I can recall that around a year ago my stress levels were rising around this time but back then I blamed it on the continuing crisis with Jermaine. There is good reason now to reconsider that argument.
Looking back it has always been around September or October where I have hit my low point. This could be a seasonal adjustment moving from summer to autumn and onto winter and that long cold slog or, and I feel this is more likely, it is seasonal but related to what happens around this time of year.
The school holidays are drawing to conclusion and they will have been heavily pressured with some many people under one roof at a time and often way too many people once all the kids mates are taken into the equation. Matt will be doing his regular yearly thing of going back to college yet never quite seeming to do so with ever increasing periods at home for alleged ‘study’. I will see myself as yet again putting off an education that is long overdue and looking for ‘me time’ which never seems to quite happen thanks to those that must have my time.
This year I have been warning Matt since May that he needed to sort himself out as he was just giving off vibes that he just didn’t have a clue what would be happening this year with regard to his education. He’d already quite an OK job because he was bored with it and wanted to spend more time with what I refer to as ‘his little friends’ and that’s because most of them are no more than 15 years old. He ‘forgot’ to go to two of his ‘A’ level exams yet continued to put off making any alternate plans besides an ever increasing level of debt to me and no apparent care as to what he needed to do.
He told me a little over a week ago that he’s not doing ‘A’ levels anymore but a HND instead. The impact of that is that I lose all benefits for him, Child Benefit, Income Support … the whole lot to the tune of some £67 a week. If he’d kept up a job over the summer then this would not be an issue but as it is, he knew best (as always) and left things. Now he is making virtually no effort to find a job that will pay him enough to live here so I am feeling blackmailed into subsidising him for as long as it takes for him to get a job. The alternative is to throw him out of the house and make him support himself as the only way to teach him what responsibility is but then … I am me and that would just be really difficult and hurt me like hell but what are my alternatives? I am dealing with an 18 year old who just already knows everything he needs to know about life and will do things according to what he knows to be the case because there just cannot possibly anyone else that knows as much as him and, besides, the golden rule according to Matt is that anything which affects his social life and his time with his little friends has to be avoided.
I am getting that feeling again, that one that says … run away little man, leave them to it.
Matters are not being helped by my beloved. He too needs to find work yet is doing nothing about it which leaves me in an awkward situation with Matt. How can I be on his back whilst John sits at the laptop playing games instead of job hunting?
Why does it have to be that I take all this upon myself? A lottery win would resolve such issues as I just would not care less. I could just say to hell with it and change things but, as it stands, I have few if any options except add to the stress levels until eventually I get ill or something and then they’ll just expect more from me because, after all, I am the bad guy, the one that makes them do stuff they don’t want to do. It’s totally no win.