parents

I feel terrible right now. The worst thing is that I've felt terrible since last night-hell, since before then-and it's because of something I don't think I had any control over.

In October, a really good friend of mine disappeared. One day, he was like a brother to me. We were hanging out. After we split up, I didn't see him again.

For a really long time, I tried and tried and tried to get in touch with him; I wanted to know why he'd left, if there was any way I could help him, and I wanted the video games he'd borrowed back.

Last night, after a long conversation with another friend of mine, I decided I'd had enough. Unless I got the game back right away, I was going to call the police and say he stole it. Because I hate dealing with cops, I called him four times before he listened to me and said 'either come get them or you'll never get them back.'

My boyfriend and his mom decided that we should come over every Wednesday night to have family dinner, so that his parents could spend some time with the baby. Last night was the first night we tried out this idea.

So, my boyfriend's mom suggested that she could take care of the baby more often so that I could get a break and go out. I pointed out that I didn't have a car to go anywhere, I didn't have any money to spend and I didn't have anyone to go anywhere with. My boyfriend's cousin suggested that one way to help that was for my boyfriend to pay me money for doing chores around the house. I commented that my boyfriend couldn't pay me enough for everything I did for him. His mom commented back that I couldn't pay him for everything he did for me.

My mom finaly broke up with her no-good boy friend, Ben. I know how you can't hate someone, but this is the one exception. He harasses me, my sister, my brother, and my mom. We even have to change our locks to our house now. We always have to be really careful. My mom said that we may even have to go into hiding because he basically stalks us. We told the cops but they said they can't do anything with out proof. I'm really kind of scared because of this. Why can't he just get over it? I told his 19 yr old daughter what is going on today on myspace, against my mom's wishes. Was I wrong to do that? He hasn't spoken to his daughter in 6 months.

I love my parents. Love them. They've been such a positive influence in my life...there's no way to thank them enough for what they've done.

However, I'm 21. I want to be on my own. But...

...I have to stay on my parents' insurance plan. Since there's no way I could pay for the cobra policy, they pay for it. They pay over $500 a month- not including co-pays for doctor appointments and visits- just to keep me on the insurance plan. Medical care just costs that much for me.

This is necessary care. The medication and doctor's appointments are not optional. And, there's no way on my barely-there "salary" that I could ever, ever afford this on my own.

My Mother

I have a mother, and our relationship is difficult.

On the one hand, she's my mum, she raised me, gave birth to me, and because of this technically, I love her. I try to make time to chat to her and I help her when she needs me.

But that's it. This may sound harsh of me and possibly even ungrateful, but she wasn't a very good mother. A good provider, yes, but never a mother. I wanted to post this, as my relationship with her has been such a big part of my life, but so difficult.

My mother, Susan, married aged 17 to a man called Tony, aged 21. It was the late 60s. Aged 18, exactly 11 months later she gave birth to my sister. She considered herself a bit of a hippy. She says she never smoked and didn't know what drugs were until several years later and thought being a hippy was just about wearing flowers in your hair (I don't know how big the press was on drugs in 68-69 so I don't know if she lies and did do drugs or if this is plausible). In hippy style, she made up my sister's name - Sepy. They moved to a new house and looked after their newborn baby. When she was 20, my mother decided to go to a local college to continue her education. Her O Levels had not been the best so she re-sat English and started Maths at A Level. She passed English and only completed the first year of Maths then left, but in her Maths class she met a man called David.

It’s been hard for me to write these blogs, after reading everyone else’s. My first blog was to the child inside me, which was repressed and hidden. I experienced things that n child, or person should ever experience. I grew up too early and never had a true childhood. My mother was never really able to be a part of my family due to the murder of her body and soul.

She experienced incest continuously as a child/ teenager by her fathers, uncles, brothers and cousins; she began self-mutilation with sex, drugs and alcohol at a very early age. The last time I saw her was on my sixth birthday, so I grew up with very jaded knowledge of how women were supposed to be. Before she left, she taught me to be beautiful, to show my legs because that’s what men liked, and that I couldn’t live with out everyone’s attention.

I grew up comfortably in the suburbs, with parents who were well-paid computer scientists with pHds from Harvard and Yale. My years were pretty much laid out before me: I’d go to the preschool down the street, then the elementary school down the street from the preschool, then the middle school down the street from the elementary school, finishing with the high school, which was, of course, down the street from the middle school. Of course, after that I’d go to college, which would probably be the one where my dad taught.

Somewhere along the line, this plan started to fall apart. I went to the high school, but barely graduated. I went to the college, but dropped out. I even went to art school, but only completed one year.