The Recent Constant Stress At My House

I got a nice surprise of seeing Mike on Monday night. I was pissed and upset when Mike called me saying Kari and Kevin had invited us to come to dinner with them, but I was so happy to have the escape to get out of my house. My mom had told me to type Samantha’s homework for her, (a load of bull), then she told me to enlarge it so that it would stretch to closer to 3 pages because it was required to have a full three page typed. I was pissed! You have to hand-write about double the number of pages you are required to do so that it comes out to the requirement in the double-spaced typed final draft. It wasn’t my damn homework to do, and I wanted to finish my work for my Geology class. Nope, my own work wasn’t important because I had to do Samantha’s work. It’s her homework! Let her do it or fail, who gives a damn if she is kicked out of the Christian School, then maybe she’d learn or be held back! It doesn’t help her one bit to be handed her education on a silver platter if she couldn’t actually do anything she’d supposedly passed.

So that made me pissed off and then my mom told me that my paperwork for food-stamps or something was due in the morning, and she hadn't given it to me sooner. Damn it! Why the hell couldn’t she have given it to me when I was at work? I wasn’t about to start that too that night. I was gonna have to sacrifice my work for Samantha’s. Screw that! That is so stupid! Well, I was glad Mike called and I promptly left the house as soon as he drove up. My mom called after me, “What? Now he is only going to honk at you, and you’ll come running?” I growled, “No!” but she didn’t hear me. I was so irate I was about to cry. I ran into Mike’s arms and he asked me, “Baby, what is wrong? Are you okay?” I told him I’d tell him in the car. We got into his car and he listened as I ranted about the injustices of having to do Samantha’s work and mine. He was really mad about it, he was positively steaming over it. He shut off his car and his hand flew to the door of his car. He was going to get out and confront my mom for making me so upset. I grabbed his arm and pleaded with him to please not. He looked at me and said he was going to unless I gave him a reason not to, and I told him that it would make it worse for me if he did. Then he let go of the door handle and sat there. He told me that we had to talk to my mom about this but not that night. He said we had to spring it on her sometime and not tell her “we need to talk” and make an appointment. He told me it didn’t matter if Samantha was there or not, she might need to hear it too. I tried to talk him out of it but he wasn’t interested, he told me that he doesn’t like to see me being walked on like that at all. He said that I shouldn’t be asked to do those things in the first place.

The idea of confronting my mom terrifies me. She’d get mean and guilt-trippy like she always does, and make me feel like the horrible person for bullying the little old lady. Or she’d flat out threaten to kill herself because no one in her mind needs her or loves her. Also if I refuse to type Samantha’s homework then she tells me in private that Samantha is retarded and that she can’t do it herself. Bull! Samantha is not retarded, she may be slower and more timid but she isn’t stupid. She holds perfectly logical conversations and asks prudent questions. It is such a lie that she isn’t capable of doing her own damn work. Then if I argued that point then my mom would say that if she was made to do her own work (and learn her own stuff instead of coasting through school not learning a thing) then she’d fail and be kicked out of the Christian School. Good! She needs a real school that doesn’t baby her, it isn’t helping her to learn and grow in that environment, she still has no friends so that idea that being there will help her to get friends it stupid too, the only thing it might be doing is keeping her from rough bullying, but she still gets teased.

Anyway Mike was mad and I was terrified to say a thing to my mom. I know how it’ll play out because I’ve had these conversations in part before. Mike thinks it would be healthy to talk about, I think it would be destructive emotionally, and it would grate on the relationships I have with my family. I just need to move out is all. I need my own place away from the chaos and emotional abuse. But, and it is a huge but, I have no money, and my mom told me when I move out I get burdened with all of the car payment (I only pay for half of it now) so that means that I’d have that lovely bill also to compound my poverty. If I never have the discussion no one will be hurt and it can all fade away, but if I do then I might be hurt beyond repair or my family could be. But if somehow I get out of the house there isn’t a need for pain, just me growing up. I need a fulltime job and I can work school around it or something. I have enough credits for my degree if I so choose to get it. I’d have an Associates in General Studies with which I have no idea what sort of job I might be able to get. I doubt one here anyway.

After Mike and I calmed down a little we left and headed to Pizza Hut. When there Mike and I sat and waited for Kari and Kevin who weren’t there yet. I told Mike what Amanda had told me that night after class, that Ryan had posted belligerent bulletins on MySpace directed by name at Mike after Mike had quit all the bands. She told me how Scott Kendall had bitched out Ryan for acting like that and then how Ryan had deleted all the posts about it. I never saw them, and neither had Mike so he said he’d ask Scott what had been said in them. When Kari and Kevin arrived they ordered a large pizza for us to all share and then we all talked. Sitting at the table next to ours were three men who work at Rib Crib, the manager, Leo (the waiter we always have) and some punk long-haired kid. They were notoriously rude to their waiters and we heard about it after they left.

About half an hour after they left a call came for Kevin on the Pizza Hut phone and he left to get it once he was told of it. He set down the phone abruptly and said to us that it was Leo on the phone and he said that his car had been hit. He rushed out the door, and when he returned he informed us that it had really been Kari’s car. Phew! When he had said it wasn’t his car I’d gotten tense for that split second with worry it could have been Mike’s new car, which would have been utterly horrible. Kevin went back to the phone and had a pen and paper. The rest of us went out to see the damage. It was just ugly, it wasn’t going to harm the car in any real way. It was a big dent in her front left side above the tire, but nothing that a body-shop couldn’t easily fix I don’t imagine. We returned inside and Kevin told us that Leo had seen the guy who did it, the longhaired dude with him and the manager. He gave Kevin the name and asked him not to call the police about it because the guy was drunk and “hadn’t realized that he’d hit the car”. We called the police immediately. They arrived shortly and Mike and I left fairly soon after.

Mike and I drove to his house where we continued our conversation. Mikes said we must talk to my mom, but for the reasons listed above I don’t want to. We rehashed and fine-tuned the conversation and then it came to me being an adult. I need to grow up and Mike has opinions on that and for the most part I agree. But anyway, that was the majority of it. Mike and I talked about how we are as a couple and why we work so well, we are adults. We are fine on our own, just better together. We complement one another but aren’t dependent upon the other to be happy. We met in a time in our lives where we were both just fine being single, and were totally able to have fun by ourselves.

Mike drove me home about 12:15.