My family have recently been arguing...a lot. Last year, around the November sort of time, my Dad had a stroke that stopped him from using his left arm, left leg and slightly impaired his vision. He is making good progress, or at least he was. Ever since he has come home from hospital he has had a really negative attitude towards life and this attitude has had a really negative effect on the rest of my family, apart from my brother (to my Dad, my brother's his pride and joy). Because my Dad is really nice to my brother but shouts at me all the time, I feel left out and like a slave because I have to look after him when my Mum goes to work. Admittedly, I have skipped school once or twice to take care of him because he just doesn't try to do anything whereas in the hospital he did everything for himself, I saw him with my own eyes. Due to this negative behaviour, me and my mum have been working overtime 24/7 which, as you can expect, builds up a lot of stress. I am 14 and I'm doing an early GCSE in Spanish, which was terrible. I got a C which is a pass but my teacher said she was very disappointed with what I did in the speaking exam. When I told my friends, only two of them, one being my girlfriend, tried to cheer me up while the rest just made it worse. One of them even stopped talking to me because I was 'breaking up the cheerful atmosphere'. What I would like to ask you is how I can explain how I'm feeling to my family and friends because hardly any of my friends understand and every time I try to talk to my Dad he starts yelling 'you're making me feel upset I don't want to talk about this'.
Can you help?
- S, 14