Quote:
Originally Posted by Auntie77
Sure, fine, I can get behind this...if they are willing to live under their parents' roof by their rules, study the major the parents wish at the university the parents wish...but otherwise, I don't think so. I worked myself through school even though my parents could pay, for this very reason. Paying my own way, gave me full autonomy.
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My parents threw me out when I was 17. My mother was a crazy person who threw ALL of her children out of the house eventually, at ages ranging from 16 to 19. My father had a good job so money wasn't an issue or shouldn't have been - except my mother spent like a crazy person, too.
In my case I had done literally nothing to bring this on. I was not allowed out of the house except to go to school, and occassionally to girl scout meetings or y lessons. I had never seen a movie that wasn't a Disney movie at a movie theater. And back then there was no cable - lots of people didn't even have color tvs - so I wasn't seeing anything objectionable on TV (which I by and large also wasn't allowed to watch) either.
I wasn't allowed to have friends. I wasn't allowed to participate in after school activities. In fact I was kept on the girls track team without ever going to a single meet because I was the fastest middle distance runner in the school and the coach kept hoping my mother would relent. She never did. Track meets would have taken me out of her sphere of control, heaven forfend!
I had also been solely responsible for cooking and cleaning for a family of 7 starting at the age of 6 - which was when my mother threw my 16 year old sister out of the house, leaving me as the eldest girl child. Boy children didn't have to do anything more than mow the lawn.
I scored 98th percentile on the PSAT, ACT, and SAT or better - I forget the exact scores. Had I been allowed to study for the PSAT I'd have definitely had one of those automatic PSAT scholarships - I was only 0.1 percentage points off from qualifying. A teensy boost in math would have put me over the top.
I was actually awarded a full ride Chemistry scholarship to an in-state but not in-town university - which my mother refused to sign the paperwork for as I was 16 at the time and would be 17 at graduation, I could not accept this on my own. I never applied for it - a teacher at school sent in an application in my name. I was refused the FREE voice lessons an opera singer offered me after she heard me singing at school during a special class presentation for our choir class. Can't have any outside influences! Didn't get to go on the European tour with our award winning choir either.
WHEN I turned 16 - the age at which I was supposed to be allowed to start dating (keep in mind I was a JR in high school at that age) my mother laughingly told me that she had changed her mind and I would not be allowed to date until I was 18 because I was "so immature". Riiiight. I'd had total care of the house since the age of 6, including taking care of the other children - including my OLDER brother, who was a piece of work himself (they call it antisocial now, but what it is is psychopathic).
So. Here I was. Just 17. Tossed out of the house halfway through my SR year. At that time and at that age I could not get a job without a license/work permit - which I could not get without a signature from my parents on the form.
I could not apply to a college even after HS graduation because I was still underage and was not legally allowed to sign any of the admission paperwork by myself. I couldn't so much as get an official transcript from my HS to send to the college. Fortunately that paperwork had been filled out and submitted just a few days before I got the heave-ho. Couldn't actually register for classes though - #1, I had no money (see below for what happened to my savings account) and #2 there were more forms that had to be signed by parents that weren't GOING to be signed by parents.
So. No friends - I was not allowed to have any. No idea of where to go. It was winter. I had the coat on my back and a pair of boots and the clothes I had been wearing and that was it. There was money in my bank account but I couldn't touch that because it was a custodial account and guess who was the custodian? Besides which - every penny I earned on a paper route or anything else - the sporadic allowance I occasionally got, birthday money, Christmas gift money from my grandmothers, the money I got collecting pop bottles and turning them in for the deposit - which I had been putting in there faithfully since I was 6 - ALL MY MONEY that I had earned mind you - when I went to the bank to try to get some of it, it turned out she had withdrawn it all several months before anyway. I had not known she had emptied my bank account.
I finally managed to find a job that was "under the table" and which I was not legally allowed to hold - as a nurses assistant at a nursing home. I was underage, remember? So they were paying me under the table, and less than minimum wage - which at the time was not that high. I got fired from that - later I found out an inspector was coming that week and they had to get rid of me or be fined/have other repercussions for having an underage employee. I didn't get my last 2 weeks wages, either.
So - I had been staying in a spare room at the school nurse's home AND PAYING HER $300 a month rent - that was enough to rent an entire 2 bedroom apartment back then, IF I had been of legal age - which I was not. It was probably more than her house payment. A house payment of $300 a month in 1976 would have been pretty high, and she was not living in that kind of house. Not a house at all, actually - a single wide, as I recall. Now I got booted from there as well. Couldn't pay the "rent" any more. I'm not even going to describe where I ended up next. Suffice it to say it was horrible. If any child of mine had to go through that I would never forgive myself, even if it HADN'T been my fault as a parent.
While all this was going on, crazy mother was of course spreading it far and wide about what a victim she was and how sharper than a serpent's tooth and I just couldn't be controlled and ... you get the gist. Not a word of it true. I had been suspended in high school once too - for repeated "tardiness". After a full day at school, then doing my homework, then helping 4 other kids with THEIR homework, making dinner, doing laundry, doing dishes, cleaning until after midnight - then have to be up by 5:30 to iron my dad's shirts, make sure everybody ELSE got up, get breakfast (which had to be made by scratch at least 3 days out of 5, including biscuits), do the dishes - can't leave them rotting in the sink just because I am lazy and slow! Get a shower - last because that's how important *I* was, so cold water shower - and finally get myself out the door - school was a mile away - OF COURSE I was late more often than not.
Yup, child protective services DID come over more than once - but every single time my mother had warning and everything was made to be put to rights before they got there, even if I DID have to stay up 48 hours in a row to see it was done.
The ONLY thing that saved me at all was I managed to get hold of my dad and make him pay for my first semester at college - but that was the last I had out of my family. Once I was AT school, I could get a job on campus, part time, the max hours allowed per week at the time - 20. Found a cheap apartment (I had FINALLY turned 18), split it with 3 other girls. $80 a month plus 1/4th of the utilities. Still needed a 2nd off campus job to make all the expenses, even with the plasma money. So - I worked 40 hours a week from about Sep through June, and 60 hours a week in the summer - and attended school full time the entire time. You can't do that these days even with those hours on a minimum wage job. Rent is a crapload more than $80 a month and tuition is even a bigger crapload more than $275 per quarter.
Why didn't I get financial aid, you might ask. And well you might.
Because this entire time, my mother was still claiming me as a dependent on their taxes. I had been kicked out since 1975 and they continued to claim me on their taxes until either 1977 or 1978. Because of the weird way they determined "independence" back then, I was STILL not eligible for financial aid on my own until 2 full calendar years (3 school fiscal years) after they finally stopped claiming me.
Sure, I could have set the IRS on them - but then my DAD would have gone to jail, not my Mom. She was the crazy one - he was just the supernice guy who had no spine. So I was nearing graduation before I could apply for any financial aid whatsoever.
And all this time - the word around town was I was a slutty (never so much as kissed a boy, or even batted a single eyelash at one) lazy (!!!) disobedient (well I DID refuse to drop out of college, move back in, get a full time job, and pay my mother exorbitant rent - while still being the house slave - plus I refused to participate in the whole you-can't-date-until-you're-some-ever-receding-age scenario) ungrateful (umm - yeah?) child.
While back in the REAL world, I was working 40 to 60 hours at minimum wage jobs to pay for all my own rent, expenses, clothes, tuition, and books. Oh yeah, and the plasma thing, twice a week, for grocery money. Until I became so anemic they couldn't even PRETEND I was anywhere close. Then - no groceries for me. I was living on popcorn someone had put in the freezer at one of my workplaces, and orange juice because I was more afraid of scurvy than rickets.
So - before you all jump on the bandwagon about how bratty and unreasonable this girl is - consider that things may not be even CLOSE to what you think they are. The brat scenario is possible - but ... it's also possible that she is a long-suffering abusee, too.
Nobody believed me when I told the truth about what was going on, either. (Well, they did at college, knowing me - but nobody in town knew me - I was kept isolated, remember?) Because my dad was SUCH a nice guy. I should be ashamed for telling such lies.
Sure, he was a nice - if weak - guy - but my mother was a screaming lunatic. It happens. And of course the screaming lunatic isn't going to relate a story that even mildly resembles the truth.
I still have nightmares where I have been forced to move back home and am still the house slave, and I just can't get away ... So cut the girl some slack. I don't know that she is in anything like my situation - but you guys don't know that she's not.
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