Invisible labour
The year is 2021. Its January, I am working for the devil in God’s clothing, (the Catholic church) technically 2.5 jobs. I work 18 hour days on weekdays 16 hour days on weekends.
In my “spare time” I was also dealing with the closing elements of my divorce, and house re-mortgage in which my ex husband was a really nasty piece of work and it was only divine providence that made me not call the police for abuse and harassment.
But not only that my mother had 3 property deals all going on. My mother, who at this point did not treat me with kindness or humanity at all had her foot on my neck to make sure these got prioritised over my divorce and house and 2.5 jobs. It really was a dark time which took me years to recover from.
These property deals included her own home which meant if didn’t keep it tight to deadlines my parents house was in jeapordy. But also so were their livelihoods.
What did I receive for all that work? Keeping the family afloat and taking huge L’s for the team? Begging my neighbours to sign documents I barely understood?
£0. and 0 pence.
The year is 2024 my aunt Dorothy is helping my mum on a £50,000 property deal in Sierra Leone. My mum wants to pay her £10,000.
Are you serious????
I protested it down to £100, but let me put that into context. My aunt is a librarian. she would earn well but minimum wage in Sierra Leone is £28.ish PER MONTH… so £100 was is over 3 months salary for the average security guard, shopkeeper, day labourer. So you can see that £10,000 is ABSOLUTE MADNESS. Please remember my aunt had to be told to call me when my father died. Please remember my mum has been paying 50% of her sons university fees for 6 YEARS!!! And so my aunt should have been doing this for free. My mum offering money was wrong, especially the amount. The amount is physically crazy.
I hate the disrespect for my time. The time of my life that I was going through when I was doing these favours shows complete disregard for what it cost ,me. It took me years to recover from that time of my life. My mother did bad thing, after bad thing, I did favour after favour and then my dad died… I took longer to recover from that because of the absolute hell my mother put me through because she and dad spent 30 years “F***ing around” and 2021 was royally the year we all “found out.” And who paid for it? Me. And I did so gladly. Because I truly understood that I had to take one for the team, because yes my parents are wildly irresponsible. Case in point? My mum offering £10k for minimal labour.
Another thing, 2 weeks ago my mum needed a small favour. It was Friday night, I’d worked from home and at 5pm I took a train to London. Mum called me on the way there and asked for something, I said I already had plans. I said that I would go to her on Saturday. I woke up on Saturday and was sick as a dog. I went back to bed and sent a message to my mum. Saying I am sick. My mum called me out of my sick bed to do the favour, it was a 20 minute favour. But I WAS IN MY SICKBED! But also she had 3 MORE months to do this favour and then 2 weeks later she’s abandoned the thing she wanted that required the favour. So she absolutely didn’t need to call me for this favour. If she’d waited 2 weeks she’d have abandoned it. But the price of that favour? Free.
Literally livid. If my aunt gets £100 I needed to have £1,000.
Courage and Grace.
Annetta Mother Smith.