Advice: Cross posted from Adult Children.
I was born to an alcoholic, single parent. For the first few years of my life, my grandparents cared for me because my mother was doing drugs at the time. She went into rehab, quit shooting heroin, and started to drink. When I was four or five my grandparents relinquished custody because they thought it was important for a daughter to grow up with her mother. I am 22 years old now.
My relationship with my mother has been one of caregiver. I was the adult in our little duo, our "Girl's Club", as she called it. I have always been the responsible, loyal, smart kid that could fix up the apartment before the landlord got there, or who knew how to lie in order to keep the family from asking questions.
I have little to no ability to feel for my own self-preservation, even today as an adult.
Things between my mother and I have always been very, very caustic. She was emotionally, mentally and occasionally physically abusive to me since I began living with her as a child, and every time I would boomerang in between her home and my grandparent's home, her sense of urgency to control what I said, and did, when and where became much more dominant. I always felt like she was trying to keep a lid on her behavior, like she didn't want people to know. Although, I'm not entirely sure how they couldn't.
Growing up being told I would never be good enough, or pretty enough, or smart enough, being told I was worthless, and being constantly lied to by the one person in the world a little girl is supposed to trust, her mother, has, I realize, taken a profound toll on how I view myself as a person. If I am incapable of finishing a task, today, I feel like a complete failure. I've always been very smart, book-wise, and had a 3.98 GPA in two-year college, but when I failed to qualify for loans that I didn't have to pay back until the end of the rest of my schooling (thanks to the awesome dip in the economy), my mother, who I had only had the guts to move out from under a year before, told me I should kill myself, my life was over, and that I had not only ruined her life, but had become the failure and disappointment she knew I would be. At the time, about a year ago, I knew I shouldn't have paid heed to what she said, that my own sense of self-worth should be high enough that I knew I was better, and smart, and funny and pretty, even without her approval. Instead I fell into a crippling depression, because I hadn't just failed myself, but I had lived down to the expectations of the one person, who God bless it, I shouldn't ever listen to.
Long story, and I'm getting to the relevant part, I promise.
For the last five years I've been in a relationship with a person who is not an alcoholic, but nonetheless, requires my constant care due to his impulsivity, irresonsibility, and who has a tendency to put me down. We were engaged. I quit my very good job in order to pack us up, but I've known for the last year that I really didn't want to be in this relationship.
We broke up about a month ago, and continue to live in the same apartment since he will be moving out of state by the beginning of April. I still cannot find another job, as my old job has no positions left. I have no money because I was always the one who paid the bills. If I can't find a job by the end of March, I might have to boomerang back to my mother's house, and our relationship is still very tenuous, as she is still an alcoholic.
I've spent every day, six hours a day, filling out applications at every crap job I can think of. I've gone to a handful of interviews and 3 positions outright have told me I've overqualified for the job. I really don't know what to do. My options seem to be: If I can't find a job, move in with an abusive parent, who, even if I am an adult I know I will buckle under the thumb of, or suck it up and get back together with a man I don't love anymore.
Any advice would be great, and I apologize if this is not the perfect place for a thread like this. If I could afford therapy, I'd definitely be there.
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I am with a temp agency and have made steps toward looking for a roommate.