I guess you could say that my mother was narcissistic and controlling thinking that she was the best around because she had a university degree and my dad, well, he was tied to her by her apron-strings.

For me, the whole thing started when I was 11 and my grades started to slip. Coming from an Asian family, good grades were supposedly essential to being a producing member of society. I came from a family of scholars, educators, and the elite brains of Japan. Most of my family are either teachers, scientists or engineers. My parents thought that being able to study came genetically or
something like that. Math and Science were not my forte and as my grades slipped further, my parents figured I was stupid since I was having even more difficulty. The teachers made an effort to try and help me, but the only way that they could even manage to break through understanding barrier was to go through the problem, step by step and repeat it until I understood it. This type of learning, my parents considered "spoon-feeding" and they refused to do it. Their explanation was "it's either sink or swim for this kid. We weren't spoonfed, why should we do it for this kid." My mother's elder brother was an honor-roll student. When he wrote his provincial exams, he came in second in the entire province. So my parents figured that I was either stupid or lazy, or horrors of horrors, BOTH! They both took great delight in taking every possible opportunity to tell me that I was stupid, lazy, fat and not going to amount to much of anything.

I loved music until my parents decided that I was going to be the next Yevgeny Kissin, the virtuoso of the keyboard and decided that I was going to take piano and learn to be the best damn pianist around so that I could be their meal-ticket. And if I wanted to stay under their roof, I was going to practice my piano; preferably until my fingers bled.

When they brought in Amber, I was under the impression that Mom and Dad would give her and I equal time. But the first night my parents brought her home, they kept her up and sent me to bed. What did that tell me? “You’re not important enough. We’ve got to coddle this one because she’s been bounced around from place to place.” That gave her the impression that she was the principal child in the family and she used it to every extent that she possibly could. Invading my private space (my room) at will, and monopolizing my time with my Dad. And my mother said absolutely nothing at all. Yet when I smacked her for trying to ‘bug me’ my mother went all ballistic. Certainly it was not what I should have done to her, but children settle disputes in that manner. That said to me that I wasn’t worth anything to my parents. Favoritism was also a preferred tactic of my parents who, when I was 12, adopted a child. Now child-psychologists say that you have to make the adopted child feel secure in his/her new surroundings. My parents took that and ran with it. Their explanation to me for adopting a little girl who was seven, was that I needed a sibling to play with and to provide that little girl with a decent home. My parents when they got her home that first night, told me to go to sleep at eight-o'clock and then stayed up with her until about ten. Then came the conditions, which were fine with me if they were administered equally. "Stay out of her room" was fine, as long as she stayed out of mine. Fat chance. She comes into my room at 6:30 in the morning and proceeds to jump up on my bed and on my stomach. My parents thought this was cute. So in retaliation, I stick my hand inside her doorway. My parents jump down my neck about being in her room. Seeing as she didn't get any grounding or any sort of discipline from my parents, she proceeded to invade my room at will for the next two weeks until I got fed up and told my parents that either she "gets out of my room and stays out..." or I leave. (remember, that this is a 12 year old, having to resort to a threat of having to leave...to get something that should have already been well-aware to adults that they would have to administer). They thought I was making a big deal out of it but consented to put a lock on my door so that I could lock her out at night so I would get a rude awakening in the morning. Then she took to screaming, yelling and crying to get her way. My mother told ME to let her into my room because SHE couldn't tolerate my sister's antics. Needless to say I stood my ground against an adult because that just wasn't right. My sister also tried to monopolize time with our father. Everywhere Dad went, my sister was sure to beg to follow. A 12 year old boy needs time to spend with his father too. But did they take that into consideration? Not very likely. I had to raise a scene to be even considered. A 12 year old having to act like a baby to get some deserved attention from his father. Finally, they had to take my sister out of the picture by returning her to the Ministry of Social Services because I was about ready to walk out of my family's home and become a Ministry ward myself if something wasn't done. They probably chose to keep me because the Ministry would have asked questions if they put me in Ministry custody and kept my adopted sister (which they would have done in a heartbeat if given the chance)

Since I was too big to hit, now she and Dad started in on the mind-games. Things they did contradicted what they said. The adoption provided them with an additional threat to use: "We're going to put you in Ministry custody if you don't behave." if I did the slightest thing they didn't agree with. In a young person's eyes, his parents are the embodiment of his well-being. The fact that my parents could threaten me with that made me start to trust them less and less. I remember the times she stood outside my door, yelling at me that “if” I “didn’t like the way things were in this house, that…” I “could jolly well leave!” She told me, a 9 year-old to get out. I remember it. It was 1979. The first time was when we were living in a shack in Maple Ridge.

Then of course when we moved into the house mom and dad built on the property, my mother had a emotional breakdown. Those years were hell. She says she doesn't remember those nights she crumbled mentally and emotionally. And woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I had to listen to that. I cowered under the sheets in my bed because I didn’t know whether she was going to flip out. Yet, she thought she didn’t have a problem. When she tried to throw herself down the well, did she even stop to think how much that affected me? Not a chance. Did she even think of the emotional trauma that was inflicted on me when I wasn’t even told what the hell happened that night because everyone didn’t think that it would be emotionally sound for someone my age to be let aware that his mother tried to commit suicide.

Let’s call this one physical abuse: Dad hitting me in the face that one time because I wouldn’t go out to the port-a-potty, because of the lightning and thunder that was going on. I was scared of lightning and thunder. Yet she never said anything to him. Nor did she not condone Dad’s actions. Sure my parents didn’t hit me very often, but that one time wasn’t warranted. Yeah, that’s where I learned that it was OK to hit things when you didn’t get what you wanted. My mother may not remember the two times I attacked her when we were living there? The first time was when she and dad were teasing me about being dumb. The second was for breaking one of my possessions. I may not have been studying, but they wanted me to study 6 hours a day after school. No fun time for me. The two of them had no respect for me as a human being. Anyone may think I’m making this up, but it's not. She’s probably pushed it so far into the back of her mind that it’s as good as if it wasn’t there. My parents probably don’t even think I’ve got a backbone. That’s the second time she let Dad hit me; and the very last time in my books; because I got too big to be hit. And I swore to myself that night that if Dad ever raised a hand to me again, I’d make sure he didn’t get back up. Oh, and about the time at when I was going to Albion, she decided to swallow a bunch of sleeping pills. My mother spent four nights at the Eagle Ridge Hospital. The first night getting her stomach pumped out and the other three trying to recover from trying to end her life? What does that make me feel? Well, that I and Dad didn’t mean enough to her to want to stay alive. That was the ultimate **** YOU!!! So now I know what she really thinks of me. I’m not worth anything to her or to Dad, I was her “kantoku” (her baby-sitter) that day that she decided to take those sleeping pills. My dad blamed me for letting her take those sleeping pills? And to top that off, I received a call from the school board telling me that if I didn’t get my ass to school that I would be placed on charge for TRUANCY??? That’s when I decided that if I wasn’t going to get love from my parents, that I’d take money instead. So my mother may be partly right when she says that I want money. Unless they’re willing to give me honest to goodness love and acceptance, then I want nothing from her except the knowledge that I’m going to do everything to make her pay for the hell she put me through.

When my Dad finally had enough of my mother's histrionics and threatened to go back to Japan and take me with him, my mother tried to haul me out of the truck bodily through two lanes of traffic because she were going to walk up that damned hill up to Michio’s home. I was screaming that I didn't want to go. And not to mention that. Not a single driver parked behind us at the light did ANYTHING to help me. She wouldn't remember that because everything she doesn’t want to remember, she buries so far in the back of her mind because if she does, she thinks it won’t exist to her or to anyone else. Too bad, it still does to me. She likes to make a good impression to everyone else but disguises the rest of the emotional hell she's inflicted on me so that everyone thinks she's a good parent and I'm a ungrateful kid. Well, I believe she does this out of self-aggrandizing self-importance. My mother needs to make other people think she’s so great. And that the people in her life that she makes out to be the scapegoats are pushed so far down, that we shouldn’t exist.

She says that I have a habit of lying. Well, if I wasn’t sleeping, during my childhood, I had to study, from the time that I was in Grade One. Sure she brought my friends over, but that was ON HER TERMS. There was no time for play. I had to bring in top mark grades, or I wasn’t good enough for her. Where was my child-hood? I certainly don’t recall it through the haze of trying to get top grades so she could look good as a parent. I had to lie to get social time. Those times I absconded to my friend’s house? That was so that I could get some social time in. I started lying to protect myself from getting punished because I couldn’t have my social time as a child. You might say that at school, we got social time. Yeah, right. You play as a form of curriculum, learning. Where the hell was the social time, just down-time for the sake of play? I tell untruths: I told untruths to get out of getting punished for something that I should have been able to do without getting punished. Playtime for example. In early adult-hood, I had to stay out late to start forming a social circle to further my career interests. But that was unacceptable to her. I had to be home at a certain time, because god knows, if I wasn’t then I was up to something no good. She'll say I am whining and I’m just trying to get ‘more money out of her’: What I want is freedom to do what I need to do to get ahead in life. I’ve had my fill of being kept down by her. What I wanted was an honest to goodness feeling that I meant something to her. But what I got was the feeling that I was a burden, that I was just a puppet for her desires of being held in high regard by society. That I was just a pawn to throw money at, to control. What I wanted was to be told that I was loved for just being ME, but what I got was “we’ll love you if you do what we want!”

By the time I was in college, the favoritism had changed to "Since our kid is so stupid, maybe if we surround ourselves with successful students, it'll either a) rub off on the kid or b) at least we can ignore his stupidity and the fact that he can't do anything right, and be able to vicariously live out our dream of having a MENSA household" As far as my parents were concerned, I was a failure and to be written off entirely. After flunking out of college, I was the cast-off, to be ostracized and told to be quiet and don't disturb anyone. Hell, it was not my intention to disturb anyone. Anytime I raised my voice to anything the remotest sound above a whisper, I was told "Be quiet, don't disturb the students...shhh, the students are studying for an important exam." I wasn't able to step out of my room to the bathroom...to the kitchen without being criticized that "You're walking around too loudly..." Finally, I just stayed in my room, if I wasn't at work and going out to eat. My parents had become rabid vegans, and tried to force me to eat their kind of food. I rebelled against that because I needed some meat (protein) in my diet. I've been a meat-eater all my life and I wasn't about to change. I also had some health issues where colds would linger for weeks and weeks since my immune system wasn't able to fight it off as well as when my body had protein. Oh, my parents were livid. They thought I was anti-social towards their students (hell, I wasn't even their son anymore according to them...I was just living under their roof...) and by not eating what they were eating, I was out and out rejecting them. I was getting sick on their diet and they weren't the slightest bit concerned. Also I had no interest in connecting with students that I had nothing in common with. I was working in real estate and real estate kept me out late. They had problems with that. When I wasn't doing deals, I was out with my friends because my friends seemed to be more of a family than my parents were.

Then in November 1999, I met a young woman on the internet; she was Caucasian and my parents did not like that. My friend and I kept communicating via the internet and soon we fell in love and were engaged. My parents had wanted me to marry some Japanese girl, but the fact that I had fallen in love with a white woman had really pissed my mother off. My mother attempted to cut off this romance by taking away my phone and computer privileges and she said that "if you ever contact her again, you can leave this house." Since I was 29...finally working and making some decent money...you can guess what I did. I think that ticked my parents off even more, because I moved in with my friends.

My fiancee came up in July of 2000 and we were married in August. I was working security. My mother decided that she was going to call up my security company site and ask for me. I told her that I couldn't talk and she threatened to sue me and mess with my wife's immigration proceedings if my wife and I didn't move out of my friend's house. Not knowing much about what she could or couldn't do legally, I was intimidated and proceeded to make arrangements with my father so that we could find someplace else to live.

We found a place in New Westminster and my mother said that she would help out with our rent until my wife was able to work legally in Canada. But the conditions were that I could not communicate with my friends, who my mother insinuated were "lowlifes". My friend Phil had been struggling with the aftermath of an automobile accident (he was hit while biking by an inattentive driver) and he was having a lot of problems, the least of which was getting the motivation to get a job. My other friend was trying to make his business successful, but was running into financial roadblocks. My mother got a burr up her behind one day and revoked her financial help because she was suspicious that we were seeing my friends behind her back when we were doing nothing of the sort. I was making enough money to see our rent paid, however financially we ended up in over $15,000 debt because of being forced to move out of my friend's place, because of added expenses.

Not to mention during 2001, my wife got pregnant, which precluded our option of her obtaining work when her landed immigrant application came through. So I continued working security, having to overcome serious threats against my person from five individuals while conducting a patrol through the parkade one night where my fellow officers did absolutely nothing but watch from a window. We moved into a place my parents bought because they wanted to rent out the downstairs to a family and we moved into the upstairs. Eventually, the downstairs moved out and a tenant-from-hell moved in. They monopolized the backyard, brought unsavory friends over and all the while my family suffered (I had moved from a $8.00/hr security job to a $30,000/year property management job) because my parents would do nothing about the tenant downstairs causing disturbances. Once I found a propane canister leaning up against the wall just under my son's bedroom window. I went ballistic. I wrote a letter to the tenants downstairs warning them that if they proceeded to persist in doing things which were hazardous to our safety, that I would notify the Residential Tenancy Office and have them evicted. Needless to say, I got in trouble from the police for that, because I was not the landlord and that despite the fact that the landlords (my parents) were not doing anything, they felt that I was intimidating the tenants downstairs. My job performance suffered during this time and as a direct result, I was terminated from my $30,000 job.

We moved out for a time and into a motel. When my parents found out, they said that we had to think about the welfare of our child and asked us to move back in. My parents had kicked the tenant-from-hell out finally after my mother was indirectly threatened. My wife, my child and myself were threatened by a friend of their tenant-from-hell and my parents did nothing.

Now, we were living downstairs in the New Westminster house (until recently after they found toxic mold in the walls) and struggling to even put food on the table. My wife's job has financial problems and we are barely surviving by going to welfare and trying to ask them to help. My parents signed over a truck, but put a CLUB on it when we had a last disagreement and are keeping me from having a vehicle which is a necessary part of the occupation requirements for being an apartment manager. In any case, I got angry and used a hacksaw to remove the club from the vehicle. That got my dad very angry and he was ready to tow my vehicle but resisted the urge to because that would put him in trouble with the law.

I have tolerated 22 years of having to put up with my parents' controlling and manipulation and I am not about to jeopardize my family catering to what they want me to do. I have the best possible opportunity to make a financial life for my family and my parents seem to want to screw me out of it by denying me access to the vehicle that my dad freely transferred into my name while I was working for my wife's company. Frankly, they seem to want to do everything possible to screw me out of any situation that could be the slightest bit beneficial to us.

So in retrospect, I have had to put up with a lot of fall-out. My relationship with my wife is strained because of my parents' meddling. I have to contend with low-self esteem from years and years of being told that I was stupid, lazy and wouldn't amount to anything and I am now financially in trouble because of my mother's meddling in my life.

All I can do is to prevent a repeat of that in my son's life and try and keep my parents away from him. I love my son and want to make certain that my son grows up to be a well-adjusted young man who will have a family that loves him and that he can grow up to be a good father, like I'm trying to be to him, despite all of what I went through.

However, after the duration where I was able to get into the Resident Manager's Training Institute course in order to get a decent job so that I can support my family.

This whole situation that I have had during growing up has left me with general anxiety disorder which causes me irrational fear of strangers and paranoia. When I'm walking through a neighbourhood at night, (it doesn't matter what neighbourhood; it could be Kits or New Westminster, or East Vancouver (that neighbourhood may be justifiable but Kits is supposed to be a decent neighbourhood), I tend to look for items that could potentially be used as weapons (lethal weapons, like a branch that I could rip off a tree or being able to use my keys to jam in someone's trachea) should someone attempt to mug me. This General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) was also the reason why I was excessively shy during my childhood. I didn't like making friends. I'd let others approach me. I also didn't like to go cold-calling.

I also have low self-esteem from being constantly belittled and told that I was stupid, fat and not going to amount to much, constantly by my uncle Hideo, my mother and my father. Even now that I'm an adult, I'm constantly getting it from my parents. When I get up at 6:30, I change the kids, and watch them for a while and I don't get to eat anything. I just head out the door for my job search, and head for Landell. By the time I leave, it's 11 A.M. or Noon, then I head back to the house. By that time, my mother doesn't even allow me a chance to sit down and grab some lunch. She decides to split, leaving me with my two kids who have already eaten and have to be amused. So I end up having to amuse them. I put Cameron down for a nap, but he doesn't want to go down, so he ends up doing a screaming fit, which starts Galen off because he thinks he's going to end up going down for a nap too. So that leaves me trying to amuse Galen for the rest of the hour and a half nap that Cameron takes.

My mother does accuse me of the following: That I make things up, that I have a problem with spending money, and that I have an obsession with the internet:

#1. My mother lies to suit her situation to her favor. She said that she was not there when my wife made the decision for us to go back to Noel’s. There was no situation like that. We came home, my mother opened the door, and we were jumped, verbally attacked, my mother dragged my wife into the bedroom and started verbally lighting into her. My dad separated me into the living room, and told me to stay there. I was not about to let my wife get ganged up 2 on 1 so I went into the bedroom and started lighting into my mother. The yelling caused my friend Noel to get on the phone. There was a squad car there in about 10 minutes, not the five that my mother was saying. So evidently they were in the area patrolling when they got the call.

#2. The stuff that my mother gave me, the newspaper articles? I don’t have a problem with debt. The debts I was forced to incur was after my parents forced me out of the house that Noel had; to survive. My job wasn’t very good at calculating the pay, since I was working excessive hours just to meet the bills that my wife managed to create due to loneliness (excessive phone-bills, and charges). I had to help my mother-in-law survive until the United States Government got off their ass and gave her the Medicare that she was entitled to. So on top of rent, I had to work double shift to pay the debts my wife incurred, pay the rent, put food on the table and help my mother-in-law. I have no more of a problem with compulsive spending than my parents have. I learned my lesson after the first time with the credit cards.

#3. Nor do I have a problem with the internet. I am not anti-social, nor am I hostile, or obsessive compulsive. I use the internet for maybe about an hour every day. That's the end of it. I pay attention to my children, I pay attention to my wife. The only time I use the internet is when I need to check up on my e-mail, and maybe spend some time on the model-building forums. Other than that, I have no need of the internet. I have all I need spending time with my wife and children.

My mother took another shot at me saying that it was MY fault that Colleen acted the way she did, that I forced her to? No, the only thing that my mother sees is the lies that Colleen told her to stay out of trouble. She’s never WANTED to see OUR side of the problem. Let me tell you what I found out from my wife. This whole thing started when my wife told me that Colleen jumped her while my wife was doing laundry one day. Colleen started in on my wife that “my mother shouldn’t have checked up her references.” That was when Colleen got on the wrong side of me. You don’t verbally abuse my wife and get away with it. My Mother keeps continually saying that she couldn’t let a woman with two children out on the street. Well, she proceeded to push my infant son out on the street by not dealing with Colleen then and there. Is there some mental faculty missing that she can’t see the flip side of the coin. That she can never see anything but a defect when she looks at me? That I can NEVER be right? That anyone associated with me is never right?

Let me say some harsh things. Their inaction ramped the stress level so high that I couldn’t come home and relax and be ready for work the next day, unlike my dad who was able to go to work the next day refreshed, without feeling like he didn’t have any safety. The only threat to his safety that he had to worry about was the glass that he was working with at work. Their comparison to my dad’s stress level of not being able to provide never compared to what I had to put up with Colleen. My fear was that my wife and infant son (Galen) had to be upstairs in a house with a psychopathic *****. There was never that fear when my dad came home from work. I’m enraged that they’d compare my situation with my dad’s. There is NO comparison. They have never, ever felt threatened. That night I went over to their house, I tried to give my dad and my mother a small taste of what we went through over at New Westminster, plus the fact that I was angry that my mother and father let Colleen get away with so much that we were forced to move out to feel like we weren’t living under constant threat of our safety. Not only did we suffer being threatened. We suffered the loss of my job, the lack of safety of my son when he couldn’t even defend himself. They essentially kept me from being able to defend my child by persisting in keeping that threatening situation, status quo. And they threatened my mental well-being. And my dad calls it just an excuse? And it was really hard to not get angry when I heard them give “excuses” (that’s what it was) of the reasons as to why they couldn’t boot Colleen out the door. That’s what really got me angry after I got home last night. I wanted to keep the conversation civil, but to tell you the truth, I was pretty disgusted by their “Oh, we couldn’t throw a woman with two kids out on the street.” excuse. I’m supposed to be all filled with sympathy and regret? Well…I believe they conveniently forgot that their grandson was also affected by this woman’s threats. So is my son, their grandchild… any less of a human being? That woman didn’t just threaten Heather and myself. They also threatened MY SON!!!! What about “We can’t throw the other family out on the street?” One who is working hard trying to make a living and not leeching off of welfare. Heck any RESPONSIBLE landlord would have said. “You, quit harassing the upstairs tenant. Or you have one week to pack your things and get the heck out for disturbing the other tenant’s quiet right of enjoyment of the property.” Colleen monopolized the back yard, and caused a scene every time I went out in the back yard to get my things from the garage, and overall made this place an absolutely unpleasant place to live at. By rights, we could go to the RTO and nail my parents for their screw-up, for “damages” due to our loss of quiet right of enjoyment of the rental property. I would suggest that they take that into mind when they choose to treat a tenant such as Colleen with more favor. It doesn’t matter WHO the afflicted tenant is, whether it is someone they don’t know, or a tenant who is blood-kin to you. If the other tenant makes the aforesaid tenant uncomfortable or openly threatens the aforesaid tenant…you have a duty-bound obligation under the Residential Tenancy Act to remedy that. And the rules are stipulated without room for error. If a tenant threatens another tenant with physical harm, you are duty bound by the Residential Tenancy Act to remove that tenant from the premises or the other tenant will have grounds to SUE for “loss of quiet right of enjoyment” and will be able to win damages. Considering the fact that Colleen pushed me stress-wise to the point of losing my job due to continual pressures from home and loss of work-quality (also attributed to the stresses from home), I’d have a case against them. The day my parents realize that they were COMPLETELY in the WRONG on the point of Colleen, stop making excuses for her behavior, and for their reasons for not kicking her out, apologize to us and specifically to MY SON…and make amends for that mistake, is the day that this wound stops festering and starts to heal. They have made excuses out the wazoo for Colleen and to this day I have not heard an absolute APOLOGY from my parents at all. So if they want to bring up the truck, then they’d better consider a financial restitution for what we went through. The loss of my job will come into play, as well as emotional damages.

My mother says that she thought that I had a future in property management; that I was able to provide for myself back then. Then WHY did she do nothing when I said that my family was being harassed, when I felt like I didn’t have a refuge (which my home was supposed to be) to be able to recharge for work the next day, that I couldn’t go to work without worrying about the safety of my wife and child???? They have to look themselves in the mirror and see that their inaction cost me MY JOB!!!

So they owe their grandson and me. They owe me the time to be able to get back into a position where I can support myself. I’m angry that they can turn around and tell me, after what they did to me and to my family, that they’re in a financial bind when there is a financial bind on our end that THEY created. I don’t care what they have to do because there is no attempt on their part to apologize for the situation they caused us. They have to fix our situation, which they caused, before they fix their own situation. Either that, or they need to make financial restitution for the mistake they made by forcing us out of our place. They lied to me when I co-signed for that mortgage (offered my signature and assurance that I had a job, so my parents could get that loan for the house) that this place was someplace that I could consider my own house. And they expect me to wring my hands in suffering that they can’t pay their mortgage? After all that they did to my family and me with Colleen? I paid my rent on time, when I had a job. I paid my bills on time. I did everything right back then and they ****ed up! And it’s time they realized that. It’s time they made amends. And if they have to go through some hard times to do it, well, that’s karma. They put us through hard financial times through no fault of our own. It’s time they went through some themselves. Either that or they fix our problem.

It's verbal twisting like this, that drives my stress level up and brings me to the breaking point (where I nearly want to flip out). It’s really hard to not react when I got pegged as irresponsible with money, not paying the bills, etc etc etc. During the time I was working, I made damned sure that the bills got paid, that the rent was on-time. The only times I was late with the rent or the bills was when I was not able to work or when my company screwed up on their pay. There was NO pay left over to SAVE. So where am I supposed to come up with money now? Out of thin air?

My parents have inflicted great emotional damage to me, not just calling me dumb, stupid, and other wonderful names when I didn’t get the grades that they expected me to get, basically keeping me prisoner in my own home. I didn’t expect to receive preference over the students. I expected to receive the same rights as as them, not to be treated like a second class citizen and told “Be quiet…don’t make any noise, you’re talking too loud…etc etc”…to the point where I felt like my only refuge was my room. The Colleen issue was the final straw. The straw that broke the camel’s back where I knew exactly where I stood with my parents. That they didn’t even consider me as a HUMAN BEING. If they didn’t consider me above the status of that woman who turned around and threatened her own family, then I knew that they didn’t even consider me as a human being.

She said that they tried to make amends by allowing us to live back in the house again. Well, let me ask her…Bring me in, shove me down in the basement in a mouse infested cramped suite and they expect me to be grateful. To see all my hard work go to the benefit of Tee? And they expect me to be GRATEFUL? Dad lied to my face and told me that “treat this place like it was your own house. You’re working towards the equity in your house…” Yeah, well, if that was so important to them, why did they treat me the way they did? Why did they not alleviate the stress coming from the home front from that psychotic tenant so that I could feel able to work in relative peace? No they’ve lied from stem to stern and I’m supposed to feel GRATEFUL that they’ve given us a MONTH TO MONTH EXTENSION!!!!! That’s a spit in the face after all we’ve been through at their hands. To tell you the truth, they don’t have any right to ask me to do a damn thing after they put me through all this crap. My dad could have retired after I got my job with Battiston, but my gut feeling was that they were jealous I was making $30,000/year and he was only making little more than $16.00 an hour at a joe-job. Their inaction cost me emotional stress and the loss of my job. That’s a $30,000 debt that they haven’t begun to pay off.

I understand that my parents have bills to pay and so do we. Yet they have rental income, we do not...we are living hand to mouth, our grocery trips are limited to once a month when the Canada Child Tax Benefit comes in and weekly when we go down hat in hand to the Food Bank to supplement our meager food.

When we were living at Noel's house, we were co-erced into leaving because Noel had difficulties with his own parents who were abusive and who were threatening to sue him for the house that his grandparents put into his own name citing that he somehow exerted undue influence on his grandfather at a particularly vulnerable time (his grandfather's wife had recently passed away). At the time, we were financially doing all right...trying to make ends meet. I was in security doing double shifts trying to help my mother-in-law keep in medications for her high blood pressure (my mother has also made slanderous comments defaming my mother-in-law insinuating that she is a drug addict). My mother-in-law on the other hand has been very supportive...of me...a person of a nationality other than hers, who basically up and took her daughter away to another country. Somebody like that, can offer me emotional support which is all I'm asking for...out of my parents and yet, my parents can't do that.

We were co-erced into leaving Noel's place and into an apartment, a step that we were NOT ready to take at that point. My mother will deny this to her dying day, but the truth of the matter is that I was called from a patrol at about 3AM to find the control officer telling me that "Your mother's calling you..." Whereupon taking the phone, I told her that I was busy. She threatened to mess with my wife's immigration process if we did not do exactly as she wanted us to do and she threatened to take me to court if I didn't jump to her wishes. I was a security officer. I needed my concentration to remain alert. Needless to say my concentration suffered for the next week after that call. To give you an idea about how dangerous this job is, I was faced by a group of punks in the parkade while doing a patrol. They threatened to kick my ass. My co-workers were sitting in the control room watching...while I faced all five of the punks and intimidated them enough to get them to leave. If I had showed the slightest amount of fear, if I had let any of my other stresses get the better of me at that moment, they would have swarmed me like sharks and kicked the crap out of me. So my mother essentially put my life in danger by knocking my concentration off. I didn't need that phone call, I didn't need to have my focus on my job screwed up.

The best thing that they could've done was to leave me and Heather alone at that time. But they didn't. They forced us into an apartment, saying that they would support us while I looked around for a better job. Then they yanked the rug out from under us...by withdrawing that support. So as far as the debt was concerned. That was their doing. We used our credit card to survive since my company screwed up paychecks left right and center. There were times when my paycheck was a WEEK late. Or I would get the old "sorry we made a mistake, we'll make it up to you on the next one..." So...what was I to do? I worked as best I could under those circumstances. I risked my life and tried to persevere. But yet again, because we were forced into a depth that we weren't comfortable with, we were forced into a situation that we couldn't keep up with financially. I don't spend MY money irresponsibly foisting my problems onto someone else when they get too tough. That money went to paying bills, paying for food to put on the table to eat.

These financial problems that they are NOW paying for in the consolidation loan that they say that they have provided for me...are financial problems that THEY foisted upon us for driving us out of a situation that we were NOT ready to leave yet. A situation where I would have been able to get my feet back under me instead of being flat on my back like a turtle.

Right now...we are paying $200 in bills...heat electricity...(in lieu of rent) + internet, so that Heather is able to do her studies for HRDC funding we are paying our share...OUT OF $570.00 Canada Child Tax Benefit (it got reduced to $513.00 so the heat and electricity ended up having to be cut out of our expenses and my parents will complain about that not caring how little we have to work with). I am declared UNABLE TO WORK by my Psychiatrist. Which means that we have $313 to work with to feed 4 mouths, make sure that we have diapers for the two, AND be able to make sure that my wife is able to get what she needs to done so that we can go back to school. And I am NOT asking them to support us. We've been getting by, but just barely. I'm too damned proud to go to welfare, hat in hand and beg for money (not to mention the fact that I don't qualify). Plus my parents have taught me too well that being on welfare (unless I have a disability) may be good for other people but it ain't good for us...so we're going to suffer until my wife gets back into school. How's that for asking for my parents' support? I'm too proud to go to welfare, and I sure as hell am not going to ask for my parents' support with strings attached. They've done too much already. Thanks but no thanks. All I want them to see is that "Hey, maybe we don't have all the problems in the world. There are others who are worse off..."

When the tsunami happened this year? Did my parents contribute in any way? We did...Out of what we had, I gave almost half of what we had in Bay/Zellers points to the Tsunami Relief fund which were converted into dollars to go directly towards tsunami relief. Yet my parents call me greedy.

All, I'm asking for them to do is to GIVE ME and HEATHER the time to get back on our feet(to allow me to get back to being job-ready...and be able to kick this depression)...(in other words go back to school, get a decent paying job and be able to support ourselves and we will gladly give the downstairs suite back to them so that they can recoup back some of their expenses.) Or is that too greedy a request? That's all I want from them. But of course, that will require that they swallow the rent for the time being and THAT is what they are really concerned about, isn't it...not that they really want to reconcile.

And another thing that they are going to rail about is the fact that I'm building models again. That is therapy for myself...that Dr. Matrick approves of, and that the Sherbrooke Day Program (which unfortunately because of conflicts with my wife's schooling, I cannot attend) approves of as ways to combat my frustration and ANGER. It provides me a way of focusing my attention and it may prove to be one of the skills I put to use in a new job. Tell them to tell me, is money in THEIR pocket more important than my sanity? 'Cause I'm running a very THIN line here.

As far as I'm concerned, it is a very short step to insanity. They keep ramping up the stress load and I feel like a ticking nuclear bomb, just about ready to explode. I've thought seriously about just walking in front of the 99-B-Line and ending it all, but I can't because of Galen, Cameron and Heather. It wouldn't be fair to them. But I need help, I really do. I can't keep doing this all by myself.