Both my parents were liars. After the divorce, I stayed with my dad, so I spent my entire childhood listening to my mom cheat on him, cheat on him, and now he has to raise me alone. I also listened to him say that women were all like that, and that I would cheat when I grew up, too. Because of Dad’s admonishments, I was afraid to get close to boys for years, because I was sure they had a similar mindset to Dad’s. In my fourth year of university, I met a nice guy who proved to me that two people in a relationship have a duty to respect their partner. Things just weren’t right with my parents, and my dad took his frustrations with my mom out on me.
I thought my mom had no part in my growing up, she just disappeared, though it turned out years later she was paying child support. Dad took it for himself, probably spent it on me, but I can’t remember ever getting much or more than one modest birthday present. It seemed to me all my childhood that we were relatively poor, if only because girls my age were going to the movies with their girlfriends and buying lots of new clothes, and I didn’t have that. Most likely, my dad just saved money and didn’t give me what came from my mom.
It came out in my forties. I already had two children, a wonderful husband, and I considered my mother-in-law to be my only mother. As was my habit, I came home from work tired, watching a movie with the kids, and my husband brought the mail into the room from the mailbox. There was a notice from the court.
My own mother was still alive, she was left alone in her old age, with a small apartment that she could no longer support herself and it was expensive to pay from her pension, considering how much she had to spend on her diabetes medication and the aftercare that followed the removal of her gallbladder. She didn’t dare come to me in person to ask for help, but she sent all the certificates to the court and demanded reimbursement from me, since she had paid child support while I was a child.
I was so shocked… I had never seen any money from her, I didn’t even know my mother had paid anything. My father is long gone, you can’t ask him, and the only inheritance I got was an apartment with a huge debt for non-payment of utilities. And now I will have another apartment like that, and they will deduct a part of my salary, despite the fact that I have children.
What a gift from parents! And contest it because I do not know how, and now I do not want to spend money on a lawyer. Husband, too, can not advise anything sensible, asks me to pay what I have to. My salary isn’t that big anyway, they won’t take much. And that’s the point – it seems small to me, I don’t always get to set aside for my own needs, and I don’t want to take from my husband. So now I have to give some of it to my mother, whom I haven’t seen for thirty-five years. We are strangers to her, and I have to provide for her…
