I am so tired of my family.

I have never wanted to leave to go back to Kansas City so bad before. I always want to come home. I miss my family, blah blah blah, and then when I get home, I remember how all of them are suck freaking dicks.

When I come home, I always help around the house. I take out the trash, I load and unload the dishwasher, I do laundry, I help clean whenever we have company over. I help cook dinner whenever I’m home. I really don’t mind doing it, which is why I do it. Unlike my 28 year-old-brother who just sits on his butt all day downstairs and does absolutely nothing to help out. I don’t do it for the recognition, but it would be nice if anyone else in the house was even an inch grateful for what I do for all of them.

But no.

We had company over the other night and my mom said something about me being such a hassle and “piece of work” when I’m home. I laughed, because oh my gosh, she really thinks I’m exactly like my brother. I voiced that I help out in so many ways and she paused, thought about it a second, and then said “The first week you were home, you did.” I was pissed because not only does she not at least acknowledge that I help out, she made me look like some lazy, ungrateful child in front of all my parents’ friends.

It’s like she’s making things up about how I don’t help out just so that Ryan doesn’t look bad. How her and my father have absolutely no problem with him being 28, still living in the basement, and helping out in no way or form and not paying rent is beyond me. He just uses them and they let him. So he laughs whenever my mom says I don’t help out because he thinks it’s so freaking hilarious.

My mom doesn’t trust me at all either, which pisses me off. I stayed out at Andrew’s house one night until 2:30AM and she threw a fit in the morning that I stayed out way too late when she didn’t tell me that I had a curfew to begin with (considering it was never a problem in the past). And then in the most accusing tone ever, asked “What do you guys do all night, anyways?”

I wanted to tell her that we get wasted and have crazy, wild sex just to piss her off but I would only get slapped. It just makes me so angry that she doesn’t trust me enough to even hang out with my boyfriend of almost four years. She knows that I want to wait and have no intention of having sex until there is a ring on my finger. It was just like a slap to the face, like she was calling me a little slut.

On top of it all, my grandpa is the biggest racist I know. Since he’s living with us, all I can loudly hear him talk about to his friends on the phone is how awful Obama is, how the stupid “blacks” are overruning our city and country, and things I don’t even want to repeat. It has just been grating on my nerves all week because there’s nothing you can say to him that will make him change his mind or even shut up. UGH.

Tonight, I had put clothes in the dryer and was in my room so I didn’t hear the buzzer when it went off. It had apparently gone off a few times and when I left the room, had every member of my family yell at me. I’m sorry, is it so hard to go downstairs and just push the button to turn it off yourself? Or even easier, politely ask if I can go get my laundry? So I did what everyone else was doing to me, I yelled back saying all anyone had to do was ask me! It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t hear it!

So my dad yelled back, “Don’t like us yelling at you? Good! We’ll yell at you all the time so you can get used to it!”

I’ve just had enough. I slammed the dryer door shut. I slammed the gate by the stairs shut. I slammed the door to my room shut. I locked my door. If Andrew weren’t already in Kansas City, I’d be at his house right now just to freaking get away. And if I didn’t have to work for my mother on Wednesday (who will be with my grandpa during his surgery) I’d be throwing my crap in my car and leaving.

Instead I’ll just go for a really long drive and blast my music and just pretend that nothing happened, because that’s what my family does best.

I have had a crappy, piece of poop phone for far too long two years. Now it does what I want it to do – which is make calls and can send text messages – but as a hard working, intellectual, bright, human being, I feel that after such a long time, I feel that I deserve to have something a little more shmancy.

However, I am also a frugal, broke, college student who can’t afford to pay $30 a month for a data plan with a smartphone because I am a.) in college and b.) my parents don’t pay for it. Which I don’t mind, because I am almost nineteen years old and currently not living at home, except for the fact that my 26 year old sister and my 27 year old brother both have smartphones and neither of them pay for their data. (Nor does my 27 year old brother pay for rent, food, insurance, or anything else besides bumming around and not working – but another rant for a different time.)

My contract ended three days ago, so I can do one of three things:

1. Get a smartphone. But in this case, that would mean that I have to fork over $30 a month for something that I can’t even substantially touch or feel. Which as a frugal person, I can’t really see myself doing. I can see myself using that $30 to slowly pay off student loans or for a new pair of boots or buy poptarts. (And I have to pay off this semester of college still and that is more than I would like to currently share.)
2. Get a “dumbphone.” Which means that I’m stuck with another phone that I’m not completely satisfied with for another two years and that I may/may not like it. Plus, the one I’m looking at costs $100 (which is absolutely ridiculous for a non-smartphone), plus an activation fee. I’m too broke for these things. I was really leaning towards this option, minus the cost and minus the bad reviews for this phone. Poooo.
3. Keep the phone I have. While it’s nothing fancy, my phone that I have does what I want to do it just fine. And it is practically indestructible; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dropped my phone on concrete, or off of my lofted dorm room bed onto tile floor, or sent it flying out of my jacket pocket on the tennis courts. But it is also very beat up and really needs to be upgraded.

So in short, I hate not having money, I hate Verizon, I hate that my parents will pay for some family member to have fancy things but not others, and that I feel like a loser. Bahh.

At least I have a phone, I suppose.