DYSFUNCTIONAL = FUNCTIONAL

I always thought my brother and I were lucky because my parents weren't divorced. Despite my father's alcoholic binges and my mother's self disgust with her obesity and health problems, they managed to bury it, just enough to provide for my brother and I.

I only have few memories of them showing affection. I was nine and we were in London visiting family. They walked, holding hands and I remember feeling so happy to see them getting along. My mother kissed my father on the lips once after a visit to the fifth rehab my father was staying at to get off the alcohol. After that, I've never seen them touch each other...ever again.

My parents only had my brother and I. Even though we're twins, I was treated different because I'm female. My mother raised my brother to believe no other female would be able to care and treat him the way she does. Typical Jamaican mother. Now he's a pompous prick who convinced that other's are obligated to give him what he asks for, simply because he asks for it. I, on the other hand grew up to fend for myself. My parents raised me to believe that if I want something, I have to work twice as hard for it because it's a man's world. So now I live with my brother in my parents old house. We're lucky that we don't pay rent, but I pay all the bills, while he spends his money on his wants and looks to my parents to compensate him for his needs. They created a monster and they are regretting it...But back to my parents.

So my parents have been married for over 30 years. My parents don't talk to each other. Usually my mother yells and my father ignores her and goes on an alcoholic binge. He's already been caught several times drinking & driving. He even got into a car accident. My mother's addiction is food. She doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and she doesn't have any friends. She only knows how to drive from work to home and the mall. She never deviates from her world. She holds on to grudges and never lets them go. When she's feeling down about herfself, she projects onto the closest person-Me. She has a distorted self image and she's tried many times, unsuccessfully to project this on to me. Anyway, my parents basically argue all the time and who do they have to turn to? Me.

My father just called me at work to tell me that my mother is in her depressive mood again and she's talking about how she hates herself and wants to move back to London. My father was forced into early retirement due to kidney cancer (brought on by alcoholism), but my mother is still working. She would like to retire at the end of this year, build a retirement home in Jamaica and live between both places. But today, according to my father, she's depressed. He vents for about 20 minutes, ignoring my demands to call me later because I'M AT WORK.

"I just don't know what to do about your mother. She walks around the house crying and when I try to talk with her she bites my head off. She's talking about moving back to London and leaving me. I know what her problem is. She gained too much weight and it's affecting her health and she wants to get a gastric bypass, but Kaiser won't approve it......" He's going on and on about shit I already know.

I let him dump his shit out on me. My father doesn't have any friends either. He has 9 other siblings, but they don't call him. They are all competing against each other to see who can accumliate the most shit. They only call to brag about thier kids doing this and that or about the income property they just bought. I hate them, but I'm getting off track.

I'm tired of my parents coming to me, venting to me. It puts me in the middle and I get accused by both of them for being on the other one's side. I'm 29, but I'm the fucking kid. I don't like to hear my mother telling me how she hates my father and wants to leave him. She's been singing the same song ever since I could comprehend. I'm sick of my father telling me I need to talk some sense into my mother and get her out of her depression. I'M NOT A FUCKING MAGICIAN, NOR A SHRINK. I'm also sick of my parents acting like they're 80 years old.

My mother comes home from work, plops herself in front of the tv, eats food and falls asleep, with her work clothes and shoes still on. My father is retired, so he spends his mornings cleaning the yard, afternoons drinking and evenings in the street drunk until about 2am in the morning. We never know where he goes when he gets drunk. He'll leave the house drunk and crawl into the house the next morning, going straight to bed. I tried to follow him one time, but I lost him.

They don't appreciate the fact that they are in their late 50s, still alive and are able to actually build a retirement house in Jamaica and their kids aren't on crack and are living successful lives...well at least one is. They have one foot in the grave already and they've given up on being happy and today it's rubbed off on me. I'm tired of dealing with their crap. They need to work it out together or on their own. I got issues of my fucking own that I'm dealing with. They wouldn't dare go to my brother with this shit because, "he's too emotional, he's not strong enough. It would make him depressed. You're the strong one." I'm sick of it.

If they compared their lives with others, they would see that they are being undeserving, whiny twits who have so much life left and wouldn't waste another second stressing over petty shit. If you're overweight and don't like it, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Take a fucking walk, decrease you food intake, see your doctor. Don't call me complaining about it, plop yourself in front the tv and eat more food.

I don't think there's a such thing as a functional family. Every family has something fucked up about them. I mean majorly fucked. I just wish my parents could see that and know that the problems they've created for themselves are problems that can be solved and is nothing when compared to other families. They have no idea how lucky they are. Their level of dysfunction is low on the scale that they can be considered functional. Am I making sense? I have a feeling I'm scaring my readers......