Socrates

Hello everyone, I'm sure some of you remember my earlier problems I was having. My parents dealing with issues and their health problems etc etc. Regardless, our problems seem to be at a minimal and everything is going good EXCEPT for one major thing. Considering I am 21 years of age, have to go to school, work, take care of myself, hit the gym, start up on martial arts as well as my other responsibilities, it just seems that as of late my activities ARE taking a lot of my time and I'm not home a lot. During my semester off, I was working about 11- 13-hour shifts so I can stock up on cash for the semester and don’t have to struggle as much because my parents really can’t help me too much since they are financially constrained themselves.

The thing is that I try my best to take care of house, cleaning up, cutting the grass, picking up leaves, washing their cars, sweeping, mopping, pretty much as much as I can do BUT sometimes it feels a little bit too much because I have so much other crap going on THAT I need to take care off. I will be working part-time this semester because it is necessary right now HOWEVER, my father continues to bring up the fact that how I need to stay home and spend time with my family and take care of the house. I feel as if there is so much out in the world that I’m missing out on, I actually have now on 2 friends I talk to and only 1 I hang out with since the other is going to school out of town.

It just feels that my parents are depending on me way too much where I’m not even on my feet yet, sh** my credit hasn’t even started building up yet and their already putting responsibilities that I try my best to take care off. With all the pressure that is already on me they keep dumping more pressure on me to please them. My father works only 5 hours and sometimes he calls me up telling me to cover his shift while Im doing something or I have just come from my other job, I hate to refuse BUT I have to because I’m very tired my damn self. He even says that he is depending on me and that I need to take care of the house etc etc but I think he IS using me. I usually don’t say anything and do as told but it’s getting to a point where I’m pretty much carrying them on my back. The only difference right now is that I’m not paying THEIR bills but the way things are going with my dads business and my moms job, it’s probably going to end up the way I for see it.

Am I wrong for thinking this way because I honestly don’t know any people my age that have to do so much and still keep their sanity. I usually don’t tell people my problems because I’ve learned that there is really no point in complaining HOWEVER it seems that my parents are always the one complaining. My little sister is growing up and she is putting up with a lot of their bullsh** too which isn’t fair either. Since Im only going to be working on the weekends my dad casually brings up the fact how I shouldn’t work over the weekends and stay home and clean-up not realizing the fact that I have to pay for gas, car-insurance, maintaining my car, food (considering their isn’t much home most of the time), tuition, books etc etc. Everything freakin adds up and costs money and I’m not at that stage anymore where I can just stay home and expect them to provide for me.

Anyone got any suggestions comments or should I just continue on trying my best hoping it will pay off for the future or am I being a selfish bastard.

Sage

Harsh truth of life... parents are people too. They have faults, and are selfish, and make mistakes.

The only way this situation is going to go anywhere positive is for you to move the hell out. It's hard, but it's NOT SELFISH. Your parents are adults- it's time they act like adults. Put it this way, if you had a kid, and your child expected you to do EVERYTHING for them- feed them, drive them around, pick up their messes, fetch them dinner, wash their clothes, bathe them, etc etc... it'd be OK until they hit about 3 years old, and then you'd want to start teaching them responsibility so they'd become productive members of society, right? Your parents are acting like spoiled brats right now... because they ARE spoiled.

Unfortunately, it's not going to be pretty un-spoiling them, but it has to be done. You're an adult now, you have your own life. You either get out there and start living it, or just resign yourself to being at your parent's beck and call for the next however many years, spending every waking moment waiting and praying for them to die so you can be free.

It's time to cut the umbilical cord... untie the apron strings... that kinda thing. Best of luck

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Demeter

This is just off the cuff, but perhaps explain to them you have a busy life, and if they could prioritize what they need from you, you'll do your best to help them out.
This way, you impart that you too have a life, and also that you cannot possible be everything for him, and yet you are showing you aren't dismissing them or their concerns.

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I am not bound to please thee with my answers.
William Shakespeare

biznatch

It's posts like these that make me realize how lucky I am. I haven't been in a situation like this, and knowing my parents, I don't think I ever will, but I suggest talking to them about it. It might spark up a fight, but they should be confronted with the truth: you're an adult, and so are they.
You are family, but both still independent of each other, since you're both able to work.
As a side note, this kind of reminds me of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. I'm not saying you'll turn into a giant cockroach for letting this go on, .
What I'm saying is it's not healthy, and it needs to change IMO. I know this can't and won't be easy, so best of luck.

abaya

I recall that your family is at least partially Asian, right? And if so, I hear ya on that one, big time. I'm 28 and have lived away from home for a good 10 years, but my mom seems to constantly think that I'll move right back home as soon as I get my PhD (uggh) and will pop out grandchildren for her pleasure after that. She gets jealous of my HUSBAND, for crying out loud. She recognizes that it's because she's insecure, but then she does very little to work on that.

Then again, she is also Thai, and Thai parents are notorious for sheltering their daughters for as long as possible (I'm an only child, too), and then as soon as they are making an income, becoming dependent on their children and expecting them to take care of the parents until they die. Not that I have a huge ethical issue with that, because I do feel it is reciprocity, but at the same time my mom seeks no life outside of mine.

It is a real burden of culture, I feel, and it makes me both sad and resentful. I don't have any answers for you, because I know it isn't as easy as saying "Just move out, cut off ties, etc." But there may be ways for you to gradually establish your independence from them... open a secret bank account and put away some money every month. And do confront them on how unhealthy this all is, and whether or not they want you to actually have no life and not meet any women (that will get their attention) and start a family. Ask them what they imagine you doing in 5 years, and how they expect you to get there, with this kind of life? Something like that.

Best of luck, man.

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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Socrates

Thank you all for the replies; I appreciate it greatly as always. To begin with I cannot move out reason is that it’s literally impossible for them to survive without me I know that for a DAMN fact plus they’ll just tell my little sister to do all the crap for them. I WILL survive but even though they are the only family I really have I still feel as if I owe them. As I’ve grown I’ve learned that it’s easier to forgive people than have grudges, you rather cut those people out of your life THAN to have grudges because you become resentful, hateful and begin to have thoughts about people that pollute your mind.

This being a different case because we ARE (semi) tied by blood it makes those ties a little bit more complex and intricate to let go. I was suggested in the other thread as well to move out but I just can’t. I don’t have it in me to do that. My mother just finished her chemo and now menopause is kicking in and she is ridiculously moody as well as going through depression, the weight gaining, everything is taking a toll on her and we end up taking the brunt of her mood swings, her ignoring us and just being grumpy. I try my best to not say anything but when a person is in a negative frame of mind and feels utterly hopeless it becomes literally impossible to get through to them because they take it as criticism or better yet anything you say pertaining to them becomes negative even though it is positive. Sometimes our mind sees and hears things it wants to in order to go according to our reality of what we perceive and I understand that completely because that is how my mother’s frame of mind is and it is slowly taking over my dad like poison.

The hardest part for me to accept is the fact that I didn't have a good upbringing to begin with a "normal" one. My parents HAVE NOT raised me in a sense that they were never really their for support and the development I needed. I don't even know sometimes how I am the way I am at this age of 21. I talk to people sometimes and they always ask me how old I am because they tell me I don't act or speak like a 21 year old but rather a 35 year old because my understanding is beyond that of a 21 year old. That is why I never give ANY credit to may parents because I had to learn everything by myself HOWEVER, my parents always seem to think that I owe them. Yes they provide me with a place to sleep but that is it. I feed and take care of my damn self if it were up to me I would have moved out a long time ago. In terms of maintaining the house me and my little sister do ALL of the sh** from cleaning to washing their cars yet we still get criticized that it's not enough. Isn't life great...?

I do understand your point and I would never in a million years mind providing for my parents BUT I have nothing to offer them right now, I literally don't have anything to give them if I did I would in a heart-beat but I need the finances to last me through the semester to where I don't have to work. As for women their another issue that I'm not even going to get into.


A little while ago I had an incident where my dad took my money from my room to teach me a “lesson” and it really hit a nerve inside of me.

You can read it here.
Very Frustrated...

I went with him in the car to pick some things up for our business which has not being doing good, actually very bad and my dad has put it on the market to sell because the business has been behind in payments and the bank has been charging over-draft fees. My dad’s partner is not willing to work and would rather hire other employees than work so my dad eventually got tired of working his ass off and at the end of the day him and his partner end up getting the same pay-check which is not fair. My dad was telling me this and he said something that send chills down my spine…”…It doesn’t matter I still get even…”. What he meant by that is that he has been stealing from the business without the other guys knowledge. “…he made me do it…” is what he said. Considering I know the insides of how a private business work I was shocked and scared beyond belief as to how low he had gone and it hit me. These problems hadn’t been recently happening they had been accumulating over-time and the reason by dad took the money from my room was because he didn’t want to be behind in payments. He was going to pay the bills off and when he had gotten the funds back he was going to give me my money back. Even though according to him it was a “joke” to teach me a lesson. When I had previously confronted him about why he would try to teach me a lesson, the same night he left the house and came back and he had been crying. It wasn’t because of the hurtful things I had said to him but the mere fact I made him realize what he had ACTUALLY done. Those were not tears of what I had said to him but rather of him actually admitting to himself what he had done and how much of a scum he had become to resort to taking money from your own child.

To make things worse, when we went to pick things up for the business and he put out 1 product and told the guy we had 8 of them the guy FORGOT to charge us for the other 7. As asked my dad that I don’t think the guy charged us for the other 7 and he acted as if he didn’t hear me and kept on looking over the receipt. When we got to the car he says that
“I think your right he didn’t charge us” I tell him we should go return it and he just tells me to put the stuff in the care and let’s go. I didn’t say anything BUT this was another clue that even though he is 56 he is most defiantly capable of doing something so low and the mere fact he has done this before and habitually he has no problem doing it again.

I didn’t say anything in the car because I honestly really had nothing to say because now I see his colors. I understand that financial constrains causes all types of stress and that you have to do what you have to do to survive but me in all honestly am having a very hard-time watching my parents break-down like this and frankly I don’t even know how long I have till I lose my senses because I feel like sh**. I put myself in their shoes and the pain becomes unbearable to understand because they have rationalized their behaviors so much that it seems normal to them, criticizing or confronting doesn’t even seem like a logical solution because I don’t see them as humans but rather figments of what they used to be….empty ghosts living day to day.