Journal entry 2013

I am beyond boggled in my mind today. I find myself ready to disown my family over their audacity and self-centered behavior as well as their complete disregard for my exitence. Not that I am surprised by it, I have known them all my life, but somehow they never cease to amaze me. It really started way back when I was in high school. Maybe earlier, but I was probably just oblivious to their behavior back then.  
 
In matters of money, I can never be sure if it is greed or just plain inconsideration for others, or just another means of implimenting control over me. When I was 16, I wanted a piano. Well, my parents decided to get me one for my birthday. But what I didn't know was that they made me pay for my own birthday present. How's that? Well, they had sold their house and decided to give a portion of the profits to each of us, me and my three brothers. They never told me this though. My mother acidentally let it slip a couple of years ago after my father died and we were discussing his funeral costs, which I had to contribute to because my mother told me that my father's life insurence policy wasn't enough to pay for the funeral. Well, it gets complicated from there, but as it turns out, she was just talking about one of his life insurence policies. I wasn't told about the other one, just the smaller policy that was a few thousand dollars short of his funeral costs. But as it turns out, there was another policy for a much larger sum of money. My mother has had this money in a secret bank acount for the past 5 years. The only reason I even found out about this is because my mother is in the hospitol and we were all there today discussing her status and what to do about the bank acount. I was only aware of one account that had very little money in it, just enough to pay her bills and rent each month when her social security check came in. Lo and behold, there is another account with a very large sum of money that she wants to divide equally among us now.  
 
But remember, I don't know this yet, I am sitting there listening to a conversation that makes no sense to me about a bank acount that I think has almost no money in it and certainly not enough to worry about dividing up between me and my brothers. In fact, my mother told me a few years ago that there is no other money. But as it turns out, not only is there more money, but all of my brothers have known about it all along.  
 
So I am sitting there wondering why we are having this family meeting about it. Well, the discussion got a bit strange when two of my brothers were saying that we will have to put my mother in a nursing home and will lose the money because they will take it. I'm like, well, so what, it's only going to be a few hundred bucks after her rent and bills are paid. Then she lets it slip, she says, no it's not, it's ...$$...  
 
I'm not going to say how much it is, but it's just enough to keep me alive for at least a year. Now, understand, she wasn't planning to give us this money while she was still alive, but because her health is declining and she is starting to forget things, she decided it would be better to give it to us now. But, something was odd about this discussion. I could tell my brothers were being elusive, and then they said, "we'll just have to let the money go to the nursing home if she has to go to one. We should just forget about it." It was like a choir of angels singing the same song about peace and harmoney. Basically what they were doing was trying to make me think there wasn't enough money to matter and get me to look the other way while they pocket the money and leave me out of it.  
 
Everyone in my family is well aware of my circumstances. They know I have no money and if my mother dies or goes into a nursing home, I will be homeless. There is nowhere for me to go and I am stuck in disability limbo for another year. It is going to be at least another whole year before that is even decided, so having enough money to have a place to live and food to eat during the next year is vital to my survival. So before I even knew how much money there was, they were wiggling around trying to convince me it wasn't enough money to put any effort into salvaging.  
Then, as it turns out, the bank acount has all of our names on it. They were just going to clean it out, never tell me and let me die on the streets from exposure. I said that to them and my one brother says, "Oh sorry, I wasn't thinking about you". WTF?
 
So that's when my mother blurted out how much money it is and I nearly had a heart attack. And I'm like, "let it go? Are you crazy, i'm a month away from becoming homeless and either freezing to death or starving to death and you just want to let it go???"  
 
Pardon me, but am I hearing this? I could pay two years rent in advance and have enough money to buy food and pay my bills too. Realize that this is money that my mother had decided to split up evenly between us and wants to give it to us now. It's not like anyone is drooling for my mother to die so they can inherrit it. And it's not enough to make anyone rich, it's just enough to make life less stressful for a couple of years. But they'd rather let me freeze to the sidewalk somewhere and split up my portion of the money than allow me some peace of mind and a chance to remain alive long enough to get through the disability process. I don't even know what the emotion I am feeling can be called. It's beyond anger, beyond confusion, beyond belief. There was no thought on their part of actually letting it go, it was letting me go and keeping the money I should get.
 
Well, that goes back to what I started talking about with the piano. I was given a piano for my birthday that was purchased with the money that my parents were going to give me, but instead, never told me I had an option and let me believe they were just being wonderful parents who bought me a piano. NO! I bought that piano without knowing it and they gave it to me. My brothers were given cash, and they got birthdays presents on their birthdays that were not purchased with that money.  
 
But that's how my family has always treated me. I'm the youngest and always was last in line for everything, including love. It's just one more reason why I wish December 21st had actually been the end of days.  
 
JJ