I’ve tried to reach out politely to get a read on where my younger daughter is in her life and relative to me. I’ve gotten absolutely nothing, not a single syllable, not even a fuck you, so I guess I’m out. I guess this is my life now. I’m terribly sad and disappointed, still confused and wondering, but today it is what it is.
Since she wants nothing to do with me, that must include my financial support. I pay for her phone, which includes 100 GB of hotspot data so she can use the internet; her visits to her psychiatric nurse practioner, who adjusts her medications as needed; and her unlimited membership to a yoga studio. I’m not as financially able as I was before now that I’m on Social Security, and the country and the economy are going out of their minds. I have to be careful, and that brings me to a decision I made.
I can justify continuing with the phone. She is forever broke, drives long distances for some mysterious job, makes frequent bad decisions, and needs a means of communicating. The phone bill isn’t that much and I provide a phone for her sister as well, even though she has an additional line of her own that she pays for. This is 100% a weak justification, and I know it.
I can also justify the psych NP visits. I need her to stay on her meds and to pay attention to her dosages. She’s always better off when she’s regulated, and I don’t want to jeopardize that. There’s no way she can afford $250 a visit and I did promise to pay for it for as long as she needs it.
But the yoga studio? She hasn’t been going for a while and it’s $159 a month. My gym membership is $30 a month. Who’s the pampered one here? I gave her a chance to respond to whether she’d like to continue but she never did. It’s money I could save for later or even spend on myself on senior day at Ross! It’s basically being flushed down the toilet. So, I reached out to the GM and had the membership canceled and my credit card removed from the account. If she decides to go there after February, she has to pay for it herself. I don’t know why I feel guilty, but I do. I couldn’t sleep last night knowing she’d find out the hard way (if she ever goes back to the studio), but she won’t talk to me. I’ll find a way to live with this decision, but it’ll be a process like everything else has been. I really loved that she was going to this place; she was getting so much out of it, but she stopped showing up. She didn’t even cancel the last visit; she just ghosted them. I guess that’s her MO.