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Determining what's Right and Wrong.
My parents are getting harder to deal with. I'm 21 and would've left a long time ago but I have nowhere to go. In school, I always poured my heart into my studies b/c I knew edu. was the only way out for me. I got into the schools I wanted, but my Dad got a D.U.I. I had my license and was basically ordered to go to a local small college close to home for the family. I did it anyway to help Mom mostly, b/c she's clinically depressed and on some psychiatric meds. They look at it as something I had to do when I just did it for them so things could stay afloat. It hurt to give up those schools but I did. My Dad is an alcoholic with abusive tendencies. We fight to blows sometimes (I'm a girl)when he feels that he's lost control. He builds up my Mom and I both, only to tear us down. My Mom isn't insane but she's not exceedingly well; she can function on her own but she wants me to stay. She says I'm spiteful because I want a life of my own. I just feel like I can never do anything. I know what I want to be; I know what I want to try to do but I can't even do that. I'm scared to leave but trapped in the same stupid cycle that's so stagant that it's like a slow death. Would it be right for me to leave, or should I stay? Am I really being selfish?
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Want to answer more questions in the Relationships category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Families?
You are 21, legally an adult now and entitled to your own life. While there are some who may say that ethically you owe you parents for everything they did for you while they raised you, that is not true.
Fact is no child asks to be brought into this world. Parents bring children into this world for their own reasons. For that reason the are required to raise them to adulthood and then let them make their way in the world. At this point many parents become the back stop for their children. Meaning they are their for them if they are needed, but they let them have their own lives.
No it is not selfish of you to want to have your own life, to experience life as it should be for you. To have a husband and children of your own if that is what you want. TO have a career to experience all you have prepared for.
I might suggest that since dad is an alcoholic that you take mom and yourself to an Al-Anon meeting. Al-Anon is a group of people like yourself who live with alcoholics they were formed to help each other with problems of living, now, people with dependencies. The following is the URL for their website through which you can find a local meeting and more about them [Link](Mouse over link to see full location).
I am recommending you take mom to an Al-anon meeting for two reason. First I think it will do you both good to speak to others who have the same problems and hear how they handle them. Second, I feel you will feel better about moving on with your life if you give your mother something or someone else to lean on.
You are not spiteful for wanting a life of your own. You are entitled to a life of your own, we all are. There is no law and nothing is written were a parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent. If a parent can function on their own than it is up to the child(ren) as to how much support they wish to provide.
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