Public meltdowns and general ranting. (March 6, 2009)

Whenever I think I'm having a good day, I just need a teenager to remind me that life is full of disappointments and upsets.

Yes, this is a rant. For those of you not interested in such things, here's a funny comic.

Today, I had a reasonably good day at work. I got things done. I was productive. I even came up with some ideas for budgeting travel expenses for the future - now that I've got a reasonably reliable paycheck, we want to save up to buy cool things, or take day trips, or invest in our business idea. I even had an idea for a new roleplaying system that is still lurking in the back of my head.

Unfortunately, then my ride home from work arrived, at which point the eighteen-year-old that I buy food, clothing, and other necessities for (who has recently gotten a job) began a long tirade in the back seat about how I should be less important to my wife than her, how the house belongs to her (it belongs to my mother-in-law, to whom I pay rent), and how we should move out and how what rent we pay is insignificant (yes, to be fair, it's a very good deal for the neighborhood), and threatening to kill me (this last was because she attempted to climb over the back seat to mess with the radio, and I pushed her arm away from it because she was fighting with the driver of the car.)

Now, I don't claim to have a particularly high sense of self-importance. However, I do not particularly appreciate being screamed at and called worthless by the same people who frequently demand money from me and then wonder why I might not be interested in giving it to them. I do my best to be not only responsible with paying rent, but in helping with household repairs, fixing little problems, and being a kindly and conscientious son-in-law. If I can't do something, I explain why I can't do it; if I can do something, I do it, and I do it when I say I'm going to do it.

In contrast, my teenage daughters have recently turned eighteen. Neither has been particularly respectful to me before then - I am the husband who should never tell them what to do, should never touch them, should never even talk to them unless they are directly speaking to me - and it has only gotten worse lately. They have jobs, and we compete over a common resource -- the family car, which belongs to the mother-in-law.

My wife is not particularly happy about serving as taxi to drive multiple people to their workplaces at various hours; while she is used to driving me to and from work, and our mother-in-law to where she needs to go, these extra trips add at least two hours of driving to each day, and for someone with back problems two hours in a car is like a form of torture. Yet instead of being thanked politely or given any form of respect, she is screamed at and treated like an unpaid servant by our children.

Furthermore, our children are constantly trying to get us evicted from the house, or trying to drive us into leaving -- or, alternately, trying to drive Laura into a nervous breakdown. She has post-traumatic stress disorder and has anxiety attacks and high blood pressure, and getting screamed at by teenagers on a daily basis is not helping.

My children do not pay rent; they rarely assist in household chores, and then only if their grandmother asks repeatedly over a period of multiple days; they occasionally punch holes in walls and doors; and they scream at anyone else in the house when they don't get what they want. They particularly dislike me, because I am less inclined to put up with this behavior, and more likely to deny them requests (and have the audacity to deny requests that I hear being issued towards Laura). They are frequently abusive towards me and my wife (including the occasional death threats), and they are supported in this in part by our mother-in-law, who 'doesn't want to start trouble' - which roughly translates to 'refuses to support us if the police are called, unless they happen to be harassing her at the time'. And yes, the police have been out here on more than one occasion.

We've considered moving out, giving up to our kids' attempts to drive us out through sheer force of will and letting them have the house to themselves -- and this latest episode has us considering it again. Personally, I'd rather evict them, but without the homeowner's support, I suspect that's near-impossible. I almost think that one of our kids will have to make good on their threat to try to kill us before anything will get resolved, and that isn't a very pleasant thought at all.

So, I'm not having a good day anymore, but at least I've gotten that out of my system, and now I'm going to attempt to pretend that my life is not a series of attempts to convince me of my own worthlessness for a while. How're you?