You want to know the exact moment I finally realized my family was using me? During a holiday lunch.
I spent years my family’s lifestyle. It was me that quietly kept everything running. I paid the electrical bills for the family cottage, sorted out their chaotic banking affairs, saved my brothers from money troubles, and completed all the irritating tax forms which my parents did not even want to look att. I have even been making a “temporary” monthly payment to my parents’ bank account which I first arranged many years ago as a favor and just… did not stop. Yet to them? I was the burden.
I guess the worst of all is that I wasn’t even aware of how deep that delusion went until a holiday lunch.
You know already what holiday get-togethers are like. Everything looks picture-perfect from the outside but the reality hardly matches it. That day, everything seemed nice, the table, the candles, you name it. I remember I was bringing the bread basket to the table when my mother leaned over and said, “Kisnley, you need to stop relying on the family.”
Wait, what? Did I misheard what she’d just said? I had to, because her words were far from what was really going on inside that family. Could they possibly take my financial help for granted and see me as a leech?
Not only that. No one around said anything to defend me. My father just kept cutting on his turkey while my brother Steven said something about independence. Bobby, my other brother, even offered to help me if I was struggling financially. “You just need to say it, you know that, right?”
Looking at my mom’s face, I knew she expected me to try and apologize for whatever she was thinking I was doing wrong and I just knew she expected me to start crying in order to make me the bad one. But I didn’t. Instead, I just said “okay,” took my coat, and left.
That night, I sat down in front of my computer at home and just hit the cancel button on everything. Internet, power, maintenance, pest extermination, tax account, and my monthly check to my parents. And I wasn’t doing it out of spite or vengeance; I was just tired of being the safety net to those who did not even know that I was hanging off the edge of the safety net right along with them.
I then figured out that when you help someone once, then they expect you to do it over and over again. And once you say no, you are the villain in their story. Would what I did make me the mean one? I didn’t really care at that point.
Only three days passed before the first panicky calls came through. Bobby was furious that the heat and internet were not on at the cabin, as he had plans for the weekend. After telling him that I was no longer paying for it, he went crazy on me, calling me childish and hanging up the phone. My dad then left this extremely passive-aggressive message regarding how “adults handled things” and basically what it boiled down to was: get this sorted out now before everyone learns what you did. I decided not to answer to any of those messages, so they decided to play dirty.
A couple of days later, there actually were legal documents that arrived at my door, as my parents sued me, wanting to contest the cabin transfer. The problem is, a long time ago, my parents put the cabin in my name since they did not want to have anything to do with the logistics and knew that I was “organized.” However, the lawyer that I hired managed to put in a clause in the contract at that time, stating that in case my parents tried to contest the transfer for no legal reasons, they forfeited their right to even use it and the property became fully mine. And they signed everything then without even reading it! So now, by suing me and trying to bully me, they legally handed the cabin to me.
I arranged a meeting in a local diner where I would finally get to speak about everything. My mother arrived there very defensive and said, “It has gone too far already. You have made your point.”
I didn’t really get into an argument with her. I just laid out a bulky folder with several years’ worth of receipts, bank statements, utility bills and transfer confirmations that I had paid for everybody. Dad got pale as a sheet as he went over it.
Steven was rather shocked, “You’ve paid for all of this?”
And Bobby being Bobby muttered: “Well, nobody put a gun to your head, huh?”
It was literally the final nail in my coffin. I explained that I considered it family thing, but now that I am such a heavy burden, they should take care of themselves. And then I laid out papers which proved the fact that the cabin belongs completely to me now. Mom looked shocked as if I slapped her and accused me of punishing them. I explained to her that I do not punish them, I just let them live in the reality which they created.
To them, I was still in the wrong, and I knew that when my father asked me what I wanted from them. I said I didn’t want anything, and that was the essence of all this nonsense they created. And when my mom said to me, “You’ll calm down. You always do,” it was that very minute that some part of me settled down forever. And I told her that this was not some kind of phase that I would come out of anytime soon.
A lot of time has passed since then, and quite frankly, things have settled down and it’s all become very calm. What was really difficult was not leaving the place or the money behind; it was grieving for the family I never had—the parents that could have said thank you, or the brothers who could have defended me. However, they’ll never be able to be that way, and I couldn’t go on pushing myself to try to make them so.
Life has never been so calm for me. I don’t have to wake up with anxiety in fear of another person’s crisis. My money goes into my account. I sometimes drive by their place, and I see their house looks like the one from postcards. In the winter there are candles in their windows and a perfect table set within. But not me. Not because I’m holding a grudge but because I finally understand the difference between being loved and being used. They were walking around with me thinking they were holding me up, when really it was me keeping the lights on.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace