Why do you invite them over?
Long story short. Well, with me it's never short, but considering what I am about to reveal below, this will provide enough context to make more sense than the following post would by itself. The house belongs to our mother. Basically this same situation has been going on since a few years after our father became disabled, before which it was his house. Before becoming too incapacitated he signed it over to Mom some years before he died. Ever since, really, high school graduation, but certainly since Dad signed over ownership of the house, my younger sister has been carrying on that a third of it should be treated as hers, since a third
WILL be hers when Mom dies. (In all honesty, barring a miracle,
half will be hers, as there's an 80% chance I won't outlast Mom by a year, and I hope everyone is well satisfied when I am gone, but just in case.... If I can outlast Mom by over four years I can beat the record of longest continuous resident in this house, it's not much excuse to live for, but better than nothing. My sisters have been pretty much not living here since college graduation...over thirty years.) So the younger sister got all pissed when I had the woodshed torn down, which was at least 90 years old (though bottles were found in there going back to the 1870s so could have been over 100), had no foundation, and was full of termites and mice. I had a beautiful new shed constructed. My sister went into a snit because they could have used the space to build a vacation cottage. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, leave my tools rusting under a tree the year round so they can spend a couple of days a few times a year in some cottage I'll have to maintain. Brilliant. Up until our uncle, who was living here, passed away three years ago, I pretty well managed to ignore my sister's little snits about the house. I figured there were only a very few possibilities:
--Until the point when I refinished the floors (which I completed around 1996, but parts are needing it again), I figured, who the freak cares, I will get married, rich, famous, or all of the above, move to a better place, and she can shove it and STFU. (If I succeeded sufficiently, I would not want this house changed much as it should be maintained as a museum. I gave that up even before Ray Bradbury's house was destroyed.)
--At some point around then I figured, hey, I have invested
WAY too much time and effort into this house, not to mention I am so attached to it and the neighborhood, and in 2003 it was pretty well all over as far as ever getting married, but I hadn't entirely given up on succeeding. I thought, geez, all I have to do is succeed reasonably, I can buy the house, fix it to be as much as possible how I envisioned my dream home, and save myself the time, trouble, expense, aggravation, and heartache of moving.
--If I don't succeed, I'll either end up like the Collyer brothers, unable to repair the house and crushed under a pile of my own junk, or I'll die when Mom does anyway even if the house is in perfect order, so what the F should I care what my sister thinks? I have bigger problems!
So this went on pretty well until our uncle passed away. Between his death and the funeral, when I was still all nerves for various reasons some of which cannot be shared here, my sister (again, same one) decided to go into a screaming fit that unless I agreed
RIGHT NOW, ON THE SPOT, to move into some wretched, hot, noisy, exposed (right against the alley--no buffer--), cramped apartment she was going to build over the sheds (which might be about a quarter of the space I need to survive, not to mention I have two cats who exist in an enclosure attached to the house which cannot be attached to the sheds), I would have to agree to some sort of poverty-type housing--either a subsidized apartment, a trailer, or some sort of ghastly boardinghouse arrangement. I
never agree to even possible and desirable things right on the spot, let alone impossible, awful things, so naturally the last of the reserve I had tried to build up to survive my uncle's funeral completely broke down and I wept hysterically for months.
These are only incidents of what happened before I broke my leg. After I broke my leg, my sister (same one, the younger) came to help me out and did not insist anymore on me moving someplace with a lot of stairs, but they wouldn't discuss alternative plans or really much of any other plans till the other day. I never had a good, steady, paying job. I had two part-time jobs both of which ended in 1999. My mom, who kinda lives in a dream world, somehow expected me to help out full-time with Dad after he was disabled, and still manage to find a good full-time paying job which didn't exist and no one would hire me for it if it did. So finally, the younger sister, after some sort of horrific wizard duel to which I was not a witness, convinced Mom to allow me to be paid to help take care of Dad, which was a program through the state. Don't ask what--doubtless it will be cut off along with any others of the least help to suffering humanity in order to build what this world really needs, bigger bombs! After Dad died, and we knew I could not find another job, my sisters managed to learn what was wrong with me (they had insisted, the older one in particular, since 1972 that something was, but I thought it was either part of a big gaslighting campaign they had going on, or just some game they needed to play to feel superior, and after about the first ten or fifteen years of being insulted, paid it no mind). In 2004 the older sister learned I had Asperger's Syndrome and assisted me in getting a professional diagnosis and to go on disability. This came as a bigger shock to me than anybody! I had never really believed for the merest fraction of an instant that
anything was wrong with me, and if it was I assumed it would be such an extremely mild case those who determine these things would say, "You're fine, go home," yet those hiring for jobs would still say, "We can't use you," and I'd be stuck with no income at all!
Even if my sisters had not done all this, I would still have to let them come over because, for one, it's Mom's house. For two, barring a miracle it will never be mine, because as long as I am on disability I am not allowed to own property and for me to go off disability one of the following has to happen. 1. I have to succeed, which I have been trying since 1971 and nothing to show for it, and after 46 years things cannot be brushed off as paying one's dues artistically or merely going through a slump. 2. Win the lottery, and be sure no one finds out about it because I will spend the rest of my life worrying about being ripped off, attacked, kidnapped, and despised, and I would much rather be ignored as not worth bothering about, than kidnapped and maybe suffer physical injury, permanent mental trauma, or be accidentally killed in a botched kidnapping! 3. Be forced off disability if it is cut off for everyone (see above), have no means of support, refuse to burden other members of the family, and be obligated to die. This is the one I hate the most and worry about every single day all day long. If I die, they will hate me for copping out, putting them to a lot of trouble arranging a funeral, disposing of my stuff, my name will be a hiss and a byword, I will not get to see the kids grow to maturity or be well remembered by them, yada, yada, yada, but if I
DON'T die, they will hate me
WORSE, for being trouble and expense to other members of the family, so I'll
have to die, but I
can't because I don't want to and they will hate me either way. This
really gets my goat! 4. Marry someone who isn't out to kill me for insurance money and let them buy the house and fix it up, but as I said I gave up on this one in 2003. 5. Die soon after Mom does because I can't cope that no one else really needs me or wants me around. This is actually the most likely outcome and depresses the crap out of me.
Bottom line, my sisters have had me over a barrel since at least Kindergarten, always have and always will, and it's the simplest damn thing! Agree to what THEY say is right, and be miserable because it's not best for me. Or, do things my way (just supposing that were fully possible--as it is, I have to stand my ground on a number of minor points, on which I will eventually lose anyway--), and have them turn up their noses and say, "Well, we hope you're happy all alone in your ivory tower because since you wouldn't agree to do things our way everybody hates you and no one wants to speak to you." Which I guess is the main reason I want them over. Sometimes they can be nice--though I can never tell when that might and might not be, particularly with that younger one--and even if they are mean I would much rather be mistreated by people who acknowledge me, than shunned. Put another way: I want people who genuinely
want me to be happy, which simply
cannot be. A few friends do, but they can't do anything about the real situation anymore than I can.
It's a horrible worry, though, because five minutes after Mom is dead I'll become just this piece of baggage to be dealt with and pushed around when and as
they deem necessary, and
THEY will be calling all the shots! It will be the end of the last person who wants me happy for my own sake and is in any position to do anything about it and I will be effectually alone in the world. If I try to be happy anyway it will be faking and cheating, I will never carry off fooling even myself, and end up feeling worse, and I don't want to be unhappy, but I know I will, but there it is, it's be miserable, be dead, or be totally delusional thinking things are, or will be, fine. It comes down only to those choices. I keep hoping someone will find some solution to all this (which doesn't involve me giving up everything and living in a packing box to show how unmaterialistic I am). No one else is called upon to show how unmaterialistic
they are!
Keep telling stories that only You can tell.
ve yours too. Love in the angry thread is good.