On Sunday my mother called to ask me to lend her $3,500. My husband called her and made her cry, thus necessitating my calling to smooth things over.
On Monday, my mother called to say that she wanted to fly to Columbus next month to be here to celebrate my 30th birthday with me. I was put in the awkward position of being the adult and explaining that it would be madness to spend an absurd amount of money when she obviously didn’t have any. I cried all through my ride home from work because it broke my heart that I had to be the one to sacrifice and stand up and be reasonable when it’s my birthday. Both of my brothers got to have our mom with them on their 30th birthdays and neither one has ever been asked for money. Just me, the baby of the family, the one who was kicked out at 18.
On Tuesday I received my mother’s reply to my e-mail in all of its self-pitying glory. I was right, she said. She couldn’t look J in the eye anyway, now that he knows about her financial difficulties, she said. But she is never the practical one so she would, she stated, still feel so upset that she couldn’t be with me on my day. Nothing about how I might feel. I cried all the way home from work, shouting out loud all of the things that I was upset about, letting it all out in one cathartic commute.
And today, Thursday, I find out that a job opening that I’ve been interested in is not quite what I thought it would be. Half of the job description is half of my current position, the half that I love and that I’ve built up and turned into what it is today. So I will have to apply for my own fucking job and just hope that I can get it and that it will pay enough to make the more worthwhile. Otherwise, I won’t simply be stuck in my current job with a colleague I despise and another that irritates the fuck out of me, but I’ll also have to train someone else to do the fun and stimulating parts of my job.
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