Have you ever felt that one particular activity seemed to be consuming more of your life than you were happy about? Was it work, a hobby that got out of hand, health concerns or something else?

Work and life, these are the things consuming me at the moment. It’s leaving me little time (1-2 hours) every other day to blog while everything else takes a backseat including the leaky kitchen faucet, leaky faucet in the backyard, and even mom’s sudden desire for a water softener, which I told her repeatedly I don’t have the funds for.

Work occupies an average of 50 hours each week because let’s face it, the amount of work I have to do each week, unless I can finish tasks at superspeed or if I suddenly grew 2 pairs of extra arms and can do multiple things at once, it’s impossible to do them in 40 hours.

Outside of work, I’m basically the family’s search engine, advisor, and technical support. One of the houses’ furnace stopped and won’t start, who do they call? Me. The AC is running on its own in the dead of winter, who to call? Me. Car won’t start, I’m the one who knows how to jump a car.

“Help your cousin,” my aunt often tells me. Why? I wondered, I’m not his mother. Shouldn’t you help your son?

It was a long weekend last weekend. I had every intention of spending it on the couch, binging on my favorite show. Instead, I had mom asking me IRS tax laws every few minutes. “I don’t know,” I told her. “Why don’t you ask the IRS?”

She got angry at me and began spewing her typical excuses, “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this spot.”

And I thought, hey, I didn’t ask you to buy that house all those years ago nor did I ask you to sell it. It was all your decision.

On Sunday, my uncle and cousin came over, needing help to install the tax filing software on his computer. And here I thought I wouldn’t need to file anyone’s taxes this year other than my own and it’s not like I had choice, not with my uncle sitting right there. My cousin’s tax return was quite complicated and I haven’t been self-employed for at least 5 years. So I forgot how to do the taxes for those.

While I was help my cousin, to the best of my knowledge, fill out the forms, mom was in the living room, contradicting me, distracting me as if she wanted me to screw up, yelling things like “read twice before answering,” or “make sure the numbers.”

After a while, she came to sit closer and closer to me. I started to feel claustrophobic. It was like she was squeezing me out of the seat.

I gave up. I didn’t and never wanted the responsibility to file the entire family’s taxes. Filing taxes is risky. I can barely handle filing my own taxes.

Lastly, have you managed to take back control, or does it still seem to be running the show, as it were?

It’s been over three years since the family had immigrated to the U.S. They are still refusing to immerse into society. Mom is even worse – screaming and shouting at me over every little thing while contradicting my every word and decision.

The other day, Mom asked me how she can get from home to the address on the piece of paper. I told her, “Google Maps.” She gave me a look that said, “you tell me” as if she was expecting me to spew driving directions from my lips.

This is who I have turned into now.

*sigh*

There are days when I feel like I have total control while other days, I feel like I’m going to have a mental meltdown as my anxiety gets the best of me.