Bad vibes

Life is hitting me with a baseball bat again. Grown up choices hurt. The latest of which is the decision to fund my mothers retirement. One that once again places all the financial sacrifices on me. I’m going to have to sell my house. Trade in my independence in order to pay for my parents bad decisions over the past 25 years. Truth is… every time they gave someone money they didn’t have it. I’m underwriting that gift. Every gift and it’s time to pay the piper.

This means I’m forced back into situations I don’t want to be in. Forced to supplement my income because I’m not stupid. There is only a financial safety net for one person in this family and it ain’t me.

Rather than be bitter about it, I prefer not to dwell on it. I knew my parents had mortgaged my future out years ago. I just thought that the first time I bled would be the last time I bled. Turns out that was wrong.

So I’m not your average 31 year old looking for love. I’m looking for peace, for strength and fun to bear the heavy burdens I’m trying to bear. Life is scary for me.

Meanwhile I’m trying not to have all doom and gloom. I was going to go to Disneyland with friends in May. This year due to no fault of my own issues concerning my father’s estate I couldn’t make Marrakesh. So now it looks like I’m being pushed out of Paris too. I got the distinct feeling I was an inconvenience because I wanted to delay the holiday until after my exam which meant she won’t go on her birthday. If it means so much to her then she should go. All of them should and I pray that adult decisions never force them to be in my position and requiring grace from a stranger.

It’s a horrible, lonely existence being the “strong child of trauma” I have had to make decisions all my life that you shouldn’t wish on people. I was robbed of my adolescence and I am being robbed still. The alternative is to allow my parents (now my mum only) to live with the terrible decisions they have made and the terrible poverty they have brought on themselves and me.

My life is so much harder than someone living with their parents. My sacrifice so much greater. So if a little bit of grace is too much to ask for… I will cry my big girl tears at the loss of the opportunity and pray to God I don’t screw up my own life irreparably by trying to fix my parents. I pray instead that I will get the opportunity to go to Marrakesh and Disneyland and all those places. I pray that I will get a husband who will take me there and I will not be left behind.

Rather than bitterness I pray instead my peers never have to make the choices I have or the sacrifices I have made and continue to make.

But I won’t go where I am not wanted. If I am made to feel bad for my choices then it’s not for me.

Grace and Courage

Annetta Mother Smith