My boyfriend’s homelife isn’t the greatest. He has an older sister and four younger brothers and of the six of them, he seems to be the least liked. His sister is beloved, naturally, because she’s the only girl. So she goes wild and never gets in trouble. She spends everything she has (plus some) on clothes and when she gets buried under debt, her parents merely pay it off for her. If they don’t, her gay "boyfriend" does because he’s a trustfund brat. They didn’t even yell at her when she decided to change majors in her third year simply because the one she was in required actual work. Nor did they yell when she flunked almost all of her classes. The ones she didn’t flunk, she dropped or withdrew from. And she’s always out partying and drinking, getting drop dead drunk despite not even being 21 yet.

His younger brother is as beloved as he is because, much like his older sister, he figured out "The Trick". The Trick, if you will, is this — go completely and totally nuts, do whatever you want…then blame it on an illness which I’m sure the people here are going to love hearing about. This kid fakes illnesses that people here have and wish they could be cured of. Depression, Anxiety, OCD, ADHD, you name it, he wants it. Because you see, the idea is that if you misbehave because of an illness, you can’t really be punished for it. It’s like going to court for murder and claiming that you have a mental illness to get out of a life sentence or the death penalty. So far, these two have gotten away with the following stunts: flunking classes (both), calling the cops (brother), spending insane amounts of money (both), head shaving (sister), dying their hair pink (sister), etc.. As for the illnesses/problems themselves, they’ve faked lesbianism, bulemia, ADHD, OCD, Anxiety, Depression, and Alcoholism…and all without even a slight scolding most of the time.

My boyfriend, however, refuses to play that game and I’m glad because I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him. Unfortunately, this means he’s treated rather poorly. He’s trying to find a job but has been unsuccessful thus far. He’s also trying to transfer back here so that he can be with me and away from them but the biggest obstacle is his useless parents. They’d rather keep him home, locked up in his bedroom, and then verbally harass him because he’s still home. Even though his sister is currently costing them something like 5 figures a month for an eating disorder she might not even have, he’s the "mooch" and they make it a point to tell him this every day.

Consequently, I really dislike these people. Some of them are very narcissistic (namely the aforementioned sister and brother) and they aren’t the most welcoming. When I went out to visit, his mother tried somewhat but the rest of his family pretty much behaved the way they always do…they screamed and yelled and fought almost nonstop and ganged up on my boyfriend (the parents included) and even insulted me a few times. His younger brother called the both of us idiots and then verbally lashed out at me when I came downstairs without my boyfriend beside me. He said something like, "Where’s Alan?" and I said, "I don’t know" so he responded with a snide remark about how he and I hadn’t been apart since I arrived so I made a smartass reply that I knew would piss him off. I asked him, "Wouldn’t you be with your girlfriend if she were here?" and he said, "Yeah" and all I answered back with was, "Exactly" because I knew what had crawled up his fat, hairy ass and died — his parents dislike his girlfriend because she’s a psychotic, worthless, bitchy blob. She’s 18 and repeating her senior year because she was too stupid to pass anything the first time around. She screams at him if he doesn’t call or text her right when she demands it and is cheating on him so the only way for him to keep her is to spend obscene amounts of money on her. Oh, and here are a few other adjectives/words to give you a mental picture — extra toe skin, hemroids, unibrow, Hunchback of Notre Dame… And they talk really weird with each other. Like he’ll call her "pwincess" and say things like "I luv voo voo". >.<

Anyways, she’s not allowed anywhere near him. They even went so far as to homeschool him to get them apart. They’ve emailed her telling her to stay away and have also gone to her house to tell her parents to keep her away. Still, nothing goes. Her parents don’t like her anymore than anyone else does so they just see this kid as their way out. He’s a doctor’s son and is stupidly interested in their mistake so they let it go on figuring she’ll get a chunk of the money (when I’m not so sure there’s really anything to be had in the first place…). But now here I am visiting his brother…and he’s furious because for once in his life, he was told no while his brother was told yes.

Not only do I dislike his family but I also worry about him. I don’t see how he’s going to get away from them anytime soon like this. He needs someone to cosign his loans and that’s how they get him. They refuse to let him go anywhere that’ll take him away from home but then they make fun of him for still being there. He’s rather thoroughly trapped and while it’d be easier for me to just dump him and let him there to suffer, I just can’t. I’m sort of thinking of sending him money behind their backs to help him along. I wonder if he could open an account and keep it secret from them somehow. I could put a bit in every so often over the summer and maybe even get a job during the school year to help him out. I don’t know, I just hate how they yell at him and manipulate him, even when he’s not doing anything wrong which he usually isn’t. Like just today, they called him downstairs to yell at him for having overdrawn his account when his mother owes him money. She just keeps having him spend his own cash on stuff she wants or needs promising to give it back but then she puts it off or just doesn’t do it at all. If he tells her "No", she tells him to get out. Things are so bad that she wants him to transfer $200 out of his savings account into his checking account because of it when she flat out owes him.

I don’t know how to help him but I keep looking anyways. I don’t know what would happen if he took time off of school to move and get a job. I know that after 6 months, he’d have to start making payments on his loans but I don’t know what would happen if he, say, moved in with my family, stayed long enough to be considered a PA resident, and then went back to school. I don’t know if that’d stop the payments nor do I know how long he’d have to be there in order to get financial aid for PA students. Ugh, I don’t know if he’d still need a co-signer either. This sucks. 🙁