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Escape from the crazy house.
5 years ago
The last two weeks have been... something. Tiring. Exhausting. Frustrating.
Here are the characters of this story, names have been changed to protect the not so innocent:
Me - 33 year old male, living at my parents' house once again.
Younger brother - 28, has a drinking problem. And a 5 year old niece.
Niece - She's 5.
Mother - 60+, I don't even know where to begin.
Cousin - 38, trouble follows her.
Lincoln - Cousin's abusive, typical asshole macho hispanic dude of a boyfriend. Crazy motherfucker.
===
Monday - 2 March 2020
Brother had been up all night drinking, as well as having done some cocaine with his friend at some point during the night or the day before. Failed to get his daughter (my niece) ready for school. This sparked an argument between him and mother. His drunk ass flew off the handle, he started raging. I was nearly asleep, about to take a nap when I was startled back awake by a loud door slam. I hoped it wasn't too serious and tried to go back to sleep. Soon enough younger brother and older brother are arguing, yelling at each other right outside my door. More door slams.
I decide I better go out there and try to keep the peace, try to make sure nobody did anything stupid. I go out to the main part of the house, and hear mother sobbing, wailing even. I head up the stairs to her room, but then the front door opens and slams shut, it's younger brother coming in. I yell at him to stop slamming doors and shit, and he yells back "WHAT YOU WANNA GO?" and rushes up the stairs to try and start a fight with me. It fizzles out when he actually reaches me (with my mother, my cousin, and my other, also female, cousin all yelling at him/us to stop), I calm him down and tell him he really does need to settle down.
As we're heading back down the stairs, mother informs me that younger brother crushed her cowboy hat during the argument, she's very upset about it. I'm upset about it, I have a pretty big problem with people destroying other people's property out of malice.
A short while later, I drive my younger brother and his friend back to the friends' place. I was of course, happy to get him out of the house. An internet friend of mine had previously offered to let me move in with him in California (I was in Arizona), I hit him up and asked if he was serious about that, as at this point I wanted to get the hell away from this house and this family.
===
Friday - 13 March 2020
A week and a half had passed since the incident with my brother. He'd since apologized to me, apologized to everyone in the house, claimed he wasn't going to drink anymore, and things had been calm. I was thinking maybe I wouldn't move after all, or at the very least, wait until I could find a job and build up some money before I went running off to another state.
Around mid day, Cousin knocks on my door and asks if I can haul a bunch of her stuff to her friends' place. I ask why, she says my mother is flipping out and wants her out of the house immediately. I say fine, and go out to help her hurriedly pack her stuff. She's very paranoid about Lincoln showing up. Every car that comes down our driveway nearly sends her into a panic. She tells me about what happened much earlier that day/morning.
At around 4am, her abusive boyfriend Lincoln had followed her back to the house in his truck, and when she pulled her car into the driveway, he hit her car with his truck, on purpose. Cousin freaked out and whipped the car around through the front yard, almost onto the porch. Lincoln got out of his car and pounded on her windshield. The commotion woke people up (not me, I was dead asleep, my room is far from the front of the house). The cops were soon called and Lincoln left.
The cops were called. Mother had insisted that cousin (who had been on the wrong side of the law most of her life, been in and out of prison, jail, etc.), that she -had- to be the one to call the cops. Father, thinking that it really didn't matter who called the cops, called them himself, despite mother's insisting that it -had- to be cousin.
This really, -really- set my mother off. This was just the biggest deal in the world to her, for some reason. This is why she was kicking cousin out. This is why we were packing stuff into my car.
Mother's sanity and composure slipped more and more as the next couple hours went by. She would not stop yelling, screaming at my father and cousin. At everyone. She was just trying to pick verbal fights with everyone at this point, saying anything she could think of to try and start arguments. All sorts of mean, ugly things. It got to the point where she was throwing shit down from the top of the stairs, onto the hard wood entryway floor. A laptop, a wireless keyboard, makeup bottles, all sorts of shit. Father has come to the conclusion, some time ago, that mother is mentally ill, and he just... lets her do these things. I went up the stairs and asked her to stop throwing things.
She stopped, but then went into her room and I hear things being thrown, knocked over, broken, it sounded like she was beating on the walls. She continued to come back out of her room to yell at people, more and more. At some point she insinuates that my cousin and my father have a thing for each other. This sets my cousin off who screams "what the FUCK?!", father gets up and comes over to yell at mother a bit, and at some point all three of them were yelling/screaming all over each other all at once. I'm standing at the top of the stairway, mostly because I want to keep mother physically separated from everyone else. It's bad enough that she's been screaming at everyone for an hour straight and has been throwing and breaking shit, the last thing I wanted was for her to start a physical confrontation with anyone.
At this moment, I think I found a newfound respect for people who grew up in abusive households with lots of yelling. I'm a 33 year old man who's not really had to deal with this kind of thing that much, and this was stressing me the hell out.
We finally get cousin's stuff packed and we get her the hell out of there. Pretty sure that last thing I heard before I went out the front door was mother screaming about how she hates everyone, hates herself, and wants to kill herself.
We get to my cousin's friend's trailer and unload all her stuff. I nearly got bit by a pit bull. Usually animals like me, but I dunno, perhaps he sensed the utter tension and stress and how high strung both me and my cousin were.
I say goodbye to my cousin, I don't know when I will see her again, as at this point I am moving out of this crazy house as soon as humanly possible.
===
I get back home, things are relatively quiet. I go back into my room and before I get a chance to do much, the power goes out for a couple of minutes. After the power came back on, I decide to go out to the main part of the house, just... to continue to keep the peace if need be. Turns out my mother is the one who went out and shut the power off, because she's still so angry at father, she doesn't want him doing anything. Doesn't want him watching TV, using his computer, doesn't want him doing -anything-. He's ignoring her, so she shut off the power. Father goes out and turns the power back on. Mother goes out and turns it back off. Back on, back off, on again, off again.
At this point I am just utterly beside myself. Is this real life? Are these real people actually acting like this? Are these my own parents doing this?
Mother finally stops shutting the power off and goes back into her room upstairs. A few minutes later, she comes back down and starts pulling the ethernet cables out of the router. I just sigh... and then she grabs the router's power cord and swings, slams it against the railing of the stair way and breaks it. The plastic side panel popped off and flew right over my niece's head, nearly hitting her. Everyone gets on her case and tells her she needs to stop this shit immediately, that she cannot be putting niece in danger, etc.
I am so unbelievably beside myself at this point. Maybe I should have been more proactive and aggressive in stopping her ridiculous behavior. It's just... I did not wake up that morning expecting to possibly be facing a physical confrontation with my 60+ year old grandma of a mother. It's also... not my house. Not my house, not my rules. And the fact that my father was just letting mother "get away" with all this ridiculous behavior, well it sent mixed messages to me. I wasn't really sure what to do.
I went back to my room and started packing, and let my friend know that I was leaving either tomorrow, or the next day.
P.S. Midway through the evening, I grabbed my smallest kitchen knife and had it in my pocket. With how crazy everyone was being, and with Lincoln unaccounted for, I figured there might be a possibility of me finding myself in a physical confrontation. I decided I'd rather have the knife and not need it, than need it and not have it.
===
Saturday - 14 March 2020
I continue to pack my stuff and begin loading it into my car. While carrying a box out, mother calls down from the top of the stairs to me "You seriously can't handle a little family drama?". I told her not to give me that attitude, and that after yesterday, I am -out- of here. We had a bit more back and forth, and at that point I decide I am not waiting another day, I am leaving as soon as I finish packing my shit.
So I packed, said my goodbyes (to my brothers, niece, and cousin, not to either of my parents), and got the hell out of there.
Drove from Laveen, Arizona, to Indio, California, with my small dog in tow, and settled in for the night.
===
Sunday - 15 March 2020
I continue on my journey to San Francisco. An hour or two after beginning this part of my journey, some rain hits. The windshield wipers on my car are in bad shape, nearly falling off, they do a minimal job at helping visibility when it's raining. I decide to get off the highway and wait out the rain. Unfortunately I couldn't... find any good spots to park the car. I end up driving through a downtown area. I haaate driving in downtown areas. In fact I have never particularly enjoyed driving at all, but having to drive in crowded downtown areas where I can't even stop to take a moment and think, was just... incredibly frustrating, nerve wracking, almost panic-inducing.
I finally found a parking lot around some stores and got my bearings, but the incident left me very high strung and stressed for hours afterwards. Some hours later, at a rest stop, I found that one of the straps holding down my car-top-carrier had torn nearly halfway. I moved the strap so the torn part wasn't being rubbed/pulled against by a metal bit on the car top carrier, but I was still very nervous about this. So my stress levels remained very high. I stopped at another gas station to see if they had any straps I could buy to replace the failing one, but didn't find anything. Finally, I decided to move the strap more, so that the torn part was inside of the car. This way, not only could I keep an eye on it which did a great deal to put me at ease, but it was also safe inside the car, not being subjected to 65mph winds.
Hours and hours and hours of driving later, I finally, finally got to my friend's place, and I've been settling in and getting situated for the past two days or so.
===
It took two days and 750 miles of driving, but I escaped the crazy house.
Here are the characters of this story, names have been changed to protect the not so innocent:
Me - 33 year old male, living at my parents' house once again.
Younger brother - 28, has a drinking problem. And a 5 year old niece.
Niece - She's 5.
Mother - 60+, I don't even know where to begin.
Cousin - 38, trouble follows her.
Lincoln - Cousin's abusive, typical asshole macho hispanic dude of a boyfriend. Crazy motherfucker.
===
Monday - 2 March 2020
Brother had been up all night drinking, as well as having done some cocaine with his friend at some point during the night or the day before. Failed to get his daughter (my niece) ready for school. This sparked an argument between him and mother. His drunk ass flew off the handle, he started raging. I was nearly asleep, about to take a nap when I was startled back awake by a loud door slam. I hoped it wasn't too serious and tried to go back to sleep. Soon enough younger brother and older brother are arguing, yelling at each other right outside my door. More door slams.
I decide I better go out there and try to keep the peace, try to make sure nobody did anything stupid. I go out to the main part of the house, and hear mother sobbing, wailing even. I head up the stairs to her room, but then the front door opens and slams shut, it's younger brother coming in. I yell at him to stop slamming doors and shit, and he yells back "WHAT YOU WANNA GO?" and rushes up the stairs to try and start a fight with me. It fizzles out when he actually reaches me (with my mother, my cousin, and my other, also female, cousin all yelling at him/us to stop), I calm him down and tell him he really does need to settle down.
As we're heading back down the stairs, mother informs me that younger brother crushed her cowboy hat during the argument, she's very upset about it. I'm upset about it, I have a pretty big problem with people destroying other people's property out of malice.
A short while later, I drive my younger brother and his friend back to the friends' place. I was of course, happy to get him out of the house. An internet friend of mine had previously offered to let me move in with him in California (I was in Arizona), I hit him up and asked if he was serious about that, as at this point I wanted to get the hell away from this house and this family.
===
Friday - 13 March 2020
A week and a half had passed since the incident with my brother. He'd since apologized to me, apologized to everyone in the house, claimed he wasn't going to drink anymore, and things had been calm. I was thinking maybe I wouldn't move after all, or at the very least, wait until I could find a job and build up some money before I went running off to another state.
Around mid day, Cousin knocks on my door and asks if I can haul a bunch of her stuff to her friends' place. I ask why, she says my mother is flipping out and wants her out of the house immediately. I say fine, and go out to help her hurriedly pack her stuff. She's very paranoid about Lincoln showing up. Every car that comes down our driveway nearly sends her into a panic. She tells me about what happened much earlier that day/morning.
At around 4am, her abusive boyfriend Lincoln had followed her back to the house in his truck, and when she pulled her car into the driveway, he hit her car with his truck, on purpose. Cousin freaked out and whipped the car around through the front yard, almost onto the porch. Lincoln got out of his car and pounded on her windshield. The commotion woke people up (not me, I was dead asleep, my room is far from the front of the house). The cops were soon called and Lincoln left.
The cops were called. Mother had insisted that cousin (who had been on the wrong side of the law most of her life, been in and out of prison, jail, etc.), that she -had- to be the one to call the cops. Father, thinking that it really didn't matter who called the cops, called them himself, despite mother's insisting that it -had- to be cousin.
This really, -really- set my mother off. This was just the biggest deal in the world to her, for some reason. This is why she was kicking cousin out. This is why we were packing stuff into my car.
Mother's sanity and composure slipped more and more as the next couple hours went by. She would not stop yelling, screaming at my father and cousin. At everyone. She was just trying to pick verbal fights with everyone at this point, saying anything she could think of to try and start arguments. All sorts of mean, ugly things. It got to the point where she was throwing shit down from the top of the stairs, onto the hard wood entryway floor. A laptop, a wireless keyboard, makeup bottles, all sorts of shit. Father has come to the conclusion, some time ago, that mother is mentally ill, and he just... lets her do these things. I went up the stairs and asked her to stop throwing things.
She stopped, but then went into her room and I hear things being thrown, knocked over, broken, it sounded like she was beating on the walls. She continued to come back out of her room to yell at people, more and more. At some point she insinuates that my cousin and my father have a thing for each other. This sets my cousin off who screams "what the FUCK?!", father gets up and comes over to yell at mother a bit, and at some point all three of them were yelling/screaming all over each other all at once. I'm standing at the top of the stairway, mostly because I want to keep mother physically separated from everyone else. It's bad enough that she's been screaming at everyone for an hour straight and has been throwing and breaking shit, the last thing I wanted was for her to start a physical confrontation with anyone.
At this moment, I think I found a newfound respect for people who grew up in abusive households with lots of yelling. I'm a 33 year old man who's not really had to deal with this kind of thing that much, and this was stressing me the hell out.
We finally get cousin's stuff packed and we get her the hell out of there. Pretty sure that last thing I heard before I went out the front door was mother screaming about how she hates everyone, hates herself, and wants to kill herself.
We get to my cousin's friend's trailer and unload all her stuff. I nearly got bit by a pit bull. Usually animals like me, but I dunno, perhaps he sensed the utter tension and stress and how high strung both me and my cousin were.
I say goodbye to my cousin, I don't know when I will see her again, as at this point I am moving out of this crazy house as soon as humanly possible.
===
I get back home, things are relatively quiet. I go back into my room and before I get a chance to do much, the power goes out for a couple of minutes. After the power came back on, I decide to go out to the main part of the house, just... to continue to keep the peace if need be. Turns out my mother is the one who went out and shut the power off, because she's still so angry at father, she doesn't want him doing anything. Doesn't want him watching TV, using his computer, doesn't want him doing -anything-. He's ignoring her, so she shut off the power. Father goes out and turns the power back on. Mother goes out and turns it back off. Back on, back off, on again, off again.
At this point I am just utterly beside myself. Is this real life? Are these real people actually acting like this? Are these my own parents doing this?
Mother finally stops shutting the power off and goes back into her room upstairs. A few minutes later, she comes back down and starts pulling the ethernet cables out of the router. I just sigh... and then she grabs the router's power cord and swings, slams it against the railing of the stair way and breaks it. The plastic side panel popped off and flew right over my niece's head, nearly hitting her. Everyone gets on her case and tells her she needs to stop this shit immediately, that she cannot be putting niece in danger, etc.
I am so unbelievably beside myself at this point. Maybe I should have been more proactive and aggressive in stopping her ridiculous behavior. It's just... I did not wake up that morning expecting to possibly be facing a physical confrontation with my 60+ year old grandma of a mother. It's also... not my house. Not my house, not my rules. And the fact that my father was just letting mother "get away" with all this ridiculous behavior, well it sent mixed messages to me. I wasn't really sure what to do.
I went back to my room and started packing, and let my friend know that I was leaving either tomorrow, or the next day.
P.S. Midway through the evening, I grabbed my smallest kitchen knife and had it in my pocket. With how crazy everyone was being, and with Lincoln unaccounted for, I figured there might be a possibility of me finding myself in a physical confrontation. I decided I'd rather have the knife and not need it, than need it and not have it.
===
Saturday - 14 March 2020
I continue to pack my stuff and begin loading it into my car. While carrying a box out, mother calls down from the top of the stairs to me "You seriously can't handle a little family drama?". I told her not to give me that attitude, and that after yesterday, I am -out- of here. We had a bit more back and forth, and at that point I decide I am not waiting another day, I am leaving as soon as I finish packing my shit.
So I packed, said my goodbyes (to my brothers, niece, and cousin, not to either of my parents), and got the hell out of there.
Drove from Laveen, Arizona, to Indio, California, with my small dog in tow, and settled in for the night.
===
Sunday - 15 March 2020
I continue on my journey to San Francisco. An hour or two after beginning this part of my journey, some rain hits. The windshield wipers on my car are in bad shape, nearly falling off, they do a minimal job at helping visibility when it's raining. I decide to get off the highway and wait out the rain. Unfortunately I couldn't... find any good spots to park the car. I end up driving through a downtown area. I haaate driving in downtown areas. In fact I have never particularly enjoyed driving at all, but having to drive in crowded downtown areas where I can't even stop to take a moment and think, was just... incredibly frustrating, nerve wracking, almost panic-inducing.
I finally found a parking lot around some stores and got my bearings, but the incident left me very high strung and stressed for hours afterwards. Some hours later, at a rest stop, I found that one of the straps holding down my car-top-carrier had torn nearly halfway. I moved the strap so the torn part wasn't being rubbed/pulled against by a metal bit on the car top carrier, but I was still very nervous about this. So my stress levels remained very high. I stopped at another gas station to see if they had any straps I could buy to replace the failing one, but didn't find anything. Finally, I decided to move the strap more, so that the torn part was inside of the car. This way, not only could I keep an eye on it which did a great deal to put me at ease, but it was also safe inside the car, not being subjected to 65mph winds.
Hours and hours and hours of driving later, I finally, finally got to my friend's place, and I've been settling in and getting situated for the past two days or so.
===
It took two days and 750 miles of driving, but I escaped the crazy house.
...
Well, as sane as San Francisco can be
That was insane.
I'm glad you're some place safe now.