Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : Throwaway for reasons.

Okay, so this happened about eight or nine months ago, but I'm still wondering if I was the asshole, so you guys get to decide.

For context, I come from a family of means. I don't know how much because we didn't really discuss money, but I know that my parents own a multi-million dollar home, and they have no problem dropping money on a dime for a plane ticket anywhere in the world and paying my and my siblings' college tuition without loans, so I can comfortably say they are of above average means.

After college, I had a lot of trouble finding a job. You know the old "All entry level positions in your field need six years of experience and a third kidney" kind of deal. I was able to find some seasonal and part-time work, but I was not having any luck finding a full time permanent job. It wasn't for a lack of trying, either: getting me a job had become a family project. I was hustling with those cover letters and informational interviews, my mother was hustling for connections and networking, and my dad was hustling trying to keep either of us (who both share some unfortunately anxious and neurotic personalities) from spiraling from stress. (To be fair to my mother, she might have been working harder than me on this.) The issue was that there was just too much competition for these nice entry level jobs. I'd get an interview, do my best, and then be passed over because someone with a graduate degree and nine years of experience applied (which actually happened for one of the part time jobs I applied to).

During this time, I was also living with my parents. It was not an ideal situation because we all love each other, but we all have very intense personalities and get stubborn when we argue. It was made worse by the fact that I felt like a leech there, since they'd complain about me not doing things around the house and then complain about how I did the things around the house when I tried and then do it over their way. Especially with cooking, my mother would sometimes complain that I lived at home and didn't do any cooking, and then my parents would do nothing but complain about my cooking when I tried to make them dinner. My parents seesawed between being okay with this arrangement to throwing whatever shortcoming I had in my face when we argued, so we all agreed that the current situation wasn't ideal.

So after something like eight months of inconsistent work, my mother introduced me to a man who worked in the industry I wanted to work in and we hit it off. He offered to put a good word in with any of the places he worked with if I applied. So I looked at the job listings, and there weren't any office jobs available, but there was a front desk job at a homeless shelter available. Since I wanted to work in a humanitarian nonprofit field and my lack of front-facing experience had been a problem, I decided I should give it a shot. Plus, since it was less prestigious than the other positions I'd been aiming for, I thought I'd have a better chance of getting it and getting some coveted permanent full time work.

I showed the listing to my mother as I got ready to bang out a cover letter, and she wasn't happy. She thought it'd be unsafe, which I thought was a fair concern from a mother and I made a note to ask about safety if I got an interview. But, due to her neurotic and anxious personality, she has a way of working herself up, and she kept repeating to me over and over in a ten minute period that she didn't think I should apply for that position, and eventually I snapped at her that I was applying so she should drop it.

And then she said, "Do you know how embarrassing it would be to ask a man I know professionally to help my daughter with a job like that?"

Now disclaimer, I know my mom is an elitist snob. She knows she's an elitist snob. I don't want to hear people bashing her about it because everyone in the family including her is aware of this.

But I lost my temper and I said in a nasty tone, "I am not like you." This was meant to be a way of saying that I wasn't too proud to work in a job not in an office, but I didn't get to finish. She flew into a screaming rage, saying how dare I use that tone with her, and she chased me into my room. I tried hiding in my room and working on my cover letter, and she kept coming in to call me names and scream insults while I tried to ignore her, and eventually picked at me until I yelled at her that I couldn't stand living in the same apartment with her anymore. The next time she stormed in (while my dad was trying to play mediator and talk me down while I cried like an idiot), she slammed a check down for something like thirty thousand dollars and said that now I had the money to leave. Then she yelled some more insulting things and stormed out.

We hashed the argument out in therapy, but my mother never said that her behavior was unacceptable, and I really think it was. But then again, maybe mine was too. My mother felt like the hurt I caused with my tone was equal to or greater than any hurt she caused that night. Anyway, I've since moved out and a got a job that my mother turns her nose at, but it's a job that pays and she's trying to be supportive.

So, folks: was I the asshole?