I have to get away.

So that last post? I was excited about the overall decrease in debt over the last 8 months and so I said to my mother (since I was upstairs, trying to get a few things done up in the sunlight), "Guess how much J and I have lowered our debt?!?"

I told her, she said great.

But she didn't stop there.

She went into her "dictator" mode. (I'm not the person who usually uses this term- this came from another family member recently.)

"Do you have a summer job lined up?" she asked.

"No. I've been looking, but honestly, I'm more concerned about my full-time, regular job since everyone's expecting to be pink-slipped this month." I replied on the defensive.

"So what you're saying is that you're not actively looking."

I have started using my brother's tecnique of just getting up and leaving the room. She kept going, I kept going, and it just escalated.

I basically told her that I'm tired of her constantly checking in about my job search. She has done it to me for years. I told her, of course I'm going to get a job, I have never been unemployed even when J was military and my life was constantly in upheaval. I want to work, I like to work, and I would never assume my husband would take care of everything. I told her that it annoys me when she starts in on me like I'm a wayward teen with no sense of responsibility. It's like, Jesus, I was just mentioning something we've acheived and I'm proud of, and it turns into this. It wouldn't be so bad, but she always takes it too far.

"Frankly, I'm the cosigner on those studen loans, so I am personally invested in whether or not you're working. Those loans are against me, too, and I have no intention of working all summer while you sit on your ass..."

At that point, I got totally pissed. "I have been paying my student loan bills on time, every month, as soon as I was able to do so." (I didn't make enough the first year we lived in Oklahoma as we could barely afford to put gas in our one car.) "I did not realize that your signing on as my cosigner would mean that you were entitled to frequent check ins and a personal say over what jobs I take and how my husband and I handle our finances for the next 20 years."

She told me that she thought she had been very good about everything, considering I had told her I wanted to pay off the smaller loans first (Dave Ramsey's "debt snowball"). I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I mean, are you kidding me? Not only am I paying them off on time, I discussed my plans with her about trying to put more money towards specific ones in order to pay them off sooner than this.

At the end of the conversation, she pulled the, "You know, that's the end. I'm not discussing this anymore. (She does this routine during every fight so she can have the last word.) I have had more important things happen this week..." and then I just gathered all my things and left.

I know she has had more important things, and that's something I need to get into later. But honestly, stop using that card to get away with bullshit that has NOTHING to do with what happened. She has been ESPECIALLY awful recently.

Update:

She just came down to try and make amends, but not really. During this conversation, she still used language to accuse without being outright and when I tried to address it, saying things like, "It sounds to me as if you are blaming me on x, y, and z..." She came back with, "I'm not speaking about this. I just want to speak factually."

End of the story: I'm to give her frequent updates on the progress of my loans. On the one hand, I get it because she's constantly applying for new loans and now she's getting denied, but honestly, she owes a ton on the house and her own school loans just hit this year. On the other hand, I do the best I fucking can and she wants to be able to see every loan with a proved decrease and frequent details of "my plan" to eliminate debt.

She might totally be in the right, but that whole encounter just rubbed me the wrong way, you know?