To Vent Again

Why....would anyone asking for money scream and cuss at the person they're asking help from?

Sometimes people are so frustrating and dealing with them makes me want to crawl into bed and never come back out again.  Tonight, I had three people ask for money in the course of an hour.  One of them asked for five dollars, one asked for ten dollars, and one asked for fifty dollars.

The five dollars, fine.  My mother needed me to pick up her medicine and it was going to cost five dollars.  No big deal and she needs her medicine and since there isn't anyone else willing to help her, fine.

The ten dollars was actually the one I was most upset by.  At first.  It will be the one I'm most bothered by in the long run.  My father needed to put gas in his car.  He needed to do so because he takes EVERYONE ON THE PLANET where they need to go, daily.  He takes people an estimated thirty places every day.  Well, except he doesn't take me anywhere.  I have a car.  I put gas in my own car.  No one else puts gas in my car.  But I have to put gas in the car that takes them everywhere?  I told my father I didn't really have ten dollars but if he really needed it I would give it to him.  But I told him I had just enough money and that I supposed it would be fine.

Then THIS happened:  My sister called to ask for fifty dollars.  Now look, she's disabled with two amputated legs and sometimes she needs help but mostly she takes care of herself.  By herself.  On her own.  So when she needs help, that's fine with me.

The problem:  she did not call me directly.  Instead, she called my mother.  My father overheard the one-sided conversation and asked my mother whether my sister was calling to ask for money.  When my mother wouldn't answer him, he asked more forcefully and more angrily.  So my sister heard him say, "Is she calling to ask for money?" in an angry tone and assumed he was mad because she was asking for money.  So my sister, and my niece who was eavesdropping on my sister's side of the phone, started crying, screaming, and cussing.  This is all before I ever get on the phone.  They also hang up on my mother.

So she calls them back.  I get on the phone.  They are screaming at me, cussing about how they aren't ever going to fucking ask for any fucking help from any fucking person again and we can all just die and such.  I say they need to calm down.  That doesn't turn out so well.  I tell them I will call them back after I talk to my mother for a minute.

THAT doesn't go well, either.  Because when I explain that I think they need to apologize to me because they had no right to scream and cuss at me, my mother goes off on ME.  She says that when you're broke and frustrated sometimes you can't help but get angry.  I say, I still had nothing to do with that.  Then my mother starts yelling at me about how I need to stop trying to explain the world to her and how I need to stop talking to her like she's a child.  I say, "All I want from you is for you to admit I had every right to be angry they were cussing at me."  She REFUSED.  She yelled about how my father shouldn't have said what he said.  I remind her that STILL has nothing to do with me.  They called to ask me for money, cussed at me, and are still going to get their way and won't have to apologize?

I tell my mother how I feel like my feelings don't matter.  They should apologize to me.  She screams her tired old, "Tomorrow I'm going to leave all of you behind and get out of this bullshit."  Now SHE'S the victim.  Because of how I'M treating HER.

I went and got the money.  I got my mother's medicine and got sixty dollars cash so my father could put ten dollars in the gas tank and take the other fifty to my sister.  I came home and, again, asked my mother to admit that I had the right to be angry.  She wouldn't even look at me.  In a voice like a child who has to recite some rule her parents have told her, my mother gritted her teeth and "admitted" it.  I talked to her for a few more minutes and she never once looked at me.  It was so frustrating.

Meanwhile, here's the conversation I had with my father in the car on the way back from getting my mother's medicine:  My father told me he had asked whether my sister was calling for money because since I had told him I didn't have any money earlier he was going to save everyone the hassle and let my sister know I didn't have any money.  This enraged me for several reasons -

a)  I did have the money.  I just didn't want to give it to my father for gas.  Because it isn't fair that I should have to pay for gas for a car I never use.  But now I was forced to admit I told him I didn't have money when I did because I didn't want to give it to him for that reason.

b)  He should have known how it was going to sound if someone overheard him.  But he doesn't care.  He's never wrong, he always has to insert himself in the middle of things, and in case I didn't mention it, he's never wrong.

c)  He didn't have the right to tell anyone whether I had money or not.  He doesn't have the right to make decisions for me.  I know he thought he was protecting me but I should get to tell people what I have or don't have, what I can or can't do, what I will or won't do.  That's MY decision.

d)  Now EVERYONE knows that I have money.  Because when it's a big blowup EVERYONE hears about it.  So the money I tried to save for an emergency is just going to get blown away because now they are all going to crawl out of the woodwork.  And I won't be able to say no because they'll call me selfish and a liar. And while there's a part of me that knows I shouldn't care, I do, and it's hard.