Parents came today to help me patch up the damage here, pack stuff, nothing has worked out in any way house-wise so, daughter and I are moving in with them for lack of any alternatives whatsoever. It's not an outcome I would have asked for. Ever. Of course I am grateful that we have a safe place to go but it isn't a happy outcome for any of us. My parents and I have developed a goodish respectful relationship in recent years and I value it. But me living there doesn't work; me staying there for more than a night once in a blue moon doesn't work.The dysfunction creeps in very quickly and I hate it. Moving in with no forseeable plan to move out is not good. Having to drop out of my course is not good. All of daughter's friends are buying graduation dresses and planning graduation hair etc and she will not be returning to school with them but will be going to another school for her last 10 weeks of primary school and she is sad and angry and I don't blame her. Her halloween party planned all year is not possible and it felt horrible packing the decorations she has been collecting and shoving them into bags. These things aren't the end of the world but they also aren't reasons to celebrate. Especially having to abandon my course. That bites.

I appreciate the help as it's a huge job and overwhelming to do alone. But the stuff that comes with it is hard to take. Mother and grandmother seem to have made all sorts of plans without talking to me (this is how it is always done in my family); they have decided where my stuff is going (I was going to put it in storage "Don't be stupid Melissa, that's a waste of money, we're putting some here and some here and some here" (and I will have to hear about it every day, the awful inconvenience of having my stuff in peoples garages etc). I say no, that isn't going to happen, I am putting it into storage on the final weekend here, I've arranged it already so it isn't necessary". Next time I come out my things are being loaded into the trailer. "It's too late now we'll just take this lot today" Thowing stuff out that I don't want thrown out when i am not looking. I am not a hoarder FYI, I hate STUFF and the only thing of my own I have a lot of is books which are mostly rare collectibles and precious to me. So every time I turn my back more of my books go into the garbage. 

Then daughter gets me alone and says, angry "all the way here grandma kept trying to convince me to go to a high school where they live. Why is she doing that?" (they brought her home from her dads since they were coming anyway). Well daughter is going to a high school that she worked hard to get into and that isn't going to change, I have 3 months to find a new home, fix up the rental arrears A has left me and restore my good name so I  can rent again. That hasn't changed, it is a short-term crisis. It's not like i am on hard times now so that's it for the rest of my life I will have to reside with my parents. But it will take me a couple of months to find my feet again, I think.  Anyway.

My only "stuff" problem is children's toys and clothes. I have almost everything my daughter has ever been given by my mother and grandmother as well as half a garage full of hand-me-downs from the entire family.  Today i really started to understand WHY that pile of stuff overwhelms and upsets me so much.. In one breath mother is saying "I can't believe you have all of these boxes of crap, its just ridiculous what's wrong with you" and then as we go through them she pulls out one item after another...baby toys, baby clothes, "I paid good money for this, this cost me $$$, i can't believe its out here in the garage, OMG this is (brand lable whatever) OMG Melissa this has mould on it and I paid $$$ for that"...er, OK. So I shouldn't have kept any of it but it shouldn't be in the garage getting dusty or damp...I see there is real panic and anger in her voice; she doesn't know what to do with it either...there are no younger children in the family to hand it down to, I was the last parent in the line....and half of what is in the garage has been donated by family members in spite of me requesting constantly that they stop sending all of their old stuff. Half of it is in the boxes and bags it arrrived in, i didnt want it and never even unpacked it. Mother knows this, i asked her again and again to refuse any donations of clothes and toys and all manner of garbage but she couldn't say no and kept bringing boxes and bags of old junk every time she came over. Now she is angry and frustrated because it has accumulated into a nightmare pile and a lot of it has become rotten and is garbage. Up until recently I didn't drive and had no way to get rid of it, it just kept coming and yes, it really IS a horrific trash pile of the entire family's unwanted stuff. But I have been asking...almost begging for years, please, unless it's something really special, if they don't want it anymore I probably don't want it either so please stop bringing it over! .There is SO MUCH junk that i never wanted in my garage. I think the family just came to think that because i am the youngest and least wealthy, any old crap of theirs will be treasure to me. Or that's the excuse for sending it all to me instead of sorting it out and finding appropriate homes for it all. So now the day of reckoning has come. If it were legal, i'd just put it all on a bonfire to be honest. But the good news is, it isn't coming with me and i will be released from it within 2 weeks. Daughter piped up while we were in the middle of bitching about it and said "My school is collecting donations for a white elephant stall this week". Alrighty. That settled it. I will take a  carload each day to her school of the good stuff and the rest goes to the tip. The collection of hoarded chldrens goods is finally leaving my custody. This will be a great, great relief.

I know this post is long but I have to just insert a funny here. A few years ago I tried to cull all of the stuff in my daughter's room by filling a bag each day when she was at school and walking with it to the collection depot (they don't have one of those anymore) where they take stuff to distribute to the welfare agencies. I got rid of HEAPS of toys and clothes that she would never even miss. So one afternoon after school we go into the local op-shop (thrift shop) and there are ALL of her toys in a big basket. And she starts to cry and carry on and I end up BUYING A HEAP OF THEM BACK and TAKING THEM HOME AGAIN. OMG LOL. Why does this STUFF haunt me so???? Laughed till I cried after that one, LOL. The stuff is supposed to go to a big warehouse and get distributed around the state or so it says on their sign but instead the whole lot was dumped at an op-shop near my house. You couldn't make this stuff up!! lol.

So anyway today mum is  throwing out A's stuff (he is not here, he's away partying in his hometown this weekend) and being scornful when I request that they don't throw out his things (he would have a FIT and I will have to live with him for another 2 weeks). Yes his stuff is all crap but we don't get to just throw it all in the bin while he is away. He will want to pack up his crap and take it with him. "Who cares" is the response I get and every time i turn my back they have thrown more of his stuff into the rubbish pile. He will go ballistic so i have to keep salvaging it and putting it back into his area of the garage which I have identified. I understand why they can't stand him but throwing out his things when he isn't here and leaving me to deal with the fallout isn't sensible or safe for me and it's not the right thing to do. His stuff is his business.

So anyway I tell myself, just push through it, get the job done and smile and don't buy into the anger or old patterns, be grateful of the help, tune out the sniping and shaming comments, use your toolkit, whatever. Just get it done.

But then it starts. Mother says "you know your dog has to stay outside at our house" and I say "I understand, but he isn't used to it so he might whine a bit the first few nights until he adjusts. I'm sure he'll be OK once he knows his place". Her dog stays inside and barks every time the wind blows but thats OK, it's her house and her dog so that's how it goes. I don't object and i am grateful. But that isn't OK, she want to tell me she shouldn't be expected to have my dog inside and he's lucky he isn't going to the pound and... well, these things are all true and i don't object, i'm glad to be keeping him but I am not complaining or objecting so there's no reason for her to keep on about it and then it comes.

"You could pitch a tent in the back yard and sleep out there with him".

A joke?

Nope. She repeats it several times, "the weather is warmer, you used to like camping when you were a kid" on and on. This stuff keeps coming up with her; a few years ago she invited me to stay at her beach house but told me "I have your aunt and her kids and my friend staying so your daughter can stay inside but you can sleep outside in a deck-chair. It's nice and warm so you'll be comfortable. You can use the outside shower too, won't that be fun?" and she wasn't kidding, she kept asking me for weeks and weeks and reminding me that I would have to sleep outside in a deck-chair and then acted offended when I didn't go and stay. It was always like that, I am not my step-father's blood and when I was growing up things would always be bought for the other kids but not for me, after dinner ice-creams would be given to everyone except me, there was just a general policy of exclusion and one day when i was a grown woman with a baby I attended their house for a BBQ on a hot day and after lunch she gave an ice-cream and a can of drink to every adult and child present including my daughter and laughed and said "none for you" to me and then said to my baby daughter "none for Melissa" and when she went inside I asked step-dad "why do you guys exclude me like that" and he said "because you're a bastard" and laughed and laughed.  I never said anything and stopped going over to visit for a long time after that. 

I want to explain I used to resent this but i haven't for a long time, I figure it's their issue and I can choose to remove myself from it. For whatever reason I took on the role of scapegoat in my family for most of my life and when i recognised this I decided not to waste any more energy arguing or trying to understand it but to just remove myself from it. But to move into it and see it starting up again...I don't even know where to begin. They don't owe me anything, i am a grown woman and should be able to take care of myself, its pathetic that i need to go there and I know it so i dont feel i am entitled to live there or anything but I also do not deserve to be subjected to that sort of degrading nonsense and i can't believe they are still doing it. I did not ask to go there by the way, mother offered and seemed very positive about it to begin with.

So anyway there's a whole history of that kind of stuff and that's why i moved out and worked and went to school as an independent teen and why I have always been as self-sufficient as I can possibly be. But when the comment "you can sleep outside, you like camping" came out today I just felt sick. Not this stuff again, not now. And no, she is not joking, although it might be tempting to think so. She really isn't. And just FYI I am hygenic and clean and not noisy or offensive, there's no reason i should be told to sleep outside.

If history is anything to go by next time we speak she will say "but I thought you said you want to camp in the back-yard so i cleaned out my tent for you" and it will go on, weird head games that i don't understand and don't want to subject myself to.

So anyway throughout the day I keep reminding her that I didnt want her to do the work for me, just to help me organise myself a bit and for step-dad to patch up the wall etc and that she can stop now please, i have 2 weeks now to finish the job and I will be fine, but she keeps going and going "I don't know HOW I am going to do all of this Melissa" sigh. And then she says she is coming back tomorrow and bringing my grandmother who will "have a fit when she sees all of this stuff" and I say no, please, i am able to get this done myself now, thank-you for the help" but no, "see you tomorrow" and then a message later telling me what stuff they will take home with them tomorrow (the stuff i am putting in storage).

And A has gone off to this party and his mother called my phone over and over today so i finally answered and she says "I was calling to find out what time he was arriving but he's here now, hang on a second" and she puts the phone down...and then she comes back and says "I was just seeing him off, i told him you called to see that he got here safely but he looked P'd off". I didn't call to see about anything in fact I didn't even call, sigh. It doesn't matter, I know it doesn't matter but it still bugs me, why? Why make stuff up like that? Why throw fuel on the fire like that? and then later I get a message from her about how she's "sorry she didn't answer all of my phone calls today but she was busy". I didn't call her, not once. She did the same last time and he came home angry that i had been "harassing his poor mum". OMG. 

ANYWAY

Look, I obviously have a lot of childish rubbish and parent issues I am going to have to work through and i'm being put in a situation where there is no way around but through. I do hear the whining in my post and I do know there are better ways of handling these dynamics and i do not have to give in to the pressure from myself or anyone else to become the whinging helpless scapegoat. But wow, I was just starting to feel like i had found my wings and was ready to soar and i feel like they have been chopped off and if I want to fly I'm going to have to learn how to build a plane...

Well i haven't gotten to a meeting for a couple of weeks and so I guess I might have said all of this babble in a share if i had instead of venting it all out here...I see the flaws and childishness in my thinking and that can only be good...if i hadn't written all of this out then i might not have seen my part in it and still be feeling overwhelmed and "done to" and victimised.

And there's the other silver lining. Where parents live there are meetings everywhere instead of once a week. I can go to one almost every night if I choose to. In my car which I can now drive. And I guess I will because on top of dealing with the dynamics there I will be grieving for that A I have been trying to love for 8 1/2 years and it's going to hurt a lot and I think a big long meeting binge just might be the one good and positive thing I can do for myself while I am living there.

So, onwards.

My mother likes to say "It'll be alright in the end, and if it's not alright, it's not the end". She's good, when she isn't playing martyr or putting me down. I suppose I am good when i am not playing whiny scapegoat. But I can only change me. So, into the rabbit-hole I go.