Ever noticed how the American Dream comes packaged with its own personal hell? You bust your ass for decades, finally get that little patch of grass to call your own, and then—like some cosmic punchline—the universe sends a parasite to feast on your financial corpse while you watch helplessly. Not a termite colony or a mold infestation, but something far more destructive: a grown-ass adult who shares your wife's DNA and absolutely nothing of your work ethic.
About a year and a half ago, we bought a home we love. But I'm paying for it dearly, $4,000 a month on top of everything else I pay for.
My stepson (Dave), who's 26, moved in with us not too much longer after. He lives in a trailer in our front yard.
I love Dave. I've been his stepdad for about 19 years. But he is lazy as hell.
Dave has worked about 6 weeks out of the last 12 months. A delivery job he took 9 months to get, then lost it because he was frequently not showing up, making errors when he did show up, then crashed the work truck.
Dave has two kids he doesn't have custody of, but "has" every other weekend. I say "has" because when they come over, he'll either avoid them by staying in his trailer or just go out. Because my wife works night shift, this means I'm looking after them, on top of the 3 school-age kids we have together.
Dave has 2 cars in the front yard as well as his trailer. Neither car works. He refuses to sell them despite being told he has to. This means he's using my wife's car which I pay the insurance for and have had to increase the insurance due to the extra miles he's putting on it.
Aside from the trailer and 2 cars, Dave has garbage everywhere that he refuses to clean up, as in actual trash. Our house is an embarrassment and we can't have people over because of it.
The final straw: Dave took out a $5,000 loan to fix up one of his cars. Instead of this, he's spent it on either drugs, gambling machines, or both. So he still has the two cars and still keeps taking my wife's car out. This also means she needs to take my car and I'm left without one.
Other things of note is Dave refuses any help. Won't do counseling or go to rehabilitation or anything. He also has nowhere else to go.
But I'm so sick of paying $4,000 a month to come home from my 10-12 hour shift 6 days a week to a junkyard. I'm ready to leave and take my kids with me.
EDIT: We've had the talk to Dave about his behavior, multiple times. He either starts getting angry with us for bringing it up or agrees to do everything then does nothing. My wife won't kick him out.
The Existential Dumpster Fire You Call Family
Have you ever considered that you're not actually living in a home but in an elaborate psychological experiment designed to test how much bullshit one human can endure before their soul collapses like a neutron star? Four thousand fucking dollars a month—that's essentially a exotic sports car payment—except instead of a Lamborghini, you've purchased front-row seats to watch a 26-year-old man-child decompose in real time.
Dave isn't just lazy; he's elevated laziness to an art form that would make Duchamp's urinal look like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Six weeks of work in twelve months—a productivity rate that makes actual sloths look like Wall Street executives on cocaine. The beautiful cosmic irony is that it took him nine months—the exact time required to create human life—to secure a job he then systematically destroyed with the precision of a demolition expert.
The trailer in your front yard isn't just an eyesore; it's a metaphysical monument to failure. It sits there like Ozymandias's shattered visage, except instead of proclaiming "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," it screams "Look at this shitshow and weep for humanity." Those two non-functioning cars aren't vehicles; they're sculptures representing the futility of human ambition, rusting reminders that everything we build will eventually return to dust.
What's truly fucking magnificent about this cosmic joke is how Dave has managed to transform $5,000—money that could have fixed his broken life—into either smoke up his nostrils or digital pixels on gambling machines. It's like watching a man drown while holding a life preserver, except he's using it as a pillow while the water rises. The universe doesn't just want you to suffer; it wants you to bankroll the suffering while having front-row seats to the spectacle.
And your wife! Oh, the delicious absurdity of a partner who refuses to evict the tumor growing on your financial corpus. She's trapped in the maternal equivalent of Stockholm syndrome, where the kidnapper is her own spawn and the ransom is your sanity and savings account. Your relationship has become the human embodiment of that classical philosophical question: if a man screams about his stepson in a house he can't afford, and his wife refuses to hear him, does he make a sound?
The Abyss Chuckles At Your Misery
In the grand scheme of things—the vast, cold, indifferent universe where stars explode and galaxies collide—your problem with Dave is less significant than a fart in a hurricane. And yet, in the crushing immediacy of your daily existence, it's everything. That's the cruel punchline of consciousness: we're aware enough to know we're insignificant, yet condemned to care intensely about our insignificant problems.
You work 60-72 hours a week like some modern Sisyphus, pushing the boulder of your mortgage uphill, only to come home and find Dave has been using your boulder as a place to store his empties. The absurdity would be beautiful if it weren't happening to you.
What you're experiencing isn't just family drama; it's an existential crisis with a pulse and a trailer. Every piece of garbage in your yard is a middle finger from the universe, every mile Dave puts on your wife's car is another thread in the noose tightening around your financial neck. And for what? So you can live in a home you love but can never enjoy? So you can come home exhausted to a junkyard that would make Fred Sanford say, "Damn, that's too much junk"?
For Idiots Who Skimmed This Far
Man works like dog π to pay for dream house π . Loser stepson π§♂️ moves in with trailer π️, broken cars ππ, and garbage mountain π️. Won't work π, won't parent his kids πΆπΆ, won't clean π§Ή, blows loan on drugs/gambling ππ°. Wife won't kick him out π€¦♀️. Man contemplates burning it all down and starting over π₯. Moral: Family is just nature's way of ensuring you never enjoy financial security or peace of mind. ππΈ
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