I should be sleeping, but I can't.
My mind is a whirlygig of worries and "what-ifs"
(Say THAT 5 times fast!)
I have my moments where I'm going through the day as though things are fine.
It's almost as if the Husband is just home on a long weekend...
but then I'll remember:
He was laid off. We have no income.
And my chest seizes up-- my eyes start to burn from tears...
What are we gonna do?
Keeps on ringing through my head.
I am paralyzed by fear of what could come, what IS coming if he doesn't find a job within the month.
I am angry and defeated at/by the circumstances.
Ones that we are no strangers to...
Weren't we JUST here?
In the summer of 2007, we were riding high.
New apartment, new engagement, our lives beginning.
Money was tight, yet we were making it...
But just as we got settled, Huz got laid off.
After 4 months of struggling on 1 income, he got a new job.
We could get back on track!
Then my job went out the window.
4 more months of struggling, and I finally found a new job.
It was at a pay cut, but it had potential.
We began to climb out of the hole that was rapidly starting to form...
A week before our wedding, I was laid off.
The economy was tanking--they couldn't afford to keep me...
And let me go two days shy of 90 days, so I didn't even qualify for unemployment.
That was March of 2008.
By July, I still didn't have work.
We were barely limping along.
All we could afford was our rent and utilities.
Everything else went to shit.
We owed all of our billers
Our credit cards were maxed
Our accounts were delinquent
There was no savings to speak of, or money in general.
Our lease was up on the 1st of August and they were jacking our rent up.
We frantically tried to find another place to live, but didn't meet any of the income/credit requirements.
(in CA most buildings mandate that you pass a credit check and make at least 3xs your rent amount to qualify for tenancy)
None of our friends were in a position to help us, so we did the one thing, the LAST thing we wanted to do:
Called my husband's parents and begged.
It was as demoralizing as you might expect...
They, rightfully, felt like we (as married adults) should figure it out ourselves and said no.
But when it became clear that it was their house or our 2003 Jetta, they consented.
So we packed up our apartment into a storage unit, gave away our dog (who we ADORED) and drove over to their house.
(On the way, we rear-ended someone. I should have known then that we were in for a difficult road)
We thought it was going to be a couple months...
As I talked about several times here in these "pages," it's been almost 3 years.
A much harder and less fruitful 3 years than I think anyone expected, but there was positivity and SOME progress.
We were finally at a point were there were no more collectors calling, no more delinquencies.
There still wasn't any savings (thanks to medical bills and needing a new car, OH, and having a child), but there were a few bucks in the bank and our bills were getting paid in full and on time.
Still had a shitload of debt and I had no idea when we'd be able to have our own place; worrying about money constantly, but I could always say:
At LEAST the bills are getting paid.
We are providing for our son.
Now We can't say that.
I paid what I could for this month--still trying to figure out the rest...
There will be nothing left for next month.
As I said in my previous post, because of my in-laws, O will not go hungry, and we will have a roof, but what about everything else?
I know this is going to drive us deeper into debt--how much deeper?
What about our credit? (Which was finally cleaned up)
What about our CAR?
Am I going to have to default on my student loans?
How long will it take us to rebound from this, when we haven't even fully recovered from the last time?
We want to move forward.
We want to be optimistic.
We're wishing for that miracle...
But looking at our peers and the economy around us, we know we have to be frank with ourselves.
We're trying to be proactive.
We've got resumes flying and we're following up on every lead that crosses our path...
We're doing everything we can, but we know that's not enough.
It's taking a toll on us. On every level.
We will weather it, I hope, but how beat up will we be coming out on the other side?
I'm not sure I want to know...
Thank you to everyone who has commented/emailed/tweeted/texted/called us.
Thank you for your support, encouragement, prayers and hope for us.
Thank you for keeping your eyes peeled and ears open.
Thank you for listening.
We really appreciate it.
We need it.
Showing posts with label The Angries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Angries. Show all posts
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
No Dice. As Per The Usual.
I didn't get the job.
While I knew that was probably going to be the case, I was trying to remain positive.
[And we all know how I feel about optimism....]
They didn't even offer to keep my resume on file or promise to keep me in mind for future openings.
The email basically said:
Thanks, but no thanks. We hired someone more qualified than you. Good luck with your job search.
Again, I wasn't surprised, but I was still crushed.
I WANTED that job.
Despite my initial nervousness about working full-time again, I knew that I would be good at it.
Being able to get back into the writing world (even in such a small way) would have been...well, never mind.
More than WANT, this job was a NEED.
We needed this job.
We need a break.
We keep trying to make forward progress and it's always 1 step forward, 3 back...
We are chained to money...or lack thereof...
I feel like that's an all-too-familiar refrain in our lives.
You have my sympathies, if it is for you as well.
Sigh.....
Fuck.
Not eloquent or pretty, but all I can say....
While I knew that was probably going to be the case, I was trying to remain positive.
[And we all know how I feel about optimism....]
They didn't even offer to keep my resume on file or promise to keep me in mind for future openings.
The email basically said:
Thanks, but no thanks. We hired someone more qualified than you. Good luck with your job search.
Again, I wasn't surprised, but I was still crushed.
I WANTED that job.
Despite my initial nervousness about working full-time again, I knew that I would be good at it.
Being able to get back into the writing world (even in such a small way) would have been...well, never mind.
More than WANT, this job was a NEED.
We needed this job.
We need a break.
We keep trying to make forward progress and it's always 1 step forward, 3 back...
We are chained to money...or lack thereof...
I feel like that's an all-too-familiar refrain in our lives.
You have my sympathies, if it is for you as well.
Sigh.....
Fuck.
Not eloquent or pretty, but all I can say....
Friday, January 14, 2011
Quarantine has been Breached...
There are times that I feel emotionally compromised.
[More like most of the time, but I like to carry on as as though I'm all stable and Maslow-y.]
Now is definitely one of those times. There's a shitload of factors contributing to my current state, both immediate and historical, but I find myself incapable of forming those factors into coherency right now.
[an attempt from an earlier post]
I hate this shit. It makes me feel lost and and weak and out-of-control, and as a HUGE control-freak, this is more that a teensy issue.
It makes me feel whiny and trivial.
I carry a lot of of sadness and grief within me. A lot of pain. I've been through a lot of horrific shit.
I've been decried as liar, and and pretty much all of my history has been denied, but it's the truth. A whole lotta ugly, ugly, complicated truth.
As true as it may be, I feel like a cliche. A ridiculous, Lifetime-Movie-variety whelpish, sad-girl.
Gross.
But I am a sad girl. A deeply fucking sad girl/woman/human. And frankly, I lose the capacity to handle it properly on certain days.
It PAINS me to admit that. And if we're honest with ourselves? It pains most people to hear it. They don't want sorrow and pain and scars that won't close.
They want healing and positivity and triumph and smiles.
You and me both, world. As such?
I acknowledge it occasionally, and sometimes put my self-awareness hat on, and of COURSE I went to therapy (I mean, obviously) for it, but for the most part?
I just try to keep that shit in quarantine, away from the rest of my metal processes and emotions....
Because it scares the fuck out of me. It's never-ending. It has a profundity that even I can't fathom, and intensity that I cannot control.
Yep, I know what you are thinking: "Gosh, it sounds like you may have depression!" I do! The clinical kind, even! Fun!
In order to compensate for the sads, I tend to turn to anger. Mostly at myself for not being able to cope, sometimes-more often than I ever wanted- at my husband for being terrified/powerless at the depth of it all, and at the "world" I live in for not often giving the struggle any real validity.
Anger is less daunting for me. I'm familiar with anger- it's strangely comforting because at least I've had practice at it...mostly with in being hurled and spit in my direction, but you get the gist...anger and I are on a first name basis.
I can control it. [Right?]
It doesn't run away with my sanity as sadness is so prone to do. I am not to well-versed in sadness. Not in any healthy way. Sadness was not allowed in the environment that I grew up in.
It was mocked and the cause for wrath. No one had the right or reason to be sad except for my Mother. Her sadness was the only genuine and respected sadness. She was the only one whose sadness was warranted and needed to be cared for.
[That was pretty much the Gold Standard for all of her emotions, btw.]
The rest of the world was selfish, putting on, grasping for attention, or being overly dramatic.
Sadness cost too damned much, so I learned "not" to be. Anger was safer. It was easier. I could internalize that shit and externalize a scowl with the best of 'em....it took me a long time to learn it, but once I did, Oh, boy! Did I have the world fooled!
Pssshhh.
Look at me! I'm together! I am a rock. No one is going to break me again! Fuck being sad! Sadness is for quitters! I am beyond my childhood, my abuses, my scars, my traumas, my brain chemistry [Hello?]. I am so completely above that now! I am now well-rounded because I know that!
Oh, Depression, you have such the sardonic sense of humor.....
Therapy, Medication, Religion, Education, True Love, Motherhood--Nothing has cured it. All, at one time or another have eased it, some continually, some superficially, some earnestly, but nothing has wholly absorbed it.
I know that it will never be. That it will ebb and flow through my life forever.
In the stillness of 2am, on more nights than I care to count, I fear that someday I will be flooded and completely taken over by it.
Not in a suicidal way (though I'd be a liar if I said it didn't bring me dangerously close to the dizzying edge more than once in my youth), because suicide is selfish bullshit that leaves your friends/family holding your bag of pain and confusion while trying to deal with their OWN, [so put the phone down] but in that way that depression works best-
APATHY.
When it's done drowning you in sorrow, it just takes everything else. You don't care-no, it's not that you don't care, or won't care, it's that you can't care. It takes away your ability to feel anything but the hollowness of nothing. I have been there for brief (and some not so brief) periods of my life, and it is not pretty.
Being a mother has made depression all the more terrifying for me. I don't want it to affect my son, and I fight like hell to shield him from it, but it would be naive of me to think that I can keep it from touching him at all. It frustrates me as a wife because I am a caretaker, and all I want to do is be the pillar of strength and comfort in my husband's life, and that role is robbed from me during bouts...
That makes me feel like a failure. Which is all part of the tapes running in my head, and the powerful hold of depression in the first fucking place, which I know from a logical pov, but it feels true emotionally.
Failure.
Such an insidious word. It carries so much power. It is personified as the Boogey Man in my closet, under my bed.
And tonight?
Well tonight, it is all I can see.
Depression is a cunning bastard.
Nighttime is when he sidles up the closest. Strokes my fears and breathes the past into my present.
Some nights we dance more than others, but he's always on my card*...
but will not forgive
Rage builds slowly, toward a crescendo in Hate.
(The Chorus Begins)
Anger croons about the smallest of injustices
waltzing with the skeletons in your closet
They sway, taunting, down a macabre lane of memories
fleshing out your demons, giving substance to their grip-
so begins their deceitful dance
Watch, as the dead whirl around the floor…
1 and,
2 and,
3 and,
4.
Mistrust is rhythmic, lulling you into a fury
and as you accept a spectral invitation to the ball,
you forget that the dead can dance Forever…
1 and,
2 and,
3 and,
4.
Listen, as the band keeps playing the same
old
familiar
song.
*For those of you who have never been ravaged by a depressive disorder, here's a tidbit to note:
Depressed people are always depressed. Always. It's just a question of to what degree.
I've spent many of my years with it turned up to ELEVEN.
Because as I intro'd with:
I am emotionally compromised the fuck up.
[More like most of the time, but I like to carry on as as though I'm all stable and Maslow-y.]
Now is definitely one of those times. There's a shitload of factors contributing to my current state, both immediate and historical, but I find myself incapable of forming those factors into coherency right now.
[an attempt from an earlier post]
I hate this shit. It makes me feel lost and and weak and out-of-control, and as a HUGE control-freak, this is more that a teensy issue.
It makes me feel whiny and trivial.
I carry a lot of of sadness and grief within me. A lot of pain. I've been through a lot of horrific shit.
I've been decried as liar, and and pretty much all of my history has been denied, but it's the truth. A whole lotta ugly, ugly, complicated truth.
As true as it may be, I feel like a cliche. A ridiculous, Lifetime-Movie-variety whelpish, sad-girl.
Gross.
But I am a sad girl. A deeply fucking sad girl/woman/human. And frankly, I lose the capacity to handle it properly on certain days.
It PAINS me to admit that. And if we're honest with ourselves? It pains most people to hear it. They don't want sorrow and pain and scars that won't close.
They want healing and positivity and triumph and smiles.
You and me both, world. As such?
I acknowledge it occasionally, and sometimes put my self-awareness hat on, and of COURSE I went to therapy (I mean, obviously) for it, but for the most part?
I just try to keep that shit in quarantine, away from the rest of my metal processes and emotions....
Because it scares the fuck out of me. It's never-ending. It has a profundity that even I can't fathom, and intensity that I cannot control.
Yep, I know what you are thinking: "Gosh, it sounds like you may have depression!" I do! The clinical kind, even! Fun!
In order to compensate for the sads, I tend to turn to anger. Mostly at myself for not being able to cope, sometimes-more often than I ever wanted- at my husband for being terrified/powerless at the depth of it all, and at the "world" I live in for not often giving the struggle any real validity.
Anger is less daunting for me. I'm familiar with anger- it's strangely comforting because at least I've had practice at it...mostly with in being hurled and spit in my direction, but you get the gist...anger and I are on a first name basis.
I can control it. [Right?]
It doesn't run away with my sanity as sadness is so prone to do. I am not to well-versed in sadness. Not in any healthy way. Sadness was not allowed in the environment that I grew up in.
It was mocked and the cause for wrath. No one had the right or reason to be sad except for my Mother. Her sadness was the only genuine and respected sadness. She was the only one whose sadness was warranted and needed to be cared for.
[That was pretty much the Gold Standard for all of her emotions, btw.]
The rest of the world was selfish, putting on, grasping for attention, or being overly dramatic.
Sadness cost too damned much, so I learned "not" to be. Anger was safer. It was easier. I could internalize that shit and externalize a scowl with the best of 'em....it took me a long time to learn it, but once I did, Oh, boy! Did I have the world fooled!
Pssshhh.
Look at me! I'm together! I am a rock. No one is going to break me again! Fuck being sad! Sadness is for quitters! I am beyond my childhood, my abuses, my scars, my traumas, my brain chemistry [Hello?]. I am so completely above that now! I am now well-rounded because I know that!
Oh, Depression, you have such the sardonic sense of humor.....
Therapy, Medication, Religion, Education, True Love, Motherhood--Nothing has cured it. All, at one time or another have eased it, some continually, some superficially, some earnestly, but nothing has wholly absorbed it.
I know that it will never be. That it will ebb and flow through my life forever.
In the stillness of 2am, on more nights than I care to count, I fear that someday I will be flooded and completely taken over by it.
Not in a suicidal way (though I'd be a liar if I said it didn't bring me dangerously close to the dizzying edge more than once in my youth), because suicide is selfish bullshit that leaves your friends/family holding your bag of pain and confusion while trying to deal with their OWN, [so put the phone down] but in that way that depression works best-
APATHY.
When it's done drowning you in sorrow, it just takes everything else. You don't care-no, it's not that you don't care, or won't care, it's that you can't care. It takes away your ability to feel anything but the hollowness of nothing. I have been there for brief (and some not so brief) periods of my life, and it is not pretty.
Being a mother has made depression all the more terrifying for me. I don't want it to affect my son, and I fight like hell to shield him from it, but it would be naive of me to think that I can keep it from touching him at all. It frustrates me as a wife because I am a caretaker, and all I want to do is be the pillar of strength and comfort in my husband's life, and that role is robbed from me during bouts...
That makes me feel like a failure. Which is all part of the tapes running in my head, and the powerful hold of depression in the first fucking place, which I know from a logical pov, but it feels true emotionally.
Failure.
Such an insidious word. It carries so much power. It is personified as the Boogey Man in my closet, under my bed.
And tonight?
Well tonight, it is all I can see.
Depression is a cunning bastard.
Nighttime is when he sidles up the closest. Strokes my fears and breathes the past into my present.
Some nights we dance more than others, but he's always on my card*...
Haunting the Dancehall
In a symphony of things you cannot changebut will not forgive
Rage builds slowly, toward a crescendo in Hate.
(The Chorus Begins)
Anger croons about the smallest of injustices
waltzing with the skeletons in your closet
They sway, taunting, down a macabre lane of memories
fleshing out your demons, giving substance to their grip-
so begins their deceitful dance
Watch, as the dead whirl around the floor…
1 and,
2 and,
3 and,
4.
Mistrust is rhythmic, lulling you into a fury
and as you accept a spectral invitation to the ball,
you forget that the dead can dance Forever…
1 and,
2 and,
3 and,
4.
Listen, as the band keeps playing the same
old
familiar
song.
*For those of you who have never been ravaged by a depressive disorder, here's a tidbit to note:
Depressed people are always depressed. Always. It's just a question of to what degree.
I've spent many of my years with it turned up to ELEVEN.
Because as I intro'd with:
I am emotionally compromised the fuck up.
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