Easy doesn't Enter a Grown-Up's Life

Life has been difficult lately.

I’ve already been so stressed out every time I think about my credit cards bills (if I allow myself to think about them) but until 2 days ago, I could manage to handle it for I felt quite happy living here.

Too bad I just had my first hit here. Last weekend Mbak Minda, the head of the staff, warned us about the increasing telephone bill last month. The boss asked her to print out the details and when she did, she found out that most of the outcoming expense was made from the dial up Internet connection. It was in total about Rp 400,000. During the “talk” with Ernie, Pam and me, she kept giving us the warning her eyes locked on me. I thought at first that it was only my feeling, but Pam knew it, too.

Great. I was the biggest suspect.

For maybe:
I’m new. And it happened after I moved here.
I previously worked at a website office where an internet connection was not really a luxury.

She never mentioned my name indeed. But it didn’t take a genius to know that I was the one to blame.

It saddened me in a lot of ways. I mean.. fuck, an increasing internet bill was supposed to be expected for there was a new teacher here (me). And come on, how many people here use the internet? 10? And I DO know someone else used it much more than I did. Unfortunately this person concerned didn’t say anything about it. And telling bad things about other people to make myself clean is not my thing!

In another case, my mom has been staying here for a week. I thought she needed a holiday from having all the hard house chores at home back in Surabaya, so I invited her here. I didn’t allow her to do the washing or ironing cause I didn’t want to make use of her being here like my other siblings did.

But this seemed to lead to another problem for she was so stressed up here doing nothing but reading, coking and knitting. She began too emotional last night and gave me all the same stuff she’s always said in her life: “how much I look and behave like my father and how she hates it,” “why God didn’t take her away first,” “how she and I are not supposed to be together too long” etc. etc.

At that point I didn’t know what to think anymore. It seems like whatever I do is never enough for her and my family. I will always be that stingy and ruthless person. I’m never as generous as my sis or cousin who sometimes treat the family some meatball or something. But why can’t they just think in one second in their life that it is indeed this stingy person who pays the bills these whole ten years after papa died, she’s the one who provides the food and the one who pays my brother’s school fee?

I really REALLY hate I should mention that for I do everything wholeheartedly. And I don’t expect any return from them. But please not even AT LEAST the tiniest, slightest conscious thought that I DO indeed do something for the family?

I’m so brokenhearted.