Venting: A Zephyr Blowing Against A Gale

[Autumn Zephyr]

I had started creating one of these topics a little over a week ago, when a sudden surge of family drama forced me to stay in the house well beyond the time I had wanted to leave, and nobody capable of driving was willing to take me to a job orientation 6 miles down the road. I had inevitably shown up too late to properly attend, and thus had walked two miles out just to immediately walk back in the other direction. My father and I had crossed paths on my way back, but he didn't pull over, he didn't turn back around for me. He had just driven right past me, despite knowing full well that I'm the only person who ever walks down that road these days. And the kicker? When I informed him what had happened when I had finally managed to get back home, worn out and severely dehydrated, he blamed me for the mess up. Just like he had so many times before.

 

I was frustrated, and ticked off, and really wanted use the opportunity to both vent and explain the negative, complainy nature of my previous two Status Updates at the time. But I had managed to convince myself that I probably would've sounded petty, or come off as just fishing for attention or pity, and ultimately closed the tab half-completed.

 

Well, I found out last night that the incident above had costed me the job offer entirely. It had taken me years to even get that far, years of searching, pushing, prying, and pulling the few strings I have access to, only to have the fruits of my effort snatched away from my at the last moment yet again. And all my father could think to say was to complain about how I couldn't bring myself to do the stupid dishes after finding out! The dishes! In my renewed sense of disappointment and frustration, I ultimately came to just one question.

 

Why should I even bother?

 

Why should I bother trying so hard to obtain an income that I'm never in going to see because the old man can't be arsed to keep a simple promise?

 

Why should I bother fueling his barely-contained wanton spending when I don't get to participate in any of it?

 

Why should I bother with any of it, when I know I know full well that he's just can treat me like dirt just like he had for the past bloody decade?

 

I understand that the usual retort to this sort of thing is that I should just be grateful to have food on my plate, clothes on my back, and a roof over my head, but can I really say that I have that at this point? There was a week last month where the menu was worse than it had been back when we were in poverty, despite the fact that he's now making over $70,000 a year and his SO makes $30,000 (not counting any funds attained elsewhere)! All my clothes, my backpacks, my school and art supplies? None of them are from within the household anymore, and hadn't been in years!

 

And the thing about the roof over my head? Uh, my own father has been charging me rent, despite knowing full well that I've never had a stable source of income in my life! Despite having claimed several times while I was still in high school that I would deal with either that or post-secondary education, and I chose the latter! Despite knowing full well that I didn't even have the legal capability to get a driver's license because one his massive screwups! 'Cuz ya know what? It turns out that nobody in the heart of the American South's willing to even think about hiring some kid with no documentable work history, and obviously Hispanic last name, and no Birth Certificate! And while we have managed to fix the BC issue recently (literally, this past July), it's no thanks to my father- that was all the afore-mentioned SO's work.

 

That recent development didn't exactly help me with the first two years of this ill-begotten 'rent' nonsense, however. I had to find other ways to try and appease to beast then, lest I once again find myself with fewer freedoms than I usually have. I had chosen a cheap post-secondary institution- but I had to use the financial aid overflow to pay my way through the first year, plus what little cash I could save from his previous extortionistic endeavors over the years... all without being able to pay for any of the textbooks I needed for class. Between the lack of resources and the depression I had already been wrestling with at the time, I had inevitably scored poorly during the first semester and was unable to save my GPA during the second, and thus lost access to my financial aid entirely. Lost access to my way to stay afloat.

 

Lost my ability to hide my desperation.

 

The following year was a mess. I spent almost a month working at a startup blueberry farm that was struggling with a blight epidemic, only to be put out of commission for a bit due to a previously undiscovered allergy to stinging nettle. I had spent a couple weeks housesitting. I had spent the entire summer repeatedly trying to donate plasma at the local BioTest, only to finally be declined because of my Asperger's Syndrome, of all things. All the while, I had been attempting finagle a way to pay for a third semester so that I could try again at fixing my GPA.

 

And despite it all, I found myself unable to attend the next semester, and soon wallowed in over a thousand dollars in debt to my own father. And while I had eventually managed to finagle mu way into the semester after that, the damage had already been done, and my "patron" decided to go completely radio silent and left me to flounder my way through all the red tape within the system to make it so that my attendance actually counted without giving a second source of debt I couldn't remotely afford to deal with. I'm still trying to deal with that mess.

 

All for the sake of someone else, someone who could hardly be said to have treated me fairly.

 

So, why should I even bother?

 

Why should I bother continuing to appease man who would beat me to the point where it hurt to even move for reasons I had no way to understand at the time, and still don't really do?

 

Why should I bother continuing to put up with a man who would give out military-style exercise combos as punishment to his weak and nerdy children, all assigned for either nebulous reasons or over things we couldn't help at all, and all double exponentially if we failed to complete them all before we went to bed (which pretty much always happened)?

 

Why should I bother putting any sort of faith in a man who had thrown away everything I owned thrice over 4 years, because I had proven unable to to do the above the way he wanted?

 

Why should I bother dealing with someone who's had Child Services called on him twice, and managed to weasel his way out of both occasions?

 

Why should I bother sticking with a man who's installed cameras in major rooms of the house and programs that let him break into me and my siblings' computers from anywhere in the world at any time wants, all to restrict our freedom even more than the various programs the machines have that prevent us from downloading anything already did?

 

Why should I bother trusting a man who knowingly sabotaged my Eagle Scout paperwork at the last moment, thus snatching me away from the one light of hope that had kept away the depression and suicidal thoughts over the years of simultaneous domestic abuse and bully issues?!

 

Why is it that the person who spent years performing good deeds ranging from repainting faded parking lots, carving a staircase into the side of a hill to make a church's back entrance easier access, clearing debris from graveyards, and volunteering at a local zoo gets thrown to the wayside, while the one who was notorious for stabbing people with pencils, breaking into and robbing other peoples' houses, and pinning the blame on their younger brother whenever they broke something at the same age is celebrated as the heart of the community? I'm so bloody tired of it all.

 

I could very easily just keep on going on this ridiculously long tirade, but I think you've all got the picture by now. I had tried to keep this tangle of terrible situations from leaking out into this community, so that I could focus on helping others and make them smile, but I suppose it was inevitable that I'd crack at some point. Better to let it all out in the subforum designed for this sort of discourse than some other topic, ya know? Thanks for putting up with me for the past year and a half, RebornEvo.

[Felicity]

I'm so sorry you had to experience any of this. I'm sorry all I can do to help is read this and try to empathize with you. I don't know what it can do for you but my DMs here or on discord are 100% open if you want to talk to someone. I hope you can find some way to improve your situation, you've always been a fantastic person to have in the community and I was sad when your activity dropped around here. Stay safe and hope for the best, even if it's hard.

[Autumn Zephyr]

Yeah, things haven't been exactly... calm on my end. Multiple layers of shenanigans going on, none of them pleasant. The absolute highlight so far was him pushing me for rent money (which I still don't have, mind), and going so far as to claim that "it's for [my] future". Like, if you really wanted to help someone's future, maybe you shouldn't put them in a position where they perpetually feel like they have no future? 

 

...Though his openly admitting that he's been psychoanalyzing(?) me to detect literally all of my verbal tics and what they mean is absolutely terrifying. How am I supposed to feel remotely safe around someone when even my deepest secrets can be pried wide open without me even realizing it while they're around? There's no Incognito Mode for that!

[Autumn Zephyr]

So, things have reached a whole new fever pitch that somehow manages to make last month's problems seem laughable. An impromptu "family meeting" was called earlier, and the "highlights" are looking quite far from bright. Key points that arose:

 

>My father has formally declared that he considers me to be an utter failure of a human being.

>>Consequently, I have been disowned. Lovely, right?

 

>He has admitted to having gone out to see if any mental support homes would be capable of taking me in.

>>This scumbag move ultimately backfired on him, as I am far too high-functioning for such institutions.

 

>Both the older of my siblings and I have been give an eviction notice for the end of the year. Never a good sign.

>>He has gone out of his way to make sure none of his friends will be able to give either of us assistance when that the time comes. Considering just how overwhelmingly social and charismatic he is, that's a ridiculous reduction of options.

 

>Seeing as our relationship has been increasingly based on hypocrisy, double-standards, and broken promises, he naturally expects us to pay every bit of rent in the meantime. Extortionism seems no end, it seems.

>> He also expects us up root all of the bushes in the front yard, which is frankly at the bottom of my to-do list in regards of things. The dang things are around a decade old (so their root systems are well-established), planted right up next to the house wall, and we lack some of the tools needed to accomplish the task to begin with.

 

>Not even three minutes after all that was laid out at the the table, he spouted out such lovely commentary as "everyone things I've been to lenient with you anyway" and "I'm a halfway-decent parent". Like, are we actually supposed to believe that bloody pile of botanical steroids?

>>This is unfortunately the sort of ego-stroking commentary he's been spouting a lot more frequently lately. Remember my last post in this thread? 'Tis the same thing.

 

As one might expect, I'm pretty concerned about this turn of events. I've never been the most social person, so my list of people I could call for help that aren't caught up in my father's web is quite slim, so I have no idea where I could even go. Worse still, if I'm gonna be stuck struggling just to get by, I'll likely have to drop out of class next semester (and perhaps even longer than that) to make things work. And considering how all-important getting a degree is in this modern economy, that's a terrifying thought! I'm sure I'll be able to find some sort of fix action before this worst-case scenario rears its ugly head, but I really don't like the idea of my father robbing me of yet another life-helping experience either.

 

In the meantime, definitely expect my post count to drop somewhat. I suspect that my father will soon return to old trick of his and shut down my internet at home, which will limit me to only being able to access the internet from school (Monday-Thursday) and the public library (Friday-Sunday, depending on how pissy the beast is feeling at the time) once he pulls the plug. It's not an ideal workaround, sure, but it's one I've dredged up on my own after having to put up this isolating tactic since he first used it 2012. And besides, it's better than nothing, right?