some boy they knew. I am currently in the middle of the break that caused. Don’t know if it’ll ever be resolved, but for the time being I am grateful to not have them breathing down my neck.