Jennifer

Thanks, everybody *hugs* I know your advice is dead-on. I would have probably moved out already, except I have no friends or family (I was never really close with anyone at high-school, and I don't think I'm close enough with anyone from college to just show up and ask if they want to rent an apartment with me. They didn't even want to dorm with me in college. They were really nice to me, but they kept making excuses until I dropped the topic and gave up. As for my family, the only relatives I know outside of my immediate family is my uncle's family, and I've only ever seen them a few times and they didn't really like us).

Anyhow, I'm trying to get a little more aggressive with my parents and my father finally took me out to teach me how to drive and he seemed quite impressed. He said I'm actually pretty good and I just need practice, and he was so convinced I'd crash the old car because my mother had so much trouble with it that he thought it was undrivable for short people (my mother is short, and I'm a few inches shorter than her). I can get along with my father pretty well as long as he isn't worn out from fighting with my mother. When he is, then he tends to lash out at everyone and he knows just what to say to really hurt people. He apologizes later, but it still puts me through all sorts of mood swings.

American My parents are of Italian, Irish, French, and German descent. They both were raised Catholic, but my mother's faith lapsed and my father's an outright atheist. I'm agnostic myself because I don't know what the truth is. My family doesn't have any contact with other people outside of school, work, or shopping. No religious or cultural ties either. In addition, my mother actively prevented anyone from coming over and violating the sanctity of her "clean" house. I wanted friends when I was little, but my mother refused to let them over to the house so I just sort of stopped asking, and now she claims I never asked and it was all my fault for being anti-social. I doubt myself enough that I might believe her, but my brothers agree with me that I was remembering correctly.

Even if that's true (it probably is), I think that I've allowed this to continue by not resisting enough. I think that after getting thwarted enough times, I just sort of gave up and accepted that everything was out of my control. For example, when I was talking to people in high school, I had no idea what they were talking about when they were complaining about their curfews and such. It hadn't even occurred to me that a child would be out of the house without a parent. But even when I did learn about it, I still didn't do anything. I just knew that my parents wouldn't go along with it so I didn't try. Plus, my father has a habit of being really nice and then turning it around at the worst moment to try to make me feel guilty. I feel awful saying this, but at times it seems like I can't think of a single nice thing he did for me that he didn't later turn around and point to in the middle of an argument, as if the only reason he had done it was so that he'd be able to say that I was being ungrateful for all he had done for me. Plus, if it was a material thing he got, he threatened to break it to get us to do what he wanted. I hate chicken. I don't know if it's psychological or physical, but it makes me sick. We used to have chicken 3-5 times a week for dinner, and every single time I'd refuse to eat it with tears streaming down my face while my father went off breaking the things in my room (my TV was the usual target--I don't know how it survived as long as it did, but towards the end I had to reach through a crack in the face plate and flick the parts inside in order to change the channel). My younger brothers don't really have thriving social lives, but they are allowed to go over to a few of their friends' houses occassionally since my dad's medicine for ulcerative colitis has actually started working and he can drive them back and forth without constantly needing a bathroom. So anyhow, now I wonder if I had asked for more, would I have gotten it? I might have. As it was, all I asked for was to go to the school's math club, which required my dad picking me up only a few times during the year, and I felt guilty enough about that. What the hell was wrong with me?

Thanks. I know this, but for some reason I'm still worried about what to decide because I don't know the first thing about renting an apartment (at college, I stayed in the school's dormitories because no one wanted to live with me). I feel like this is the first real step I need to take, although hopefully I can get my driver's license first now that my dad is trying to teach me.


Right. I've been looking on my own, on and off, but everything I was looking at required years of experience. The few jobs I found that didn't, I applied for but I assume I didn't get them since I didn't hear back yet. My mother actually found out from one of her coworkers how her daughter got a job that I was looking at, so I'll look at that (assuming she's in the mood to give it to me...I didn't even find out she had done it until she used it against me in a rant about how useless and ungrateful I am)

True, but the funny thing about the situation is that while I am in my parents' house, there's no way I'd be able to get to a counselor (I have no transportation, and they gave me so much hell over visiting the school's free counselor that I have no idea what they'd do if they found out I paid to see one, and they WOULD find out because I've never once in my life left the house on my own, so they'd know something was up). Once I'm out of my parents' house, I won't need one.

I know. I was a bit depressed and crying when she said it the first time. She actually had a bottle of aspirin and wanted me to eat it all to put her out of her misery (she did phrase it that way, saying that killing myself would make her less miserable). I got so angry that I said I wanted a knife instead, and she said no, that would be too messy. Every now and then, she starts a fight with me over nothing (like if I left the fan on in my room while I went outside to see what my brothers were up to) and she'll yell at me to go commit suicide when she's lost the argument. Sometimes my brothers will joke at me that at least they aren't going to kill themselves (implying that I am, which I'm not). And for a good month after finding out I visited the psychiatrist, my father kept saying I was too stupid to live, and asking if I wanted to end up homeless on the streets because I gave all my money to a psychiatrist. He'd just bring it up out of the blue and ruin my mood even though it had nothing to do with whatever we were talking about. He stopped doing that after a while, though.

I'm trying to work on that Hopefully my driving lessons with my father will continue to go smoothly. I was actually doing pretty well, and he didn't yell at me. Although he does have the extremely annoying tendency to panic and tell me to do something, and then once he's calmed down he gets annoyed and then says that was the wrong thing to do. For example, there was a parked car on my side of the street, and then on the other side of the street two people were walking taking up the whole lane. I moved to go around the car, keeping my eye on the people, and I had plenty of room to go. But then my dad said to stop, so I did, and then he got annoyed and said I should have sped up so that I'd have passed the car before the people got close, which is what I was doing before he told me to stop.

That I will have to work on once I've got my own place. There's no way I'd be able to buy food or cook here on my own.

I know, I just wish I had a clue where to start. When I applied for one of the jobs, I looked for apartments online that were nearby and they were all pretty expensive. I don't know if that was normal, or even if the search thing I found on google was reputable. I've never dealt with this before and I've got no clue.

Yes, I am convinced this is the truth. I've always been a fast learner once I'm forced to learn, but until I actually face that sink-or-swim moment I doubt myself and fear that I can't do it. It's like I know that as soon as I manage to get out, everything else will fall into place. I'm just having so much trouble taking that first step.

Thank you

Actually, I might I never ate anything without my parents' permission. I noticed that when I had to briefly fend for myself during summer classes at college, I actually forgot to eat most of the time because I was so unused to getting my own food. (I was okay during the full year because I was used to cafeterias, though) I actually did visit one of my friends over Thanksgiving break last year, and her mother commented repeatedly that I needed to be much more aggressive in getting my own food. I just kind of stood there dazed watching my friend and her sisters totally ravage the food supply and I had trouble making myself realize that I should just grab what I wanted and eat. So I kind of have been trained to starve unless I'm fed (my parents never starved me, but ever since I'm back home I'm kind of confused about what I'm supposed to do for food since my dad has finally taken into account that I hate chicken so I don't have to eat it, but then I'm left on my own because my mother is a bitch who can't make up her mind. She says she's not hungry to my father so he doesn't make her anything but then she goes and eats what he had set aside for me so I've got nothing). Some times my dad gets annoyed at me for not having fed myself, but then other times he gets annoyed at me because I did feed myself when he had planned to make something for me. I can never tell what to do, and I don't get much exercise anyway since I'm never out of the house, so I haven't really been eating much lately.

I've never heard that phrase before. I like it

Yeah, you're right. I just need to figure out where to go and I am out of here.