I don't even know what to write, I just need a hug. *cries*

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My sister and dad had an argument last night over her getting a dog. Apparently, her husband, who is stationed overseas, sent her some money to buy a puppy, but my dad disagreed with it, so she argued over it with him and she is mad at my dad. She would have kept it in her room. I guess I am siding with my dad on it. With her laziness and tendency to hand off responsibilities to other people, I think my dad and I would have had to take up the slack. They had an argument in which she claimed my dad was being "unreasonable" and I

But suffice it to say, she and my dad are once again at it. She ended up staying the night at my mom's. I guess she talked to her husband today and asked him if she could move out, but he refused because he felt the rent money should be saved up. So now she isn't talking to her husband either.

But enough about her, I am just feeling tired and anxious and angry at being dealt this hand of card. I've had to suffer through my parents divorce, through years of arguments between my little sister and dad, through both sister's boyfriends, through my dad not accepting my homosexuality and making light of my Aspergers, through my sister's first marriage, her getting pregnant and having a baby, basically be expected (post-Bachelor's degree) to watch the toddler 12-13 hours a day, all while my dad sleeps and my sister is gone with friends or (productively) working. She has the gall to claim she is the "only person in the family who is working" when my dad worked for 32 years at the post office and another 11 years as a school custodian and rests on the laurels of his pension. He supports financially my little sister, her toddler, and I, and she still claims he is lazy. She sees me taking care of her kid and taking classes for a master's degree online and claims I am lazy.

My dad, for all he does financially for the family, isn't making much of an attempt to listen to me at all about any of my concerns, or is asleep when I really need him to help. He has been far more generous and good to my sister and yet I am the one being saddled with all of these obligations. I only get the time when the kid takes his nap and when he is asleep for the night (in my dad's bed) to myself. I am cooking dinner, washing dishes, and doing laundry and she thinks I am lazy. She doesn't even do her own laundry.

I'll tell you why I don't have a f*****g job, because I am here and I have anxiety problems exacerbated by all the family tension all the time and by people having appointments and expecting me implicitly to be here constantly to care for the child. I want to work, and I haven't worked more than 2 weeks as a student library aide when I was working on my bachelor's degree. I want to get a job when my sister moves away (hopefully in October, but could be January if her husband's deployment is extended), but I have the spectre of another 2 years of full-time graduate school ahead, and ... I just can't say any more, I'm too discouraged.\

My mom is about the only person who supports me and understands what I am going through. I see other people my age and they are laughing and enjoying themselves, and I am suffering. I have too much anxiety to take real risks that could improve my life. I need a hug. I'm getting a headache, I'm mildly nauseous, and I am angry to the core right now.

Well I can't give you a hug. How about a picture of a small, furry animal instead?

Aspie hug (((TabrisAngel)))

:big squish hug:

I feel so bad for you. Fathers often have a tendency to deny the aspects of their children's lives that are contrary to the father's ideals. unfortunately, fathers are also imperfectly human and often tend to favor the one(s) with the least conflict with said ideals. Speaking from past failures, it is difficult for a father to embrace the conflict, and this can cause alienation with the child, in spite of the need to bond. Some dads are just jerks, but some are just emotional clutzes. very few get it perfect, Of the few who get it right, most just get it "ok enough to suffice".

Hopefully your dad will stumble into the right path.

As the failure of a father that I am, my heart aches for you.

It sounds like some people need a wake up call for not appreciating what you do. Try to come up with a way to stop doing it. Perhaps they might appreciate what you did more.

The only way I know of improving family relations is communicating and spending time together (working together, watch a movie, take an outing). Not that it guarentees success, but without it there is little chance of success.

Cyber hug to you
and a nasty scowl to those who stress you out

*hugs*

Consider this post as a coupon for free hugs with no expiration date. You have to redeem it in person in Cleveland OH, though.

Sending you a virtual hug now in case you can't make it out this way.

I haven't met you yet. Hello.

It sounds like you deserve the biggest hug, and to lay down away from all the stressors. I am so sorry. Hey, come to Texas, we have a very comfy couch and I can cook.

I do sincerely hope that your sister grows up & realizes her wrongdoings though.

(((hug)))

I know how you feel about some of that. I'm considered the flaky, unstable one in my family, but I've had the same job for 16 years while the "stable" one has had more jobs in the past 10 years than I've had in my whole life. and he might punch a hole in the wall if I point that out to him.

When you finish your degree, you can hopefully get a good enough job to be self-supporting and hang around with everybody on your own terms.

(((hugs)))
Can you move in with your mom?

Thanks for all the very warm thoughts. If your offer of the couch is sincere, then I might look at it, but it is only like a 0.0001 percent chance I would accept the offer, all factors considered. Thanks though. I cannot move in with my mom, because her income is too low and I have no income, plus they have no extra room at the apartment.

I guess the fight has died down and the little sister and dad are talking civilly, if not friendly, to each other. That is the only certifiable fact. Through back-channel communications (mom, dad's eavesdropping), I have heard that my sister's husband has agreed (albeit reluctantly) to give her financial assistance and a go-ahead to move to the Air Force Base (or near it) before he returns, which was not the original plan. This means she is probably going to move out sometime next month and is planning to take a job at the base commissary and get child care for her kid. The original plan was October or November when he was slated to return (although rumors fly of his deployment being extended to January). However, nothing has been said to my dad about it, so I am not certain if it is a confirmable fact. If this happens, I have one month to go until she is no longer living here. If that happens, it can safely be assumed that I will no longer have to deal with that sister or take care of her child or base my entire day around caring for that child.

But, in the meantime, I am still miserable-feeling. I've nearly completely lost my interest in anime (it was almost the most important thing in my life a few years ago), my interest in video games is non-existent (I probably play Pokemon once every 6-7 months) I want to get these problems out of my head, but when I am awake, the problems are all I can think about. I try to listen to new age/classical music, surf Wikipedia/TVtropes, and read books to perk up my spirits, but to no avail. I stay up until almost 4:30 in the morning on my computer. My mom thinks I am depressed, and that is what is dragging me down. My dad is blissfully unaware of what is going on with me. When we do talk around dinner time (I cook and wash dishes), all he talks about is what his doctors are telling him to do about his diabetic diet. I occasionally ask him questions, but I get the distinct impression he does not like my questions about things. My little sister comes and goes (literally) from the house to go to work, hang out with friends, etc. When I am ready to put the kid down for sleep, my dad usually is laying in his recliner, asleep, and was probably asleep for 2 hours before that. I want to ask him to help, but when I do try to rouse him, he acknowledges me, and sometimes will fall back asleep.

Last 2 nights, the kid has been waking up at 6:30-7:00 in the morning, which means I have to lengthen his afternoon nap time to compensate. I hope he returns to a "normal" sleep-wake schedule. I am nervous because my dad has yet another doctor's appointment to go to next week, and he has to be up super-early for it. So that means I will probably not get any sleep that night waiting for his alarm clock to go off at like 6 AM so I can surreptitiously sneak in and replace him in his bed so the kid will not wake up too early.

My best friend, whom I hang out with on an occasional basis, has either had a work schedule on Saturdays which makes him too tired to want to hang out with me, or he has some function/travel he wants to do. I feel kind of abandoned lately. I have other friends, but as I drift away from the anime/video gaming scene, I am finding that they are completely different people than me. They always make facebook posts about events they are going to or tv shows they liked or about some food they made, and I am suffering from real problems and often don't post about foods I like or TV shows I watch (since I have the kid most of the day, I have to watch cartoons or he gets bored pretty easily, since neither the mom nor my dad seems to want to to spend money buying him new toys or books). I really want to watch other programmes, but he gets bored really easily with live action stuff. I only get online when he is asleep for the night, taking a nap, or in the very rare instance someone else has him. I really want to be on a normal schedule, but with taking care of my sister's kid, I have to basically live MY OWN life when he is not with me, because I start doing something and he is all over me.

I am also sad because a very good friend of mine (who has MS and is the landlord of the other friend), her health declined rather suddenly this last Spring. She told me that she thought it would be 10 years before she was a quadripalegic, but she was hospitalized because of a reaction to the immunosuppressant she was taking. So she quit taking the drug and now she is bedridden, needs 24 hour care, and needs help with even the most basic mobility needs. When I went to see her, she was having a hard time talking and she is sleeping almost 20 hours a day now. When I last visited her, the nurse's aide told me she was going to see the doctor the next day and a prognosis would be hammered out the next day. But, some people close to her have told me that she is going to pass away from her current health condition.

I almost enjoy being around this 52-year old woman than I do being around the other friend. She always talks to me about issues related to climate change, politics, astronomy. She would always want to look at the books I bring over to see if they are interesting and we would talk about science fiction authors at great length. She knows intuitively that I am gay and have Asperger's, and she is one of the few human beings who has shown me that there are greater things to think about in this world besides my family problems. I hope I run into more science fiction fans like her in the future.

I just wish I could feel normal again and lead a normal life, but this family has very implied expectations of me, and I am made to feel guilty if I am not helping, and even if I do help, it either leads to me being criticized or being drawn into fights I don't want to be part of.

I have had a lot of trouble with my family in the same way. Tons of expectations for what I should be doing, expecting me to help them out all the time, and getting angry if I ever asked them for help. It got worse when I finally got a steady, decent paying job; they all started begging for money. I starting paying doctor's bills for nieces and nephews, mortgage payments for my dad, rent for my oldest sister, a ton of cash to pay off all my little sister's legal fees and fines. It got to the point that I finally had to cut them off, more or less. I just stopped helping. Most of them refuse to even talk to me now, and it did get very lonely for a while, but somehow the loneliness was better than what the stress and panic were doing to me.

As for having trouble with your troubles sucking up all your brainpower and having difficulties with keeping an interest in something, I'd recommend you give writing a go. You write well, and I think that you should go with it and see where it takes you. It doesn't really matter what; poetry, songs, short stories, rambling rants, anime movie reviews, even just recording feelings on a piece of paper or a computer screen has helped me in the past. It seems to help turn off a lot of the background noise in my head.

Sonofgandhi, that's a great idea. I do like to think about things beyond the mundane, about spiritual (I'm agnostic) and scientific realities. I can be very poetic at times, other times my mind is being drug in the dust behind a truck.

So your family disowned you after you quit bailing them out?

Most of them have. The extended family pretty much cut me out earlier when I stopped buying all their ridiculous over the top religious junk. My parents, two of my sisters, and my grandparents cut me off after I stopped handing out all my cash and started to pay off my debt instead. My little sister stills talks to me some, but she's up to 6 kids and she's trying to make it work with her newest husband, so not often. I have a couple of cousins who didn't unfriend me on FB, but I think they just want me to help them out on their FB games (they never post anything or message me other than that).

It was pretty rough, though. Loneliness is a real MFer. I just couldn't keep on taking all their crap. It was mentally and physically destroying me.