1996 Volkswagen Jetta

Have had my jetta for a few weeks now and I bought it from someone who had the car sitting for a while with no mechanical issues, and it has around 130k miles on it. There have been very little in the way of problems with the car, but this definitely qualifies as a problem.

There are actually two main issues:

The issue is that the steering sometimes feels like it is VERY loose, to the point where sometimes the contours of the road will determine where I go instead of me deciding. This has always been an issue, but I have learned to adjust, and accepted it, but if anyone knows what the problem could be, that'd be great.

The other issue, which has just started very recently, is a little more unsafe. Basically, the steering sometimes feels really firm, and then when shifting, the steering wheel will go very very loose and just kind of cause the car to jerk left or right really sharply. A variation of this is when I'm in gear, and trying to just go around a slight curve in the road, I will turn the steering wheel the amount that it used to take to take such a turn, but the car would not really respond, so I turn the wheel a little more, and then all at once the car turns very sharply and very fast in the direction of the turn. I am not sure if this is a great description of what's going on, but I hope it's a start.

Any help anyone can give would be great, because I would really like to know what is going on.