Had to move back in with my mom during covid after my job laid me off. Been underemployed since and back in college, so I wasn't able to move back out yet in this economy. A few years back, I blew through my savings to get my disabled mom away from my abusive (verbally, monitoring, financially/day-to-day controlling), cheating stepfather. Moved her to a gorgeous little apartment minutes from downtown Chicago and less than 5 minutes from all of her doctors. We were doing well there for a while, but she gradually started spending time with him again against my advice (I suggested no contact and therapy). He's a pastor, and instead of joining a new church like I suggested, she just started going right back to his. Through all this, she kept insisting for the two years we lived at the new apt that she would never live with him again. I felt the same and then some.

Fast forward to the end of those two years, and I'm finally getting to the point where I can comfortably start saving again. Then my stepfather finally decides to do what my mom suggested years prior and apply for veterans benefits. He gets a retroactive check in the six figures. He was talking about us all moving into a house he would buy, but I (naively) wasn't worried because she was still saying she wasn't interested in living with him. 

So I'm just working and going to school as normal when one day out of the blue she tells me they're shopping for houses. She would not hear any of my concerns or advice against it, only assuring me that I had two options: 1 - she would pick a house where I could have a quality, separate space to myself, or 2 - she would continue to pay her part of the rent at our apt since he would be paying all bills at the new house. I tripled my efforts to find more work, but within just a couple of months they'd signed on a whole damn house I hadn't even viewed. Both options she gave me turned out to be a lie.

A few weeks after that, I was expected to be ready to move, without even having input on the day or time movers would arrive. So I ended up having to dip into my savings yet again to hire separate movers of my own. At that time, a friend of mine I've known a couple of years was out of work and offered me his second bedroom, and I accepted because the basement of the home she chose isn't fit for occupation (friend didn't ask for any rent, but I eventually started paying it anyway and helping with other things). 

My mom made it seem like they were going to remodel the basement for me (which would still be windowless and inescapable in the event of a fire) but I really didn't care. I was staying with said friend to buy time to find a better job. The job market is shit ofc, so after six months I'd made no progress and was at a point where I had to live with her to get paid for caretaking so I'd have some kind of income to support myself and my two cats. Despite being super close the whole time I lived there, my friend got really weird on me when it was time for me to move out and pulled away entirely, citing *resentment of me for helping him financially and emotionally*. Apparently, no one else in his life shows that level of concern, and me doing so makes him 'uncomfortable'. So now that I'm moved out, we barely talk. Friendship seems over.

Now me and my little ones get to live in the windowless basement of a crappy house miles from anything, with shit plumbing that floods my living space at random because they didn't have any proper inspections. I have no recourse for dealing with that, as I'm not allowed to make any alterations to the house because it's his, and she's back to the abused mindset of not pushing back against any of his wishes. I have no savings, no car, and a job that is dependent on me continuing to live here. And now I get to have my own mother yelling at me and giving me an attitude for not doing cleaning tasks she's explicitly told me not to do.

I'm tired, and this sushi is gross. Gonna get a refund and eat ice cream instead. 

No good deed goes unpunished.