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Dec 2014
I often find it puzzling when my 28-year-old sister displays her total lack of adult feeling. In her adult years she never has shown an ability to feel what my parents were feeling as they took care of her 100% financially.
    She was mentally ill from a very young age, a spectacle for the neighborhood kids to see as she took the smallest things to heart and didn't care much for friends to play with. Once old enough to have a job, she had no interest in having a job. And not in the usual immature teen kind of way, but a more deeply-rooted, adult fear of work and adult responsibility type of way.
    Now 28, still living at home and jobless she attends the local community college where she is afraid to check her grades because having no job or responsibilities does not allot her the ability to firmly grasp all A's. I was not always so highly critical of her. To the contrary, my whole family was made to think she was some mysterious *** of gold we all had to treat as if there was nothing peculiar and all her outlandish antics were okay.
   Indeed, I'd have no problem with her if she could only hold a ******* job, or do like I am and get on FAFSA and find a loving, kind-hearted man to support her while she goes to school. A man for whom she'll clean up after, do his ***** laundry and fulfill all domestic obligations in-part or entirely until she graduates an honors student and finds a career she can be proud of. But no, instead she found an abusive boyfriend who was himself mentally Ill, as arguably anyone would have to be to want to get with her, and after a fight she broke her cello and now my parents are paying for it. My dad, who has been for several years saving up for something nice for himself, who is now committed to paying for my wedding, who has been ignoring my emails inquiring about money to start buying little reception things, willingly or unwillingly. My mother, who barely makes anything as a public school teacher. Who both help support my uncle who is also living there now.
   *******, the hardship of my mental life has been to be angry at these people, the sweetest of the sweet for continually allowing her to suckle their metaphorical ***** for 10 years too long. The enabling has put me into a mental twist and I have become obsessed with it because I was down in it for so long. I guess all families have that one person, but few too my personal knowledge have one like this. Sometimes, I wish one of her suicide attempts had been successful, but then my parents would be enthralled in pain and anguish for something that may have been different, but probably never will. It is just like how it is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all. If she'd never been born, maybe they'd been happier. Or maybe she'd have been born a different person. But now they have her, and they can't go back.
   She'll probably wind up homeless once my parents are gone. We've both agreed we can't take her on...
   This all might make me seem like the bad guy, but you wouldn't know unless you spent a day in the life.
True story. My sister just turned 28, has no job, lives at home, doesn't drive and my father is now paying for the instrument she threw across the room, and neglecting to answer my emails asking for small installments of reception money so my Maid of Honor and I can start buying things... But, as I said, I can never be mad. How can one be mad at Mr. & Mrs. Mother Teresa for caring for a ****** they chose to have.  (I use the term ****** because she is, for all intensive purposes emotionally and socially *******)
Emily Rebecca Burch
Written by
Emily Rebecca Burch
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