<prompt> Human: I am simply ready to give up. This story is incredibly fucked and I could write five pages, but I will keep it to the bare minimum I can.My dad committed suicide in 2010 and the impact on my family has been devastating. He thought he was doing it to help us he had set up a 5 million insurance policy but having become so entrapped in a pit of drugs and delirium, he defaulted on his payment for three months before he took his own life. We received zero payout. My brother began heavily abusing alcohol and drugs for three years, lying and stealing from my mom. He stole nearly 20,000 and totaled two cars. Finally thank god he became sober after an out of state rehab treatment that cost our family over 100,000 in savings. He has now been in AA for almost five years, he nearly has his five-year sobriety chip, and is a pre-med cognitive science major at UC Berkeley. I love him and am incredibly proud of him. My mom has never fully recovered from my dads death. He handled EVERYTHING financially. He also was incredibly wasteful with money and would lavish her in anything she wanted. We had the best of the best, and that mentality stuck with her for years, even when we obviously couldnt afford it. From welfare, child support, mental disability checks, she has been keeping our family afloat. This has all expired or been lost now. Despite having no income, she has turned toward material possessions, expensive apartments, and unnecessary shopping gifts as a means of escaping what happened. Having slowly lost all of her welfare income, she has now found herself in a horrible position financially. She keeps buying with no sense of making money. She finally got a job at home depot but cannot afford her three bedroom apartment. She lives alone, in an incredibly cluttered place I can barely walk in there, with two cats. I love her to death but every time I come home from college I get extreme depressionanxiety from living with her. That brings us to me. I have endured this all and helped to the best of my ability. I applied to six jobs at age 14, worked my ass off in high school, and managed to get accepted to UC Berkeley as well. In all of high school, I paid her phone bill, car insurance, and 300 of rent every single month for over three years. This meant I was working 2 jobs seven days a week. I am now a business major at UC Berkeley. My future is looking exciting, but my present is absolutely intolerable. She calls me weekly asking for more money. I cannot afford anything, but I also cannot afford to lose my relationship with her. She is still my mom and I am still her son, I will ALWAYS do ANYTHING I can to help. But this becomes a fault when I start putting her needs above mine. I now have -6.00 in my account. My grandpa gives me 500month and that barely covers food and school supplies. My grandpa has not been speaking to my mom as she only calls him to ask for money. Tonight my brother called me, sounding very dull and unhealthy. He has a girlfriend, who Ive just now learned is pregnant, and is expecting a baby in nine months. My brother and I both live in dorms at school, returning back home to our moms apartment during break. Every break when we get back, we both feel like shit just based on the environment we are in. However, we indulge our mom and spend time with her to make her feel good and ensure her that we love her a ton. My brothers girlfriend stays with us too, but now with a baby on the way it is clear that wont be a healthy environment to stay in. I have 300 in my savings. I have more invested in stocks but am trying not to touch that for at least a year. I am objectively a driven and smart individual, I just need to demonstrate to someone that I am a hard fucking worker and will do anything to be able to make money and support my family. I currently work a marketing job for a start-up called DELETED, but the job is heavily performance based, as I get paid 1 for signing someone up. Last semester I earned 4sign up and was able to be the top Campus Representative at my school. My best month I got nearly 200 sign-ups, which earned me 800 that month. Unfortunately as this business scaled, my boss told me he could no longer afford 4sign up and lowered it to 1sign up, with 2sign up coming after the first 50 people I sign up. Its getting harder and harder to effectively earn with this payment model and I need to seek something more reliable. On top of all this, I am in a fraternity and currently hold the DELETED position. I am a part of the DELETED lame but I need to as DELETED, and am also playing intramural soccer and volleyball. I have agreed to be DELETED for DELETED free advisingtutoring organization at my school and have two separate hour-long meetings per week. In addition I am taking 16 units, and my calculus class is killing me. Everything is piling up. I have too much on my plate to afford to help my mom or my brother. Like I said earlier, my brother called me tonight explaining he was not in a good financial place. It took him a few minutes to finally tell me that he just got off the phone with our mom, who called him crying and desperately asking for money, saying she was 500 short on rent. He has 300, I have 300. Neither of us knows what to do. I even tried to apply for food stamps and couldnt get a hold of my moms tax records to do so as she couldnt find them. Nothing is working out and I feel like if I dont get some income or support soon, I may have to drop out of school and find a job. I love Berkeley and it would be sad to do that, but I need to help my mom. Anyall advice is welcomed and incredibly appreciated.Thank you.EDIT: I have received so many kind PMs. I really have not felt more capable of inciting change at any point in this last year than I do right now. Thank you everyone for the support and for being involved in a great community. Assistant: I dont think you are helping your mother by paying her bills. She has the capacity to live within her means but doesnt need to because shes always bailed out. You need to focus on your school and your own finances. It does seem like you are doing too many things. Dont forget that you are there to pass calculus and not play sports.Human: I appreciate that and I often consider your point. It simply comes down to how reliant I am on her to be ok. I really cant feel any pride or happiness in myself when she is struggling so much. She lost her husband I dont want her to lose her kids. I do want to focus on school and have been recently, but getting the call from my brother brought all this up again. I also feel obliged because I live in the place when I get home and I am an adult too. Shes on her own paying for a 3 bedroom apartment and she reminds me of that all the time.  <response>: I would suggest you look into possibility you are co-dependent. This statement basically says you are completely co-dependent. I really cant feel any pride or happiness in myself when she is struggling so much.My experience has been until you learn, and you may need to seek outside help, to let go, you likely will never be happy. 