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Old Nov 13, 2012, 01:32 AM
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Detia Detia is offline
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Member Since: Jul 2009
Location: Midwest, US
Posts: 252
Wow, it has been a very long time since I've looked at this. It has been a really long time since I have been to psych-central.

Okay so, I don't know if anyone is still paying attention but I feel like updating this for those who potentially are.

Right now I am 20. Certain plans have not worked out in my favor for some time and I still live with my family. We are currently making plans to move out of state together and for me I feel like it's a last family hurrah before I finally leave the nest.

A for the relationship between I and my Mom, well... We have slipped in and out of old patterns quite a lot. I wish that she and I could have diplomatic conversations like you have been able to have with your son, Wolf. Those are hard to come by depending on how stressed my mother is.

I am not with my girlfriend anymore, and since then I have had a boyfriend and we have broken up as well. I am still friends with the both of them, and they are absolutely amazing and supportive for me despite our reasons for breaking off the relationships.

Oh boy, where do I start...

I've realized that a lot of issue between I and my Mom has a lot to do with stress management and communication. There were a lot of issues that caused my mom to have a fowl mood that I was never made aware of, such as financial. Financial reasons are probably one of the BIGGEST stressors in our household and I really didn't realize how quickly my mom's mood could go from good to fowl because she resented her inability to provide for us, while she is also stressing about every bill that has to be paid.

I have watched her fill out applications and make phone calls and she has still been unable to find a job to support me and my little sister. At the same time she is growing depressed, bored, and anxious in the house.

I finally have a job and while I work more than twice minimum wage, I work less than part-time. I also commute. So most of the money I make goes into the car that I earned by babysitting last year.

I am trying to learn to be honest, calm, and patient with my mom because she jumps to wild conclusions. I have found that if her wild conclusions are ignored she'll take the conclusion as a fact and that creates a lot of misunderstanding. So I have had to grow a back-bone when it comes to asserting myself to her and it's really not easy a lot of the time. It's not always easy to keep calm and level-headed in the face of someone else who is not being calm and level headed.

Right now I feel like my Mom is now just a person I live with than my actual parent. There is no real parental role that she has to fulfill for me anymore and honestly, the last roles that she could have filled were not met. So I am okay, I have found my own way through a lot of things and I have found again and again that I am a more resourceful individual than I may have once thought. I have very caring friends, and their families usually adopt me too! So I have many people I can go to about advice for this thing, or that situation. The only issue I have with it is that I have difficulty approaching people, I much prefer to ask advice when I just happen to be hanging out in their vicinity rather than calling them up when they might be in the middle of something.

Boundaries are always a thing I'm working on still, but they have gotten much better. .... We actually had a big fight two weeks ago where I ended up running out of the house because she came at me physically and I was afraid that she might slap me. Which she rarely does, but has notably done so 2 times in the past year. (honestly, I have trouble with this most recent fight because while I know she didn't hit me, my brain keeps registering it as 'close enough'.)

We talked after that fight, and she admitted to me how much she is struggling. I'm trying to get her to understand that even though I'm her child and she raised me, I'm not longer in my minority and she needs to start respecting me and treating me as an adult so that I can get used to being an adult. This means that, unless she wants to, she doesn't need to hide as much from me just because she thinks a child doesn't need to know the trouble that a parent is having.

Honestly I think it's better to understand the position that the family is in, and I think that it is better to discuss what is going on so that everyone can pull in and help for the situation. For example, if I know that we're struggling to make ends meet with food I might consider not bringing friends over at the end of the month, and if I have extra money and see that we're out of milk, I might go buy a gallon.

There's nothing wrong with helping out with basic family affairs as a 20 year old, I don't think.

It also helps to know what kind of stressors are going on so that, hopefully, we don't have another situation like 2 weeks ago where she was so stressed out that she created an unnecessary negative atmosphere. I did end up finally fueling the fire after I was offended that she told a manager in an interview that she didn't have a babysitter for my little sister even though I had already agreed to play the part of babysitter if it meant she could get a job. Ultimately the manager ended up putting her off repeatedly and never gave her a 'yes' or a 'no'.

I am beyond ready to move out and live on my own because as I realize that I don't really have a place among the family that makes me comfortable right now, I also realize that my Mom and sister are just not the kind of people I like to hang out with. It's surprising how different we all are from each other, but we don't have the same sense of humor, or even the same sense in values.

Living together is pretty difficult, but like I said at the beginning of this thing, I just haven't been able to move out yet. I really don't want to move into a worse situation, either. I had plans to move in with 3 friends, but only 1 of the 3 ended up moving and so that plan got scrapped. Which was very stressful at the time, early September, because I was very ready to move and I had prepped myself to adjusting to living with these 3 people.

I have had the option to move in with my ex boyfriend, but I don't feel comfortable with moving in with his family. I would want to live on my own, I would like to work my 1 or 2 jobs and pay my own rent, pay my own bills. Mostly I would like this for the sense of independence I have had since I was young. If I am paying for all of this, then I won't feel like I have to really adjust myself to make everyone else 100% happy. If I am covering my own expenses, then I feel I would be more comfortable in asserting any needs that I have. One major need is my own space, because I frequently need time alone to cool off or recharge. I would not have my own space in my ex-boyfriends house. I would also not pay forward to any bills, because that's what his family requested of me if I moved in.

Honestly it sounds like a cushy deal, but I'm not interested in picking up a new set of parental units. I am interested in caring for myself.

Maybe at 18 I should have been more worried about school or whatever part-time job I may have been working at the time. I have gone to college on and off since, but I have not had a good time of it. As a part time student I took 2 classes at a time, and for a short while I was working a babysitting job from 12pm-12am, then going to class at 7:30am. Each and every semester I have gone to college so far I have passed 1 class with a C or higher, and I have failed one class. This has done poorly for my GPA and currently if I want to go to college I will need to come up with the funding on my own, or go to a different college that will accept my financial aid.

Oy, my Mom. I realize that she has strong emotions and passions, she also has many fatal flaws... Like any other human being. I appreciate all that she has done for me, and I truly appreciate that she has been my mother. There are things that could have been better, of course. However as a single parent, starting parenthood at 19 and keeping it together so far, I think she has done a miraculous job.

I think that things may not have been so hard for us all, and I think that perhaps she would have been better at communicating if it were not for the financial stress that we have been under since my sister was born. She was born at the beginning of the recession, and my Mom was not given her job back after going on maternity leave. It has been since then that we have been struggling financially because she has had a hard time finding a job. Let alone finding a job that also allows her to be here physically for her kids, which is very important to her.

I love my little sister will all of my heart, even though she's a pre-adolescent jerk sometimes.

So I'm still trying to keep things going good. I still appreciate all of these comments and all of this input from you guys, so thank you very much.