I am simply ready to give up. This story is incredibly fucked and I could write five pages, but I will keep it to the bare minimum I can.
My dad committed suicide in 2010 and the impact on my family has been devastating. He thought he was doing it to help us (he had set up a $5 million insurance policy) but having become so entrapped in a pit of drugs and delirium, he defaulted on his payment for three months before he took his own life. We received zero payout.
My brother began heavily abusing alcohol and drugs for three years, lying and stealing from my mom. He stole nearly $20,000 and totaled two cars. Finally (thank god) he became sober after an out of state rehab treatment that cost our family over $100,000 in savings. He has now been in AA for almost five years, he nearly has his five-year sobriety chip, and is a pre-med cognitive science major at UC Berkeley. I love him and am incredibly proud of him.
My mom has never fully recovered from my dad's death. He handled EVERYTHING financially. He also was incredibly wasteful with money and would lavish her in anything she wanted. We had the best of the best, and that mentality stuck with her for years, even when we obviously couldn't afford it. From welfare, child support, & mental disability checks, she has been keeping our family afloat. This has all expired or been lost now. Despite having no income, she has turned toward material possessions, expensive apartments, and unnecessary shopping/ gifts as a means of escaping what happened. Having slowly lost all of her welfare income, she has now found herself in a horrible position financially. She keeps buying with no sense of making money. She finally got a job at home depot but cannot afford her three bedroom apartment. She lives alone, in an incredibly cluttered place (I can barely walk in there), with two cats. I love her to death but every time I come home from college I get extreme depression/anxiety from living with her.
That brings us to me. I have endured this all and helped to the best of my ability. I applied to six jobs at age 14, worked my ass off in high school, and managed to get accepted to UC Berkeley as well. In all of high school, I paid her phone bill, car insurance, and $300 of rent every single month for over three years. This meant I was working 2 jobs seven days a week. I am now a business major at UC Berkeley. My future is looking exciting, but my present is absolutely intolerable. She calls me weekly asking for more money. I cannot afford anything, but I also cannot afford to lose my relationship with her. She is still my mom and I am still her son, I will ALWAYS do ANYTHING I can to help. But this becomes a fault when I start putting her needs above mine. I now have -$6.00 in my account. My grandpa gives me $500/month and that barely covers food and school supplies. My grandpa has not been speaking to my mom as she only calls him to ask for money.
Tonight my brother called me, sounding very dull and unhealthy. He has a girlfriend, who I've just now learned is pregnant, and is expecting a baby in nine months. My brother and I both live in dorms at school, returning back home to our mom's apartment during break. Every break when we get back, we both feel like shit just based on the environment we are in. However, we indulge our mom and spend time with her to make her feel good and ensure her that we love her a ton. My brother's girlfriend stays with us too, but now with a baby on the way it is clear that won't be a healthy environment to stay in.
I have $300 in my savings. I have more invested in stocks but am trying not to touch that for at least a year. I am objectively a driven and smart individual, I just need to demonstrate to someone that I am a hard fucking worker and will do anything to be able to make money and support my family. I currently work a marketing job for a start-up called Knack, but the job is heavily performance based, as I get paid $1 for signing someone up. Last semester I earned $4/sign up and was able to be the top "Campus Representative" at my school. My best month I got nearly 200 sign-ups, which earned me $800 that month. Unfortunately as this business scaled, my boss told me he could no longer afford $4/sign up and lowered it to $1/sign up, with $2/sign up coming after the first 50 people I sign up. It's getting harder and harder to effectively earn with this payment model and I need to seek something more reliable.
On top of all this, I am in a fraternity and currently hold the Risk Management Chair position. I am a part of the Calgreeks Alcohol Taskforce (lame but I need to as Risk Chair), and am also playing intramural soccer and volleyball. I have agreed to be Director of Tutoring for Peace Tutoring (free advising/tutoring organization at my school) and have two separate hour-long meetings per week. In addition I am taking 16 units, and my calculus class is killing me.
Everything is piling up. I have too much on my plate to afford to help my mom or my brother. Like I said earlier, my brother called me tonight explaining he was not in a good financial place. It took him a few minutes to finally tell me that he just got off the phone with our mom, who called him crying and desperately asking for money, saying she was $500 short on rent. He has $300, I have $300.
Neither of us knows what to do. I even tried to apply for food stamps and couldn't get a hold of my mom's tax records to do so as she couldn't find them. Nothing is working out and I feel like if I don't get some income or support soon, I may have to drop out of school and find a job. I love Berkeley and it would be sad to do that, but I need to help my mom.
Any/all advice is welcomed and incredibly appreciated.
Thank you.
Submitted January 29, 2018 at 01:39AM by shitshow2016 http://ift.tt/2El693M
