Throwaway for obvious reasons.
Me and my girlfriend have been dating for over a year now. Before we went out, we had a class together and she sat next to me. We weren't exactly close, but we talked occasionally. Since our first date things have been going really well. We clicked instantly and grew from there.
For our first few dates we went out to eat a few times, saw a movie and went to a park. We texted pretty much daily, and always had plans for our next meeting by the end of each date.
Here's where things changed dramatically. It was exactly ten days after our first date and we had no plans to meet that day. We texted a bit in the morning, and she stopped replying suddenly. I thought little of it. About an hour after I last texted her, she very unexpectedly shows up at my door with tears streaming down her face.
She was shopping with the exchange student that lived with her when she got the call. Her dad had killed himself. She rushed back, and told me she had no idea why but her first instinct was to come to me. I put on my jacket and drove her home, where I met her family for the first time. I really had no idea what to say or do. At the time I hadn't ever had someone close to me die or even really come close to death, but I did my best. I stayed with her all day for a few weeks, keeping her company and taking her out for strolls at the park when she needed to get out of her house to get away from her family.
I think I really helped her and her family get through it all. I would do the grocery shopping for her distraught mother and did work around her house, despite my girlfriend insisting I didn't have to.
My girlfriend has two siblings. She's the oldest, her younger sister is 17 (she was 16 at the time), and her younger brother is 15 (13 at the time). I got along really well with them, and I like to think I helped them too. I spent a lot of time with them, taking them out to interesting places, teaching them to cook and how to play cards, stuff like that.
In the coming year, I started to notice her mother is very unstable. My girlfriend tells me she has always been a pretty unpleasant person, which she believes largely contributed to her father's suicide. She drinks a lot, not like a ton, but more than average. She's the kind of woman (I've witnessed it, it's fucking embarrassing) who makes scenes anywhere when she doesn't have her way, she has ridiculous mood swings, and when she's upset she says some truly horrible things to her kids (mainly my girlfriend, she adores the youngest boy and doesn't pay much attention to the middle child). She's disgustingly lazy, too. She's a nurse but only works two days a week at most. Every morning she's not working she'll come downstairs and grab a bag of chips for breakfast, stay in front of the TV all day and not do anything. Her house is usually trashed, she doesn't cook and can't really be bothered to keep the refrigerator stocked for her kids. What's worse, she does very little while spending all day bossing her kids around, who are all in school and have other activities they like to do. I mean, I completely understand it's good to have the whole family help around the house and run errands, but she literally does nothing for the majority of her time.
Her mood swings are the most damaging bit. Many times my girlfriend has showed up at my house in tears because her mother kicked her out over something so, so minor. She would scream at my girlfriend, telling her she was a horrible person and sometimes accusing her of being the reason her father killed himself. Really fucked up things like that. Then, every single time, she'll apologize and tell my girlfriend she loves her and to please come back, she'll never do it again, only to have the same shit happen next week.
There's a lot more I wish I could express into words, but that's the basic idea.
Currently, the middle child is on an exchange in Germany and my girlfriend and I are in college an hour away, leaving only her and her son. I believe she feels lonely, because very quickly after we left for college she took in another exchange student, joined a ton of dating websites and adopting more animals, bringing a total of 4 dogs and 5 cats. She's also on a variety of mental health medications, some from before the suicide but most from after.
Today my girlfriend went home for the first time in a while, and things went the usual route. As she came to pick my girlfriend up, things were okay, at least peaceful and civil. But then she managed to my girlfriend cry in the car ride before even leaving the city, and within seconds of stepping inside she made her deep clean the trashed house. She dislikes it, but she usually doesn't fuss a lot about it.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the condition her brother is in. Currently in the house is only her mother, her brother, and a Japanese exchange student. Her brother looks completely worn out, he says he gets shouted at a lot, doing a grown man's house work, struggling with his freshman year in high school, and having to basically parent the exchange student because the mother does virtually nothing for him. She says he doesn't really smile much anymore.
Today, she kicked my girlfriend out once more over another minute problem. She said some nasty things to her (in front of her brother, no less), calling her a selfish bitch among other things. The mother stormed out of the house, grabber her son and told my girlfriend to get the fuck out of her house. Well, we live over an hour away and she had no way of getting back. So she called her aunt and asked her to pick her up.
Her aunt is being very supportive. my girlfriend is sleeping in her aunts house tonight and she's coming back tomorrow.
What really kills me is that my girlfriend is, justifiably, depressed. She adored her dad, he was always the kids' barrier against their mom. She says she just wished he was here, how her biggest worry is her brother, and how she just wished she had a normal family or at least a parent. She decided that she is tired of dealing with her mother, and directly told her she is cutting ties with her. Her mother has already apologized and gone through the usual act, but my girlfriend has made her decision.
We plan to place an anonymous tip about possible abuse toward her brother, but really I just have no idea what to do or say to help my girlfriend. I guess I plan on just being there for her, and helping her brother whenever I see him, even if it's just by playing Smash Bros with him and taking him to Gamestop.
I'm split, part of me really wants her to just cut ties with her very toxic mother, but part of me wants to help make things good again, but I fear it's simply impossible to do so.
Submitted December 13, 2015 at 11:18AM by Gorilla_Butt http://ift.tt/1RL5rya TwoXChromosomes
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