I need a little reassurance. And sometimes just writing something down makes it makes a bit more sense to me. I often feel as if I am my Mom's employee, not a member of this household. She thinks we're getting on great, well except for the past few days she's been horribly mean to me because I say something about the way her boyfriend treats people. I didn't scream it, swear it, or otherwise deliver the information in an obnoxious way. I was a bit upset because he's a bully. All around, to everyone. And she knows it. She lets everyone, but me, I'm her punching bag and always have been. That's why I moved to begin with. I can't stand being the person she takes out everything on. If she's mad at my sister, takes it out on me because I won't be as mean as Lily, ever, or as loud as Lily, ever. I won't hit her like she's afraid my brothers will. But she is the one who cultivated the relationship to be the way it is with everyone around her. And then she doesn't want to fix anything, she just wants to complain. I'm sick and tired of her crap. I've been sick and tired of it since the days she manipulated me into sitting around listening to her bad mouth my father and bitterly complain about a divorce that she asked for! I'm SO MAD right now. I just, simply find my mother to be a sad, simple, pathetic woman who is angry at the world. She thinks the world owes her something for her crappy life. If you ask me, she's blessed. She has a home, money without having to work, four healthy (physically) children, and honestly, the world at her fingertips. She could do whatever she wants. But all she wants is to complain.

And when I'm around it's suddenly as if her own arms and legs don't work. Nellie do this, Nellie do that. Now I really don't mind helping around the house, but this is way beyond that. She mad as hell right now because I spent yesterday painting part of the floor of the basement I have to live in. I just want to make it livable before winter. I also need to set up a desk so I can go to school and be able to do homework. I also need to take some time to myself so I can find a job. I spent pretty much all my money on my methadone payments. So I need a job because I'd rather spit up blood daily than ask her for money. See my siblings have always ignored her bullshit, let it slip over them, so they ask, ask, ask. I've always wanted to ask her for nothing. She's the typical sour Italian woman who will give you something and then hold it over your head for eternity! I can't take the guilt, the stress, the lies. Because I think behavior like that is one big lie to yourself. You can't tell yourself what is really the most important to yourself, so you are unable to stand up for what you want. How do you get to be on this planet for 60 years and be so scared to look inside yourself?

Example: She's been wanting this oldish, 1920's type crystal chandelier. It helps to know that buying things is one of the only ways she feels whole. So she finally bought it the other day when she dragged me to the antique shop on the pretense that we were trying to find the feed and grain store. So she bought it. She got a hundred bucks off because she sort of knows the man. So she was wicked excited to hang it. And she had asked her horrible "boyfriend" to come up to help her do some stuff around the house. She probably would have gladly had me do it since he complained the whole time and took, like, five hundred breaks, but I'm not strong enough or tall enough for certain things. So anyway, he fancies himself some sort of expert, because he's got to be the cheapest man alive, on obtaining things for a deal. And unless he's the one to find the deal, he puts it down. So he's ripping on this thing that my mom bought, making her feel shitty. Saying it was worth only fifty bucks. And she's just doing nothing. Sheepishly giving him some sort of satisfaction by getting red-faced and upset while scrubbing the dirty crystal furiously to clean it to hang. And he's just sitting there, in a lawn chair, watching her work, criticizing. I think he's a poor excuse for a man. And I know she just wants help and companionship, but only when it's convenient for her. That's always sort of been her thing. Something is cool, only if it's cool with her at the moment. And you never know which moment is which. He does passive aggressive stuff like that everyday, all day long. He's snide, sneaky, and cheating. And I know, and this is telling, that my Mom though he was rich when she met him and that colored her opinion of him. She would have seen him more realistically if he hadn't posed himself as something other than what he actually is. He was RENTING a house in Westport, CT from his friends for really cheap. My Mom thought the house was fancy. Now he's living in his daughters vacant apartment while she's away since the other people came home and didn't want to share their house with Larry anymore. But at least he had my mom go down there and break her back cleaning it for him so he could get his deposit back. And she thought he had this great business until she realized it was going under and he needed money, lots of it, to stop that from happening. He's mid divorce, was fired from his last job and leaves the Volvo he bought with money he stole from his dying father at my mom's house so he doesn't have to share it with his wife in the divorce. Cool guy. I think I'll find someone just like him. And then I will stick hot needles in my eyes for fun. Sweet role models I've always had, I wonder why it's been so hard to find up from down. Anyway, I swear my Mom treats me badly when she knows something I said was right but she doesn't want to admit it. She was annoyed with him too. He's sitting under the umbrella outside while she's lugging stuff around. Of course she is crazy and doesn't know when to stop and wants everyone else right there with her. Except when she overdoes it, every couple days, and has to lie in bed puking to recover. Then she doesn't think you get to rest too, because you were her minion the whole time. Now you must serve her. Get me eggs, go pick up my medication, vacuum the house, do, do do. I'm sick of it. The family therapist says to write down everything I do, and once it equals what I would pay for rent, tell her and then anything I do over that, she has tom pay me. She didn't like that idea. I did.