Why doesn’t anything ever work out for my poor mum?

I feel so bad for my poor mum, nothing ever seems to work out for her.

She lives in an awful Department of Housing unit, where she is the ONLY tenant that works and actually has a job.

Because she does the right thing and goes to work every single day, Department of Housing reward her by making her pay FULL RENT.

She pays more rent on a 3-bedroom unit in a crappy suburb than I do in a 3-bedroom house in a nice area.

The only reason that she even wants to live in this horrible Department of Housing unit, is because she has never had high-paying jobs, and therefore, she doesn’t have a lot of money in her super fund.

She only has about ten years of work left and she is scared that if she doesn’t stay in the unit she is living in, she will be struggling on the pension and will not be able to afford rent when she retires (which will probably end up being the case anyway).

The other residents that live in her unit are EXTREMELY inconsiderate. As none of them work or have ever had a job, it is no big deal for them to have loud parties that last into the early hours of the morning… ALL. WEEK. LONG.

My mum tries to explain to these people (in the nicest possible way) how inconsiderate they are being of the fact that she needs to get up for work in the morning and can’t sleep as the walls are paper-thin and their loud music, banging and screaming keep her awake all night.

She can never walk from her unit to her car without walking through a car park full of people and doesn’t feel safe in the underground garage area, as there are always drug addicts around that duck in and out of the meter room where they sit and hang out while they smoke pot and ice.

She’s worried that there will come a day where these people will realize that she’s just come home from work and will think that she has money for them to steal.

People in the unit constantly run up and down the stairs, banging the railings as they go (which echoes loudly throughout the whole unit) and stand out on their balconies having loud (almost yelling) conversations on their mobile phones where they bellow and cackle loudly in an over-exaggerated manner.

There is not a day or night that goes by that you can’t hear one (or more) of the other tenants in the building. Some of these people listen to their music and television shows SO LOUD, that you can still hear it inside my mother’s unit with all the doors and windows closed AND her TV or music on.

She has made many complaints to the Department of Housing, the police and the council, but no one ever takes her complaints or concerns seriously.

Everyone thinks that because she lives in Department of Housing, she must be some scummy, low-life junkie – my mum has never touched a drug in her life and doesn’t even smoke or drink!

My mum currently has (and always has had) an extremely low-paying job, which makes it hard for her to live a comfortable life.

She is always having to buy the cheapest, no-name products so that she is able to get the things that she needs and even though she shops on the tightest budget she possibly can, she still ends up having to put back many of the items that she needs.

Each year when pay-rise time comes along, she ends up with an extra $15 a week and Department of Housing bump her rent up $30 a week.

My mum has no money to create herself any savings and she, more often than not, can’t afford to go out with her friends.

She gets embarrassed that she constantly has to tell people that she has no money, or she can’t afford to go out with them. She’s always worried that people will think that she just doesn’t want to go out with them, when that’s often not the case.

Many of my mum’s friends offer to pay for things for her, but she often declines as she is so worried that people will think that she’s a scab or a freeloader and she knows that she won’t ever be able to return the favour.

My mum has lost a lot of friend’s due to the fact that she can’t afford to spend time with them, which means that she is often lonely and on the rare occasion that she does have a little extra money, she doesn’t have anyone to go out with.

One of my mum’s biggest dreams/ hopes/ goals is that she will one day be able to go on an overseas holiday.

She constantly has to sit at work and listen to how all of her colleagues have been to this country and been to that country and are planning their 67th trip overseas or just skipped over to another country for a weekend getaway. It upsets her that she can do nothing but sit and listen as she doesn’t have anything to add to those kinds of conversations.

As my mum is in her mid-fifties, she’s worried that she won’t ever get to go overseas. We’re currently trying to save for a holiday to Canada in a year’s time and so my mum is desperately trying to get a second job.

It’s been a few months now and it just seems impossible for her to find anything that is suitable. She needs a part-time job that she is able to go to for a few hours after already working an 8-hour day.

I keep trying to explain to her that she will be working LONG days for not a lot of extra money, but her response to this is that anything is better than what she’s getting now (even if it is only a tiny amount extra).

She’s also worried that the job she is currently working now isn’t going to last her until retirement as business for them is quite slow at the moment.

Even job hunting doesn’t seem to work out well for her – she is always having trouble with her computer crashing and/ or not saving her resume, or she will prepare an entire job application and just as she goes to send it off, something happens and she loses all the time and effort that she just put in.

My mum has no partner, so she has no one to share her thoughts, feelings and problems with, no one to share the responsibilities and no one to split the bills with.

My mum isn’t fat by any means, but she is a little overweight (enough to make herself conscious) and she can never find clothes that she feels comfortable wearing.

When she finally does find something nice, she can’t afford to buy it. Even stores that used to be cheap are starting to bump up their prices.

Everything just seems to keep going wrong for her and it’s so sad to watch. Even stupid things like her favourite TV shows constantly being cancelled, or her DVD player breaking down or her internet constantly dropping out or the insane amount of traffic she has to sit in on her way to a job that she doesn’t even like that much, in a car that she can’t really afford.

She originally started working downstairs in the factory at her job and when another staff member left, they offered my mum a job up in the office. My mum got really excited, thinking that the new position would come with a pay rise.

Her boss even told her that they would leave her pay the same for a couple of weeks to see if the office job would be suitable for her – she’s now been working upstairs for a little over a year on the same money.

When she worked downstairs, she got to work in a fun environment with fun people. Now that she’s upstairs, she works in a stuffy little room where no one speaks to anyone else.

When my mum was younger, my older brother’s father paid a great deal of money to have the best lawyers ensure that he would have custody over my brother, meaning that my brother grew up with his father instead of our mother.

My mum often makes plans to go up and see my brother (who lives an hour and half away) or to have him come down to stay with her (which often sees her spending money she doesn’t have on extra food and drinks) and he often cancels at the last minute, which breaks my mum’s heart.

She was also super-excited when my brother had kids – she absolutely loves babies and for years had wanted grandchildren. She finally got them and when my brother finally does keep plans for us to go up and see him, he promises that the boys will be there, but when we get there, they’re not around and he always has some excuse as to why.

My mum recently has been very depressed and unhappy due to her situation and it’s so hard to watch as I know that there isn’t really anything I can do to help her.

I can’t help her get a second job, I can’t help her move out of her crappy Department of Housing home, I can’t help her find a partner or make new friends and I can’t make her boss pay her more or the cost of living cheaper.

Recently I tried to reach out to see if I could get some advice on how to help my mum be happier (she often wants to give up hope and says that she wishes she were dead because nothing she tries to do ever works out) and I found out that all of these free counselling services are nothing but a scam to help refer you to psychologists.

As soon as I told my “counsellor” that one of the contributing factors of my mum’s depression was the fact that she had no money (and wouldn’t be able to afford to see a psychologist), he couldn’t get rid of me quick enough, telling me that I’d be best just to refer her to her GP and that he wasn’t able to stay on the line any longer as he “had half the country to respond to.”

I couldn’t help but feel that my mum’s life wasn’t deemed as worthy enough just because she doesn’t have money.

I am not a negative person and I always try to find the silver lining and look on the bright side of every situation, but I can honestly say that I’m glad I was contacting these people on behalf of my mum and not myself, because I feel like if I were the one in despair, I probably would’ve hurt myself after ending that conversation!

It’s so sad that we live in a world where having no money (or not a lot of money) makes people look down on you and see you as worthless scum. It’s so sad that we live in a world where possessions define us instead of our actions and the way that we treat people.

My mum is the type of person that wouldn’t hurt a fly – she’s never mean to anyone, she’s never rude to people, she’s compassionate and she’s always considerate of other people’s situations and feelings.

She’s always taught me to also have compassion for people, to be polite, to have morals, to be considerate of others and she’s always been there for me. She always gives me the best advice and she always tries to help everyone she meets and goes out of her way to make other people feel good about themselves.

If my mum was a nasty person, I’d probably just put her rough life down to karma, but in this case, I’m not sure what the go is. I really wish the world would just give her a break.

She’s a good person and she deserves much better. Praying that things will turn around for her soon.