Prepare for a mind f--k of a story. Anyway, I’m in my mid twenties and live with my mother. I just completed my degree and am searching for work. Here is where it gets weird. My mother does not work, actually, my great aunt (80+ ) pays for her bills. My mother suffered through some hard times a long time ago with her parents. She lost her mother to cancer when she was in her twenties, and her father was injured and couldn‘t work anymore. Her father, however, wanted to settle for $20,000 in compensation which would have landed him on the street in no time. She fought to get him the biggest settlement she could (about $120,000). Basically, all that lasted was about 3 years, because he spent at least $30 dollars a day on booze, and was always drunk. He wound up in the hospital and was placed in assisted living. With that in mind, my aunt was talking to my mother and told she would help out due to all the stress she was facing. My aunt is by their own hints, rich, they live in the Hamptons in a 2+ million dollar house, along with other homes in country clubs. She promised my mother world. She told her that she would buy her a house, and that the current place was a stepping stone. My aunt also hinted that the will we were in was worth $500,000 a piece. Things were up and down with their relationships to a point, but things always seemed to remain fine. At one point, when I ran out of scholarship money from high school, it was told to me that my great aunt would pay for some of my semesters of college. Well, I took the deal. Who wouldn’t. I started off humble, just wanting a degree in exercise physiology. However, being in classes full of pre med track students, and doing better than most, I decided to switch my major to medicine. My mother was happy about the idea, at least it seemed. Shortly after, when I had to study, she would sometimes pick fights with me. You know, like, “all you want to do is study.” Then, the talk of how long is it going to take to complete this. All of this was leading to stress and my grades started dropping. A’s were turning to B’s, and B’s to C’s. One time I was kicked out of the house for trying to study for an exam the next day. After being chased away from numerous parks twice by the cops, I finished my studying in a cold park and slept in my car near the college. At least I passed, I got a C+. After this point, I was being short changed by my aunt for my tuition, and couldn’t afford taking more than 10 credits. I felt like I was being discouraged of completing my degree. I started thinking about getting financial aid. However, I couldn’t because your parents have to fill out all their financial data, which would open a can of worms, because she pays no taxes, and has no job. Until you are 23, there is expected family contribution.
Shortly after the financial stress happens, one of my other uncles dies. This is a hot part. My uncle dies, and the whole family goes into a tailspin. Why? Love? Grieving? Heck no, he was the wealthiest person in our family. Problem is, he has no wife, he has no kids, but he has a 90 year old mother. So, yeah, 90 year old mother inherits son’s millions. Anyway, back to me, my tuition money gets cut off in the hysteria and I can only put together enough money to take a chemistry lecture and lab. One semester of 4 credits. I thought someone was worried how long this was going to take me?
Now, my aunt that pays for my mother happens to be the sister of the women who inherited her son’s fortune. You get the picture? If the mom dies first, they are collecting money from kids by a twist of faith. With this in mind, the will I’m in should go up, right? Wrong, the will was now down to $80,000! How do you lose 80% of your wealth, first of all, you get in a position to inherit someone’s estate worth more than your, but now you have less. Fuzzy math. Oh, by the way, the 90+ women is in a nursing home.
Based on what my mother tells me, my aunt was getting nasty with her about her uncle dying. Saying that she has no business in the matter, and to simply stay out of it. Meaning, don’t talk to anyone concerning his death, don’t attend the funderal (which was a long way away anyway), and don’t even send flowers. Also, don’t talk to his mother, either. You would think my mother was on bad terms with my dead uncle. No, quite the opposite. Her mother was close to him, and so was she when they had last lived around each other. My mother gets a letter in the mail about an article concerning my uncle and his surviving relatives, giving a hint that she was left out. Left out of what? A will? The guy who wrote the letter was not a objective party, it was the husband of the aunt who pays for my mother’s bills. He pretended he didn’t write it, but it was obvious. At one point, my mother’s cousin calls her and is kind of rubbing in her face, like oh, an you where really close to them, too, haha. You can assume she might have been left out of a will. Based on how everything was going, I felt like they were playing my mother. Then, some things were making me feel like my mother was playing me. She was telling me for years about unusual relationships in our family. There was a thing that a few sisters (the rich aunt, or sister 1, the 90+ mother, or sister 2, and more) were born under father “A” and mother “A.” What happened, supposedly, was that father “A” died. Mother “A” got remarried to father “B.” Here is the kicker, 90+ mother (sister 2), runs off with father “B,” and has a child (my dead uncle). My grandmother was the daughter of father “B,” but supposedly the daughter of mother “A.” Here is the problem, Mother “A” would have had to be in her 40’s at the time of her birth, while sister 2 would have been about 18-21. My mother has never seen my mother’s birth certificate. So, yeah, sister 2 could in fact be my mother’s grandmother, and that would make my mother the heir to the 90+ woman’s money she got from her son. Might explain the panic. Oh, but that is just silly, right. What would make you believe in a family lie. Well, based on what my mother says, and other things heard by my aunt, father “B” was dead in 1940 something. My grandmother claimed she never saw his body or went to his funeral. That makes sense, because he did not die until 1975 or so, social security death index has the proof Either all this stuff was for my ears only, or my grandma was really bullshitted. She also, supposedly never saw a dime from his estate. He had to die with something, but she was apparently never notified. That is another reoccurring joke in this family, everyone dies penniless. One of my aunts owned 1/3 of a fairly expensive house, had a bank account, and even owned shares of my rich aunt’s (sister 1) husband’s business, but she died penniless, even with shares in an ongoing business. Now, the bigger joke is that my uncle who died also died penniless, that is straight from the rich aunt and uncle’s mouth. What about his properties? Supposedly, mortgaged up the you know what. A guy with property in 3 states, royalties from his work, was penniless upon death. No way.
After this entire ordeal, I basically, got a part time job and paid for the remainder of my college by myself. In an odd way, my mother wasn’t arguing with me as much, because she owed me $700 for fixing her car. Don’t worry, though, in her own words, I do nothing. I had a job that lead to minor injuries on a daily bases, and studied with my remaining time. Finally, financial aid kicked in, and I graduated. Before I graduated, I told my mother the shit would hit the fan with the aunt (sister 1) when I graduated, and that I would be expected to pick up on all the bills. She told me that it wouldn’t happen. Well, it is starting. I got lectured on how I need to find a career, and I should be a cop. I am a science major. I abandoned the idea of medical school because I like research, and have considered a doctorate. Oddly enough, in their county, about 70 miles from me, two cops were murdered on the side of the road in and area they live in. I’m like, they want my life to be at risk? Also, how the fuck does being a cop relate to biochemistry and research? Never in my life has it been suggested I should be a cop, but after I graduate in a bad economy. Just another mind fuck. For a while, know, my mother tells me I shouldn’t expect to support her, and I should have my own life. However, any time I tell her of a good job that opened up, she is never happy about it. The more it pays, the more unhappy she seems. If I talk about living somewhere else, she treats me like I’m running from responsibility, and she gets hostile. That doesn’t make any sense. By the way she acts at times I feel she treats it like we are a married couple sometimes. It feel like a bad marriage sometimes. I questioned whether or not my mother has jealousy issues with me, because she talks of never getting the chance to complete college. She has no degree to speak of, unfortunately. My aunt (sister 1) and her husband have treated this family like second rate people, and have pulled some nasty legal things on her in the past (they lied to my face about it, but I had the documents). However, my mother treats me like I’m the enemy. Misplaced anger, maybe. The problem is, she has accused me of having a plot against her with aunt (sister 1) and her husband. I don’t talk to them, but three times a year on the phone, or see them more than three times a year in person. She talks to them at least once a week. Used to be more. Logic tells you, if anyone has a conspiracy, it is the people who talk the most. That stuff really bugged me. I used to believe that she was just easily manipulated by them into a paranoid state (playing her against me to divide and conquer), and that is still possible, but to accuse me of a plot made me feel like I was being bullshitted. I always had the hope that she would wise up and not let them play with her emotions. She will agree with me that certain things should be taken with a grain of salt, and don’t react to things you can’t prove (just words). It seems like she learns, but then she will have these relapses and it is like logic (me) vs. pure unregulated emotion (her). I know being brainwashed is possible because cults demonstrate that (Manson and Jim Jones). She isn’t the true believer type from my perspective, she is an atheist after being raised in a Catholic school, and she doesn’t not come across as stupid. I’ve seen her come up with solutions to problems that surprised me. So, she has the capacity to be very devious, and that makes me believe the devil (aunt) made me do it stuff could be an act. Which is what lead me to believe that her and my aunt plot how they want my life to go for my mother to benefit from. You know, kind of like a husband who makes enough to support a household, but would take a drop in lifestyle if he were to leave. Her house is paid off recently, if I were to stay, it would be rent free, just utilities and food. So, financially, it could maybe benefit me in the short term, but then she becomes dependent, and now I bear the guilt when ever I leave. No thanks.
Well, this has gone on and on. Like I said, it is long messed up story. At this point, I feel like cutting ties with all of them. Forget them, their promise land wills, and all the bullshit that keeps you staying around. It is like “Everybody Loves Raymond” on steroids. The dead uncle had the same attitude, supposedly, I was told he said they are all nuts, and that if mental illness was genetic he would never have kids. He never had kids and never married, and now the money he earned on his own, is going back to the people who trashed him before and after his death (called him a prima donna, a dumb business man, and said the relation between his mother and father was disgusting). Epically, tragic and disgusts me.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. I some people learn from this as well.
Topic: A true, crazy, and unfortunate story. Tell me what you think. (Read 1053 times)
May 11, 2009, 01:57:30 AM
